Jewish Museum Berlin: Visit the Libeskind Building

To attempt to comprehend Berlin without considering its centuries-long, complex, and often tumultuous relationship with its Jewish citizens would be akin to attempting to complete a jigsaw without a significant piece of the puzzle.

Long before the Brandenburg Gate became an icon or the Reichstag housed parliaments, Jewish life was interwoven into the very fabric of this city, a thread sometimes celebrated, often tolerated, and tragically, brutally torn.

While historical records are sparse, evidence suggests that there was a Jewish population in the Berlin-Cölln area as early as the 13th century. However, a more formally recognised community began to flourish in the late 17th century. Following the expulsion of Jews from Vienna in 1670, Frederick William, the ‘Great Elector’ of Brandenburg-Prussia, issued an edict in 1671 permitting fifty expelled Viennese Jewish families to settle in Berlin. More than simple altruism; the Elector recognised the economic benefits these families could bring to a city still recovering from the devastating Thirty Years’ War. This marked the official re-establishment of a Jewish community in Berlin, a community that would grow to become one of the largest and most vibrant in Europe.

Over the ensuing centuries, Berlin’s Jewish population became integral to the city’s transformation into a major European metropolis. They were pioneers in trade, industry, and finance. Thinkers like Moses Mendelssohn, a key figure of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) in the 18th century, made Berlin a centre of intellectual ferment, bridging Jewish tradition and European philosophy. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish Berliners were at the forefront of culture, science, and the arts – names like Max Liebermann in painting, Albert Einstein in physics (though his special theory of relativity predated his Berlin professorship, his presence cemented the city’s scientific prestige), Kurt Weill in music, and countless others enriched the city immeasurably.

By the 1920s, Berlin was home to around 170,000 Jews, roughly a third of all Jews in Germany, contributing significantly to the Weimar Republic’s famously liberal and creative atmosphere.

Yet, this vibrant existence was always shadowed by prejudice, discrimination, and periodic violence. This culminated in the unimaginable horror of the Nazi era and the Holocaust (Shoah). From 1933 onwards, Jewish life was systematically dismantled – rights stripped, businesses aryanized, synagogues burned (most infamously during Kristallnacht in November 1938), and finally, deportation and mass murder. Berlin became a hub for the bureaucratic machinery of genocide. Of the approximately 160,000 Jews living in Berlin when the Nazis seized power, around 55,000 were murdered. Thousands more fled, their absence leaving an unfillable void in the city’s soul.

After 1945, only a few thousand Jews remained in the ruins of Berlin. Yet, against all odds, Jewish life slowly, painstakingly began to re-emerge. The community remained small for decades, split between East and West during the Cold War. A significant turning point came after German reunification, with the influx of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. Today, Berlin once again boasts the largest Jewish community in Germany, estimated at around 40,000-50,000 members affiliated with various community organisations, though the total number of people with Jewish heritage is likely higher. It’s a diverse, dynamic community grappling with its history while forging a new future, with new synagogues, cultural centres, schools, and kosher restaurants adding to the city’s landscape.

The Jewish Museum Berlin stands as a testament to this entire complex narrative – the centuries of contribution, the depths of persecution, and the remarkable resilience of the Jewish spirit in Berlin.

The museum’s central mission is ambitious: to present two millennia of German-Jewish history and culture. It deliberately avoids being solely a Holocaust museum, though the Shoah inevitably casts a long shadow and is addressed with profound sensitivity. Instead, it seeks to illuminate the richness and diversity of Jewish life in Germany – religious traditions, intellectual achievements, cultural contributions, daily life, periods of coexistence and integration, as well as times of persecution and exclusion. The German state’s commitment to funding and maintaining this institution is a powerful statement about acknowledging historical responsibility and preserving the memory of a community that was nearly destroyed, while also celebrating its enduring presence and future. It stands as a vital space for dialogue and understanding in contemporary Germany.

The story of the Jewish Museum Berlin is itself a reflection of the fractured history it seeks to represent. It’s not the first Jewish Museum the city has known. An earlier institution opened its doors on Oranienburger Straße in 1933, adjacent to the magnificent Neue Synagoge. Housing a significant collection of Jewish art and cultural artefacts, it was a beacon of Jewish heritage precisely when that heritage was coming under vicious attack. Its existence was tragically short-lived; the Nazis forced its closure in 1938 following the Kristallnacht pogrom, its collections confiscated or dispersed. For decades after the war, the physical representation of German-Jewish history in Berlin remained fragmented, overshadowed by the enormity of the Shoah.

The idea for a new Jewish Museum began to gain traction in the 1970s. Initially, the plan was relatively modest: a Jewish department within the existing Berlin Museum (now part of the Stadtmuseum Berlin). However, as discussions evolved, particularly in the charged atmosphere of West Berlin during the Cold War – a city acutely aware of its historical burdens – the ambition grew. It became clear that the sheer scope and sensitivity of German-Jewish history demanded a dedicated, purpose-built space. This wasn’t just about displaying artefacts; it was about creating a place for reflection, education, and confronting a difficult past. Germany’s post-war generation was grappling with the legacy of the Third Reich, and creating such a museum became an important, if complex, part of that process.

In 1989, a pivotal year marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall, an architectural competition was held for an extension to the Berlin Museum specifically for the Jewish collection. The winning design, submitted by Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind, was radical, unconventional, and deeply symbolic. It was so powerful, in fact, that it eventually propelled the project towards becoming an independent institution. Libeskind, himself the child of Holocaust survivors, envisioned a building that would embody the complexities, ruptures, and absences within German-Jewish history, particularly the void left by the Holocaust.

The Libeskind section of the museum officially opened its doors to the public in September 2001, though this part of the building had been completed years earlier and already become an architectural landmark, drawing visitors even before exhibits were installed. It comprises two main parts: the Altbau (Old Building), the stately baroque Kollegienhaus, a former Prussian courthouse, which serves as the entrance and houses administrative offices, temporary exhibitions, and event spaces; and the Neubau (New Building), Libeskind’s striking zinc-clad extension accessed via an underground passage from the Altbau.

Libeskind’s design forces visitors to confront the difficult aspects of history through sensory experience – the instability of exile, the chilling emptiness of the Holocaust, the undeniable presence of the void. It’s a challenging, demanding architecture, but one that provides an extraordinarily powerful framework for understanding the exhibits housed within and the history they represent.

Daniel Libeskind’s extension to the Jewish Museum Berlin is not merely a container for exhibits; it is an exhibit in itself, a powerful architectural statement designed to evoke emotion and provoke thought before you even encounter the first display case. It’s an experience meant to be felt as much as seen, translating the often-unfathomable realities of German-Jewish history, particularly the trauma of the Holocaust, into physical space. Libeskind titled his design “Between the Lines,” referencing the complex, often invisible, connections and devastating disconnections within this history.

The building’s exterior is immediately arresting: a dramatic, zigzagging form clad in shimmering zinc panels, slashed by seemingly random window openings. This shape, often interpreted as a deconstructed or fractured Star of David, resists easy interpretation and suggests rupture, disorientation, and a path abruptly broken. Unlike the orderly classicism of the adjacent Kollegienhaus, Libeskind’s structure feels dynamic, unsettling, almost scarred. The sharp angles and metallic skin create a sense of tension and vulnerability.

Visitors enter the Libeskind building not directly from the street, but by descending a stark staircase from the baroque Altbau into an underground network. This descent is symbolic, representing a journey into the depths of history. Here, you encounter the building’s conceptual core: three intersecting underground corridors, or “Axes,” each representing a different facet of the German-Jewish experience.

The first is the Axis of Exile. This long, sloping corridor leads out of the building entirely, culminating in the Garden of Exile. This stark outdoor space features 49 tall concrete pillars arranged on a tilted, uneven grid. Growing atop these pillars (48 of them filled with earth from Berlin, representing 1948, the year Israel was founded) are oleaster trees, symbolising hope and life, but their constrained growth speaks to the difficulty of putting down roots in unfamiliar soil. The ground beneath is deliberately slanted, creating a physical sense of instability and disorientation, mirroring the experience of those forced to flee their homeland. The 49th pillar, at the centre, contains earth brought from Jerusalem. Walking through this garden is a profoundly unsettling physical experience.

The second corridor is the Axis of the Holocaust. This path ends abruptly at the Holocaust Tower (or Shoah Void), a towering, empty, unheated concrete silo, almost entirely dark save for a small slit high above letting in a sliver of natural light and muffled city sounds. Entering this space is chilling. The heavy door clangs shut behind you, enveloping you in cold, near-silence, and oppressive darkness. It’s a space of profound absence, designed to convey the suffocation, isolation, and despair experienced by the victims of the Shoah. It’s not an easy place to be, nor is it meant to be. It’s a visceral confrontation with the void left by genocide.

The third and longest corridor is the Axis of Continuity. This path represents the persistence of Jewish life in Germany despite persecution and rupture. It cuts through the museum’s main exhibition spaces and leads to a dramatic, steep staircase that ascends upwards towards the light, symbolising the continuation and endurance of history and culture. Along this axis, intersecting it at various points, are the “Voids” – stark, empty concrete spaces that cut vertically through all levels of the zigzagging building. These Voids are mostly inaccessible to visitors but can often be glimpsed through openings or crossed via bridges. They represent the physical and spiritual emptiness left by the destruction of Jewish life in Berlin and Europe – the absences that cannot be filled, the voices silenced forever.