Performing Art

The Spanish War Memorial was built in honor of fallen German communist fighters in the Spanish Civil War. The civil war took place from July 1936 to April 39 and was triggered by a military revolt in Spanish Morocco. Shortly afterwards, General Franco appointed himself the new head of state and was immediately recognized in Germany and Italy. Among the German fighters were also many Jewish fighters who stood up against fascism. Today, the memorial is in Friedrichshain to commemorate the fallen fighters.

A quarter of the tenants in the Hackesche Höfen at the beginning of the Third Reich were of Jewish origin. From 1912 to 1933, the home for girls of the Berlin chapter of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (founded in 1904) was located there, and social work was one of its most important fields of work. Here, single, gainfully employed young girls could find accommodation for little money. At that time, many Eastern European Orthodox Jews/Jüd:innen fled the Russian pogroms and brought Yiddish theater and music to Berlin.*

With the construction of the new theater at Kommandantenstr. 57 in 1906, comedians and actors Anton and Donat (née David) Herrnfeld realized their ideas of their own theater. Donat wrote the plays on bourgeois themes of morality and honor in Jewish families. The success of the theater was also due to its family character. This existed in the interaction with the audience, but also in the operational structure. The wives sat at the box office, sisters and children also played on the stage, the mother cooked in the theater kitchen.

Since 2015, the monument „Moritz and the dancing picture“ by Robert Schad and Pascal Coupot, can be found on the Freiheitsplatz. Furthermore, you can find a copper statue of Oppenheim. Moritz Daniel Oppenheim was the first Jewish artist with an academic background.

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim was born in the Hanau Ghetto and lived there until he was 20 years old. Due to the destruction during the Second World War, it is not known where his house was.

The German-Jewish Theater is located since  1994 in the building of the Citizens' Office in Charlottenburg/Wilmersdorf. The German-Jewish Theater continues the idealistic work of the former Jewish theater "Bimah" in the Meinekestraße, after the last one was on the verge of closing.
The team of the German-Jewish Theater, which consists of participants from different cultures, has the goal to contribute to an intercultural exchange in the city and to develop a Christian-Jewish dialogue.