The Jewish Museum

Today I went to the Jewish Museum. The first thing you notice when you walk up to the building is, obviously, the architecture. The building on the left while facing the museum from the front is an older, neoclassical/baroque building called the Kollegienhaus. It holds the ticket stand, security, and cafe. On the way in I was stuck behind a group of students from Tulane who commented "The Jews don't joke around." um. okay. They proceeded to complain about the €2.50 ticket price. Americans.

The building on the right was designed by Daniel Liebskind. It is a zig-zag shape, filled with blank walls, windows, and voids. Here is a picture from the top, courtesy of Wikipedia:


The museum itself was incredibly interesting. It doesn't focus solely on the Holocaust like a lot of Jewish museums tend to do, but starts with Jewish-German history from the time of Constantine. One of my favorite things in the museum was this "pomegranate" tree. The museum provided paper pomegranates for you to write a wish on, and you can hang them on the tree. It was beautiful.



The museum weaves its way through rural Jews in Germany, enlightenment, 1920s Berlin, the second world war, up to Jewish experiences in the present. Some of my favorite things in the museum included the interactive "voids" where you could put on a set of headphones and listen to information about important Jewish artifacts that had been lost, the depictions of Jews in 1920s Berlin, and the final room in the museum. It held 18 different pictures of Jews in post-1945 Germany, Austria, and Switzerland accompanied by audio files of them discussing what the picture was and what it meant to them. This was my favorite:




After I was finished in the museum, I talked to the information people regarding my new thesis. [My new thesis, by the way, is regarding my own and others Jewish identity in modern Europe, as well as an exploration of modern Jewish media and spaces within Berlin.] The info desk person said there was a large celebration for the tenth anniversary of the museum occurring this week, and gave me a number to call on Monday once it was over. He said there were many people that would be happy to help me... just not this week.

This weekend I'm headed to Warsaw, and I hope to see/experience the country where 75% of my family came from and be able to relate that to my thesis as well.