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| Cologne’s Jewish Museum closer to reality
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Cologne City Hall with Window to the Jewish ritual bath
Photo: City of Cologne
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Four months after the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Cologne’s synagogue, Fritz Schramma, the city’s mayor, has made positive comments about plans to build a Jewish museum next to city hall.
Abraham Lehrer, member of the board of the Jewish community, called Schramma’s comments a "surprising and positive step for us".
Schramma was originally opposed to the idea of having the Jewish Museum built on the square in front of the city hall – fearing that it would change the character of city’s centre.
However, the mayor’s spokesman Ulrich Hover told the Kolnischen Rundschau newspaper that “the architectural model of the museum, by architect Joachim Schuermann immediately got the mayor to change his mind”
Medieval square
The square directly in front of the city hall was once occupied by buildings that made up the centre of medieval Jewish life in Cologne.
In the middle of the square, a glass roof, at street level, lets passers by peer deep into what was once the old mikveh (ritual bath).
According to Hover, “not only has the mayor recognized the significance of the square - distancing himself from his belief that the area must remain an open space – he has also seen that a significant building such as the one designed by Schuermann would enhance the city’s architectural landscape.”
Pope Benedict’s last year meeting with Cologne officials and Jewish leaders, such as Abraham Lehrer, “contributed greatly to the mayor’s change-of-mind”, according to the Rundschau report.
No funds
Although the Schramma now seems to stand behind the project, he has indicated in a public statement that the city does not have the funds to contribute to the museum project. Instead, he called for “the establishment of an Association for the Promotion of a Home and Museum for Jewish Culture of the Northrhein-Westphalia region”.
The mayor said that an architectural competition would take place so that “the best solution” would be found for the square. The small archeological zone that is due to open in 2010 will need to be incorporated into the plans.
Already in October 2001, Free-Democratic (liberal) city council members proposed that a Jewish museum be built on the square.
The city sought the recommendation of a team of 40 construction and historical experts to discuss various locations that had been proposed. “The square in front of the city hall is the only proposed area where all experts unanimously agreed that construction could take place,” according to Ralph Sterck, speaker of Cologne’s Free-Democratic faction.
Cologne’s Jewish Community
Cologne, a city of about 1 million inhabitants northwest Germany, including about 5,000 Jews.
It is home to the oldest known Jewish community north of the Alps, dating back to at least 321 A.D.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis wiped out 11,000 of Cologne?s pre-war community of 20,000 Jews. The six synagogues of the city and its surrounding were destroyed (along with most synagogues across Germany) on Noember 10, 1938, Kristallnacht (or "the night of broken glass.")
While most of the survivors scattered to Israel and the U.S., a group of 50 returned to Cologne following the war. They began to meet and pray together in the ruined main synagogue.
By 1959, that number had grown to about 500 and with help from the German government, they rebuilt the main Cologne synagogue. The community continued to slowly expand through births and immigration from Poland, Czechoslavakia and elsewhere so that by the late 1980s there were about 1,300 Jews in Cologne.
Then the collapse of the Soviet Union opened the floodgates to Russians claiming Jewish heritage.
Germany is today home to one of the world?s fastest growing Jewish populations, with more than 100,000 people.
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