Description
In the quarter around the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße we tell you the history of Jewish Berlin. Our city walk takes us to numerous Jewish places and places where Jewish culture was lived and partly is lived again.
In 1671 the first Jews who were allowed to settle permanently in Berlin came to Berlin from Vienna at the invitation of the Great Elector. Their rise to the bourgeoisie was tough and arduous, often at great cost, and for this very reason the contribution made by Jewish Berliners to social, cultural, political and scientific life in Berlin cannot be overestimated.
However, these changes were also connected with conflicts within the Jewish community, and so Berlin became an important place for these inner-Jewish controversies. Tensions between tradition and modernity eventually led to different developments from modern Orthodoxy to Reform Judaism.
Numerous monuments, especially here in the Spandauer Vorstadt, commemorate the expulsion and murder of Berlin's Jews, but some also bear witness to their struggle and resistance against National Socialism.
From Alexanderplatz we go to the Scheunenviertel and the Centrum Judaicum. There we will visit the exhibition and the ruins of the New Synagogue and on our further way through the quarter we will get to know numerous institutions of Jewish life. The tour will end at Koppenplatz.
City tour by: Karen Pastofski
