Jüdisches Leben im Grindelviertel

"The mural “Jewish Life in the Grindelviertel” was created in 1995 on the campus of the University of Hamburg. A group of students from the University of Economics and Politics (HWP) and the University of Hamburg took the 50th anniversary of the liberation from National Socialism as an opportunity to develop the concept for this mural after many discussions and extensive research.

The formerly Jewish Grindelviertel district, with the Bornplatz Synagogue and Joseph Carlebach Square, typical shops, and historic street names, was to be made visible again, along with the people and their everyday situations, political currents, and fashions. The destruction of this life was to remain permanently visible, like a gaping wound, as Nelly Sachs asks in the quoted poem “Chor der Tröster” (Chorus of Consolers): “Who among us is allowed to console?”

With this concept and Nelly Sachs' poem, the design also strongly opposed the historical-political tendencies of the 1990s to draw a line under society's confrontation with Nazi policies of robbery and extermination.

Above the main entrance of the former HWP (now the Department of Social Economics), Cecilia Herrero, with the support of the mural group “Los Muralistas,” painted the picture in the summer of 1995 based on the group's designs. The project was financed by private donations and public funds. The grand opening took place on November 9, 1995, as part of the commemoration ceremony for Kristallnacht

In 2015, Cecilia Herrero restored the mural. Once again, donations and subsidies were acquired by the mural group to enable the restoration.

More than twenty years after the mural was created, Jewish life is once again present in the Grindelviertel district: Jewish cafés, public tours on the subject, stumbling blocks, the Talmud Torah School. However, the police protection in front of the Talmud Torah School building also shows that Jewish life can only take place under strict security measures.http://gdff.de/juedisches-leben-am-grindel/"

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Translated with DeepL.com (free version)