City walk Potsdam

Beginning and end
In today's Ebräerstraße 4, Potsdam's first Jewish community came together from 1748 onwards.

After the devastation of the Thirty Years' War (1648), Potsdam was developed under the "Great Elector" Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg into the second residential city, next to Berlin. It owed its upswing, among other things, to two admission edicts: in 1671 for Jewish and in 1685 for persecuted Huguenot families. By 1691 at the latest, David Michael, a Jewish merchant, was living in Potsdam. From 1730 onward, other entrepreneurs joined the ranks, especially in textile manufacturing. Already around 1740, a small Jewish community was thus formed, which held its services from 1748 in the then Kupferschmiedsgasse, presumably here in House No. 4 (the present building dates only from 1785.)

The "Ebräerstraße", as it was called since 1786, was renamed back under National Socialist rule. Along with the people, every other reference to Jewish life was to disappear. Today, among others two Stolpersteine commemorate the couple Marta and Julius Back, who ran a bakery at Brandenburger Straße 22 from 1922 to 1932. While the three children managed to escape, the parents were deported to Theresienstadt in 1942. Julius died after a few weeks, Marta could be ransomed to Switzerland in 1945.

"Auf allerhuldreichsten Königl. Befehl ... feyerlichst mit einem Dankfeste eingeweyhet" (1767)
At today's Platz der Einheit 1 formed until 1939 three synagogue buildings the center of Jewish life in the city.

At the site of the Old Synagogue can be found today only a simple commemorative plaque from 1979. It requires some imagination that here for over 170 years the religious as well as social center of the Potsdam community with last 600 members should have been. As early as 1760, Jechiel Michel was the first rabbi to advocate the construction of a synagogue. The king himself supported the project. On December 10, 1767, the new "school" was inaugurated with "trumpets and timpani" and provided seating for about 70 people. However, the inexpensive pile construction did not bear in the long run, so that a new building was necessary until 1802.

The congregation continued to grow, and so on June 17, 1903, it inaugurated a third synagogue in the neo-Baroque style designed by Otto Kerwien, now with seating for over 320. The Prussian eagle was emblazoned above the Torah shrine, with an organ above it. Despite its close ties with Germany, the synagogue was desecrated during the November Pogrom 1938, but was not set on fire because of its proximity to the main post office. In May 1939, the building was forcibly sold and subsequently continued to be used by the post office until the British air raid of April 14, 1945. The ruins were demolished in the course of new construction in 1955.

"With the Nazis it was called Kaufhaus Mainka"
. It was not until 2000 that the Jewish "prehistory" of the M. Hirsch department store was reappraised by students of the Voltaireschule in Potsdam.

In the heart of Potsdam's old town, at the entrance to the pedestrian zone, an old department store building can be found on the left side: the former department store M. Hirsch, Brandenburger Straße 30/31. The Hirsch family had already been resident in Potsdam for generations. In 1880, Magda Hirsch opened a "Wollen-, Tricotagen und Posamentier-Geschäft" here as a branch of the Max Hirsch trading company. The company expanded and, although soon sold on, the name "Warenhaus M. Hirsch" was retained.

The present building dates from 1910, and from 1917 the widow of the then owner, Julius Rubinski, continued to run the business. Paula Rubinski (remarried Rothschild) was still the owner when the department store was "Aryanized" in November 1938, that is, forcibly sold to long-time NSDAP member Alois Mainka. The Rothschild couple was deported to Theresienstadt in 1941.

After 1945, the house served as a shopping center for Soviet officers, then as a furniture and furnishing store, and thus remained in the memory of many Potsdamer*innen. The painful history "behind the facades" was only made public by a project of students of the Potsdam Voltaireschule in 2000.

The last refuge
. In the house Dortustraße 57 the Jewish community came together from 1939. Here lived the "only Jew in Potsdam" until April 1943.

Between 1933 and 1939, the number of Jewish community members in Potsdam shrank from 365 to 175 people. After the forced sale of the community center and synagogue on May 30, 1939, only meetings in private rooms were possible - as once in the 18th century. So they met here in the former Waisenstraße 57 (since 1948 Dortustraße) in the house of the merchant James Gersmann (d. 1942). He was the last chairman of the old synagogue community and had succeeded city councilor Julius Zielenziger (1856-1938) in 1938.
Next to the Jewish old people's home at Bergstraße 1 in Babelsberg (today Spitzweggasse), his house was designated as "collective accommodation" for the remaining Potsdam Jews. Among them was Bertha Simonsohn, Gersmann's niece, a fun-loving woman who had run a drugstore next door at Brandenburger Strasse 19 with her husband Max (d. 1940). "At present I am a sight to behold," the widow wrote to her children as late as November 1942, as "the only Jew in Potsdam." On April 19, 1943, Bertha Simonsohn was deported to Theresienstadt. Her death just two months later is commemorated by a Stolperstein in front of her former house.

One for all?
Since 1993, Potsdam has been struggling to build a "New Synagogue" - with currently five Jewish community organizations.

Whoever is looking for a public synagogue in Potsdam today, will not (yet) find. At the location intended for it, castle road 1/Friedrich Ebert road, a building pit gapes. In 1991, a Jewish community had already come together, mostly families from the former Soviet Union. Today's "Landesverband der Jüdischen Gemeinden Land Brandenburg" (State Association of Jewish Communities in Brandenburg) emerged from this. The Potsdam members organized themselves in 1996 as the "Jewish Community of the City of Potsdam". Currently there are over 400 members, with families 1,200 people.

Plans for a synagogue or community center existed since 1993, a separate "Bauverein Neue Synagoge Potsdam" followed in 2005. The design of the Berlin architectural firm Haberland emerged from a Europe-wide competition in 2009. The building permit was issued in 2010. But despite the support of the city and the state, the building has not yet been completed. After internal differences, the "Law-abiding Jewish State Community" split off in 1999, followed in 2010 by the "Potsdam Synagogue Community" (today together with "Chabad-Lubavitch Brandenburg") including its own "Potsdam Synagogue Support Association". The banner on site comes from the latter. The "Beth Hillel University Community" was added as the fifth organization in 2012. Despite all the religious diversity, a compromise now finally seems to be in sight.

"Through its barren streets we wander..."
In the spring of 1829 Heinrich Heine stayed in Potsdam - and was not particularly happy.

On the way along Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse, shortly after Schwertfegerstrasse (once Potsdam's crossroads "Eight Corners"), there is only a fleeting trace at house No. 121: a memorial plaque for Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). Just three months, from April to July 1829, the poet stayed here in the former Hohewegstraße 11, to continue writing in "rural seclusion" (Heinrich Stieglitz) on the third part of his Reisebilder . Already in 1825, Heine had been baptized Protestant. Thus he hoped in 1829 as a "Doctor of Laws" better employment opportunities for a professorship at the University of Munich. But it was at this time that a dispute with his fellow poet August Graf von Platen came to a head, with the latter making a massive anti-Semitic attack on Heine. In turn, Heine made Platen's homosexuality public in 1830 in his Reisebilder . He was denied a professorship, and frustrated, Heine left for Paris in 1831. In general, the days in Potsdam do not seem to have been too cheerful. Remained are some biting lines about the city. For Heine, it was, as it were, a "monument" to Frederick the Great,  "through its barren streets we wander as through the writings left behind by the philosopher of Sanssouci, it belongs to his œuvres posthumes,..."

"Researching for truth..."
The philosopher Moses Mendelssohn became the namesake of the first research institute for European-Jewish studies in Potsdam in 1992 - others followed.

Since the 1990s, Potsdam has developed into a nationally and internationally recognized center of scholarship in the field of Jewish and rabbinic studies. The beginning was made in 1992 by the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies (MMZ) here at Neuer Markt: an interdisciplinary research institute for the history, religion and culture of Judaism in the majority non-Jewish countries of Europe. A visit to the well-stocked library (through the gateway on the left) is worthwhile in any case. 
In cooperation with the University of Potsdam, the interdisciplinary course of study Jewish Studies was established in 1994/95. In 1999, the Abraham Geiger Kolleg was founded, the first seminary after 1945 to train rabbis, Jewish religious teachers and, since 2007, cantors in Germany. A separate School of Jewish Theology opened in 2013. Two decades after the founding of the MMZ, the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg (ZJS), a teaching and research network of various academic institutions in Potsdam, Berlin and Frankfurt/Oder, was realized in 2012.

"The LORD redeems the soul of his servants..." (Psalm 34:23)
Since 1743, the Jewish Cemetery on Potsdam's Pfingstberg was and remained a mirror of Jewish life in the city - until today.

Despite all memorial plaques or stumbling stones, the place where Jewish life in Potsdam is really visible, the Jewish cemetery on the Pfingstberg (stop Puschkinallee). A visit is possible daily except on Shabbat.
Established in 1743 on what was then Eichberg, then "Judenberg," the cemetery was expanded three times (in 1874, 1910 and 1920) and is now the largest in Brandenburg in terms of area with its 532 historic burial plots. Under the auspices of the State Association of Jewish Communities Brandenburg it is since 2012 again by its own funeral brotherhood, the "Chewra Kadischa" (founded in 1855), cared for.

After years of decay and a fundamental renovation since 1990, even a fourth expansion is now planned. The occupancy clearly reflects the individual development phases of the Jewish community: while the youngest graves in the lower area of the cemetery date from after 1991, the oldest are in the middle (from 1743), above which are the partly magnificent graves of the 19th and 20th centuries (until 1942). Also worth seeing is the restored mourning hall from 1910 including a memorial plaque for the Jewish soldiers who died in the First World War. Since 1977 the ensemble is under monument protection, 1999 followed the admission in the UNESCO World Heritage.