Memories of Jewish life in Schöneberg, Berlin

In the Western part of Berlin, Schöneberg is one of the areas where used to live many Jewish intellectuals, among which Albert Einstein, that used to live on Haberlandstrasse 8, Gisele Freund, Leo Baeck on Fritz Elsasstrasse 15 or Erich Fromm, on Bayerischer Platz 1. Marcel Reich-Ranicki, the leading literary critic of German literature also lived here for a while, and in his memory, a local school is bearing his name.

Aiming to remember the terrible times, an artistic project of Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock is aimed to raise awareness about the absurdity of the racist legislation at the time. Near the street lamps, on the main streets from the Bayerische Viertel, where Jews used to live, small billboards were placed with the texts of the interdictions the Jews were victims thereof. 

Jews were not allowed to go to school, own dogs or visit the doctors. Even though, later in the project, various mentions were added aimed to specify the context where those decisions were taken, reading all those messages on the light of the day in 2014, doesn't sound very pleasant.

The 80 signs are doubled signed: on one side there is a fragment of the German Nuremberg law and on the other side, there is a graphic description of the interdiction. 

As the signs are written in German, the target of the live exhibition is the German speaking population, but I suppose that after a while, those living around got used with the signs ending up by completely ignoring them. 

This exhibition is part of the larger project 'Places of Remembrance', aimed to outline the lost Jewish heritage of Berlin and can be considered as one of the most significant in the Western part of the city.

In the Schöneberg area used to live around 16,000 Jews, out of which 6,000 were deported from the Munchenerstrasse. At no. 37, there used to be a synagogue and Jewish school, mostly destroyed first during Kristallnacht and after by the bombings. The Orthodox synagogue was opened in 1909, answering the spiritual needs of the growing Jewish population. 

Schöneberg used to be called the 'Jewish Switzerland', but nowadays, there are only the Stolpersteine and the various memory projects that reminds about the past. This is how things are in this part of the world.