One year later

Exactly one year ago on the 4th of July, I officially arrived in Germany.  I landed at the Dusseldorf airport with my German grammar book in hand, took a train to the city of Bonn, the Ubahn to Tannenbusch, and schlepped by suitcase to the Acora hotel just in time to meet my fellow BuKas for an American-organized Independence Day BBQ.  Maybe you remember... there is probably a blog about it.  What followed was an extraordinary  year.  My time in Germany is of course not yet over, but exactly one year after my arrival we fellows met together one last time as a family of 30 for our three day closing meeting.

Monday the fellows not based in Berlin arrived, and we all had dinner together at a Lebanese Restaurant near the hotel with representatives from the foundation as well as Friedrich, who has organized all of our gatherings and meetings, and in the meantime become a friend to us all.

Yesterday was our big political day which began with a meeting at the Auswärtiges Amt (the Office of Foreign Services), which funds our fellowship and had the opportunity to ask questions of representatives from Germany who specialize in relations with the US, China, and Russia.  Then it was on to the Chancellor´s office to... meet the Angela Merkel.  Ok most of the day was a tour of the facility, which is actually quite modern and beautiful, and only 5 minutes actually consisted of meeting with Angie herself.

Nevertheless Angela Merkel was a pants-suit wearing delight.  She asked us what we thought of Germany, and when we told her we were having a nice time, she claimed we hadn´t been here long enough.  Then she poked fun at the Deutsche Bahn.  We stood ready for our photo op, and she said "Say cheese, or as we say these days in Germany - Greece".

After some more official meetings and meals with important people, plus a visit to the Neue Museum to see Nefertiti´s head - the highest insured object in any museum in the world at €550 million compared to the Mona Lisa at around €220 million - it was time to say goodbye.

It was weird to say goodbye.  For one thing, my fellowship is not over.  It will last at least until the end of August, and hopefully a bit longer.  But mostly I just can´t imagine that I won´t be seeing my 29 colleagues and friends in just a few weeks for some meeting or trip.  I think one of the biggest surprises about this year was how close I ended up feeling to the other BuKas.  I had hoped I would find a friend or two among the group, and then of course there were times over the summer and throughout the year when Germany was incredibly lonely, and I felt very much alone.  But, somehow when I wasn´t looking, probably on a long bus ride, or sitting around the dinner table, or posing for one of our many group photos, they started to feel like my family in Germany.  There are some I know better than others, some I can talk more openly with, but we are a group - 30 BuKas in Deutschland, and I can´t quite grasp that we will probably never all sit in the same room together again.

This is the sad truth about the globalized world, which seems like the phrase that is always on everyone´s tongues.  The ease of technology helped bring us together, and it may very well allow us to stay in touch - I hope it does - but it won´t solve the logistical challenges of bridging 3 continents, 30 busy schedules and separate lives on distinct tracks.  I will miss them, but I am excited to find out where they each end up next.  I am grateful, more than I can express, that we got to share one year together in Germany.

Continuation:Treasure Hunt (Please Begin at First Entry)

Chapter 5

My work at the Centrum Judaicum is varied.  It´s a bit hard to explain what exactly I do each day - sometimes I do work from the Museum, other times I focus on my independent research.  One of the major projects for the museum is an upcoming exhibition about the Jewish Museum of Berlin 1933-1938, an historical examination of the Art and Judaica collection of the Jewish Community of Berlin, which became one of the world´s first Jewish Museums, and was then tragically forced to close after the Pogrom Night of 1938, after which the art was taken by the Nazis.  After the war a large portion of the collection was rediscovered in Berlin and subsequently restituted and/or distributed to other institutions around the world, as the Jewish community of Berlin was at that time too small and weak to even consider reclaiming the works.  Nevertheless, this art collection was extremely meaningful to the community, along with being quite valuable.

My task has been to examine catalogs, lists and other documents made about the collection between 1945-1955 to help the museum understand where the art went during these years, and where it might be now.

One of my coworkers, who is more involved in the project than I am, actually managed to find two "lost" pieces of art that wound up in a retirement home for Holocaust survivors in London.  And, given my talent for English (uh, yeah) and frequent (ok, occasional) travel to London, I got nominated (I asked) to retrieve the rediscovered paintings from London and bring them home.  This was possibly the most glamorous and exciting moment of my life.

Until this point in my 24 years on this earth, things have been good, ok really good, but not exactly action movie worthy.  If my life were to be made into a movie, right now it would be more of a modern day "Little Women" than, say, "Indiana Jones".  But, whatever.  That was all about to change, because I was about to bring World War 2 stolen art back to its rightsful home - hello Nobel Peace Prize.

BuKa the Movie:

Scene 1: British air flight to London with my parents (in the movie we will cut the parents - sorry, and swap British air for a helicopter).

Scene 2: Hanging out with the family in Greenwich - birthplace of time.  We will leave this in the movie, because it was kind of fantastic.  We took a boat ride to Greenwich, took pictures standing on the Prime Meridian, toured a museum entirely about clocks, and learned about Sympathy Powder.

Ok, brief hiatus from the movie to explain this ridiculously cool concept.  Basically, the Prime Meridian and in fact time itself (more or less, ok less) were invented, because sailors were unable to navigate properly resulting in a lot of shipwrecks.  So, it was determined that they needed a way to tell time aboard ships, where pendulum clocks were of no use.  Lots of scientists, scholars, and all around genius-y types were called on to try to solve this problem.  One of the suggestions was Sympathy Powder, which is a powder that was believed to have special powers.  The plan was to GENTLY cut a bunch of dogs with the same knife, send each dog on a different seafaring vessel, and then have someone in London plunge that same knife in a bowl of sympathy powder everyday at noon, thereby causing all of the dogs in various parts of the world to yelp in MILD agony, thus indicating to the ship´s captain the time of day to be noon.  Clearly this did not prove to be so successful.

Scene 3: Family trip to Brighton to walk along the pebbly beach, and explore an awesome palace wherein we learned the word "Chinoiserie", the attempting by europeans to imitate (poorly but elaborately) the artistic styles of Asia.

Scene 4: Return Priceless Lost Art to Germany
Setting: Elder Care Facility in Golders Green. Note: This will likely be the first action film to take place in an elder care facility or in Golders Green.

With my parents in tow, we arrived at the facility and were given a lovely tour, which I actually found really interesting.  Finally we were shown two beautiful pieces of art.  One which I recognized from my work at the CJ, a simple but elegant still life, quite large, definitely too big to transport home to Berlin alone.  The other was still hanging on the wall, and was a huge portrait of a rabbi that our guide said the residents were sad to see go.  But, no way was I going to be able to lug that thing home.  Then we were shown some other pictures and portraits that, along with these two paintings, had been at the old facility for many years.  I took pictures of everything.  It was pretty disappointing but it seemed there was no way I could carry these two paintings across state lines.  I left feeling slightly disappointed, but knowing there was just no feasible way I could carry those two paintings.

The Getaway Scene: Without any art, I flew home to Berlin, met a nice Palestinian couple who offered me a ride home (but they didn´t actually understand where I lived, so I ended up riding with them to the opposite end of the city and then taking the ubahn home).

Conclusion: A little less Thomas Crown Affair, a little more I love Lucy

Upon returning to work on Tuesday, without any art, I showed my bosses the two paintings I had seen.  The Still Life, yes they agreed, far too big for me to drag home alone, and the Rabbi painting.
The Rabbi painting???  My bosses looked shocked and confused.  Even more when they saw the picture of the giant painting hanging on the wall in London.

It was the wrong painting.  Looking back through my photos from the previous day, I had a beautiful photo of the small, portable, etching which had belonged to the Jewish Museum of Berlin in the 1930s.  A phone call to London and the whole confusion was cleared up.

And that is the story of how I accidentally almost but didn´t steal artwork and transport it across national lines.

Part Three: Still haven´t not stolen that art

Chapter 4: Plotting and planning

A not so secret side effect of moving to a random place, say Germany for example, is becoming the local tour guide, travel agent, hotel, hostel and bed and breakfast to anyone you know or sort of know who decides they might want to visit your location of choice.  I take this role with pleasure, but never with as much pleasure as when showing my family around Germany, because I want them to love it, or at least like it, or at least not be miserable.

Fortunately, before my parents visited Berlin, I had a good dry run with my brother.  Together we analyzed each and every detail of Berlin, to figure out how to orchestrate the ideal visit for our parents.  It began with meeting them at the airport with pretzels in hand (links will soon be available to my father´s pretzel blog entitled "twisted").  We continued to eat pretzels, basically as meal substitutes, at least once a day.  I attempted to show them all things in the near vicinity that could be considered both pretty and old - downtown Dresden, the palaces and Dutch quarter in Potsdam, and a personalized tour of the New Synagogue - Centrum Judaicum.  I also showed them just enough of the grit of Berlin to get a feel for the local color without inviting the American notion of certain danger/gang violence (sometimes graffiti really is just an art form, mom).  And, of course there was a healthy enough dose of history and historical analysis offered by moi , for the entire experience to be deemed, "kinda like a week long field trip with Rachel".

After too little time, we were off to London to see J and O, and to look in on some art...

Part Two of: Tales of an unintentional but fortunately unsuccessful art thief

Chapter 3: A tour of Europe... ehem Germany with a side trip to Brussels

As a small child, when I asked my grandma about her family´s origins and how they came to America, she told me, "They took a tour of Europe".  I think this was a happy combination of not wanting to horrify me with the notion of centuries of Pogroms, honestly not really knowing where the family came from, and her knack for embellished storytelling (I guess it´s genetic).

As a German Chancellor Fellow, I also have the opportunity to take a little tour of Europe in the form of a two week study tour through Germany with my fellow fellows.  Actually for months my friend Jen has referred to this as the thrity of us "going on tour", which makes it sound a lot more rock star than the reality.  You may recall earlier posts about our orientation seminar, and this was pretty similar, except this time we were really on the move, nearly everyday a new city, meetings from early in the day until late at night.  Mostly I was just thrilled to be back with my BuKa friends.  It had been six months since we were all together, and what better way to reconnect than by spending hours packed in a bus together cruising the Autobahn.

So as not to bore you to pieces, and seeing as we´ve still got an art heist ahead of us, I´ll just fill you in on the highlights:

Stop 1: We meet in the city of Leipzig (the Paris of East Germany according to my boss at the Centrum Judaicum, who I must not assume has never been to Paris).  Just kidding, in reality, Leipzig was a nice enough mid-size German city.  From there we visited some more brown coal mines and solar power factories (if one year in Germany has taught me one thing it is that Germany is really into energy sources and showing them to visitors).

Stop 2: Ingolstadt - home of the Audi Factory (where all that brown coal and solar power won´t do you a bit of good).

Stop 3: brief stop in Bayreuth, recently made famous as the University town of Germany´s most famous plagiarizing politician.

Stop 4: München.  A beautiful city, where we visited Siemens, the Max Planck Institute, a beer brewery, the Philharmonic (right after the beer brewery... we barely stayed awake) and then had some free time which I used to see one of the most boring Operas (even for Opera) ever.  I don´t remember the name of it, since we got there late and had to spend the first half sitting in the light box, but basically there were some really upset seeming nuns/religious cult members who were very unhappy and whose compound exploded at the end.  The explosion was by far the highlight of the piece.  Part two of free time involved a delightful hike through the Alps which ended at a Monastery that produces its own beer (quite common apparently - drinking beer is the trick monks used to "fast" for days on end and end up with amazing visions) and makes a pretty delicious pork knuckle (I was also unaware that pigs had knuckles... but life is about learning).

Stop 5: Karlsruhe, to see the highest court in Germany and a nearby Organic Farm, and then to taste some local wine and sing with locals (singing after, before or between alcohol tastings is a favorite BuKa activity).

Stop 6:  a day in Frankfurt to visit the European Central Bank, see Goethe´s house, spend the night in a tiny village called Bad Münster am Stein (long enough for me to remember how much I like tiny towns in Germany more than basically anything else) and on to visit a factory and workshop for disabled people.

Stop 7: Brussels to visit NATO (and ask semi-intelligent questions about Libya) and the EU commission, and long enough to insert the phrase "ooh la la" into any and all sentences.

The best parts of the trip, for me at least, were the hours of bus time simulating some type of strange family road trip, if, say, your family was Russian, Chinese, and American with a German dad named Friedrich, who reminded you constantly not to look like a slob at the EU Central Bank, or to prepare good questions for NATO, and gave you fun facts before rolling into unknown cities like Ingolstadt.  Basically there is nothing quite like BuKa time.

It was sad to say goodbye and know we wouldn´t all be together again until June (hmmm not so far off thanks to my procrastination in writing this entry).

That Time I Almost Accidentally Stole Art From a Nursing Home and Moved It Across National Borders

Chapter 1: The First Escape

Hello noble reader.  Before you get yourself agitated, contacting the authorities of the various countries in which this story will find its settings, allow me to let you know, that there never, in the real or imagined versions of this story, existed the intention to steal art.  Whatsmore, no art was or ever will be stolen, unrightfully removed or relocated against the will of its owners by the author of this blog. And yet, everything that you read is true.

It begins with an escape.

It was a brisk March day when I woke up, looked around my room on Krossener Street and realized, what I needed was an escape.  I had lived with the most awful roommate I could imagine for going on six months, and the prospect of even another day seemed suddenly unthinkable.  I went to work.  I began frantically emailing every apartment posting I could find online.  That night I came home, sat my two roommates down, and broke the news.  I would move out before the end of the month.

Chapter 2: The Search

Apartment searching is never an easy task.  It is however more complicated when the search must be conducted in a foreign language on a tight time table.  Fortunately, my standards were at an all time low.  After living with a roommate who was so beastly, I was willing to live just about anywhere.  But... not ANYWHERE.

The visits:

1) The bed with a hole:  A tiny apartment being shown by a very nice guy who had built a non-removable high-bed which took up half the room.  The only trouble is that the high-bed had a large, deadly hole in the middle.  I would have fallen to a certain death.

2) Middle-aged chain spoking depressive:  Nuff said.  If you are older than 45 you should say so in your posting.

3) If it´s too small for a bed, you can´t list it as an apartment:  Although this out of the way apartment got extra points for having an extremely attractive landlord who lives nextdoor and swore he "knew how to install a kitchen", you just can´t list something as a living space if it is not large enough to fit a bed.  

4) Mandatory Man-Hating Bonding Time: These two cat loving ladies, separated from each other by decades have a weekly appointment to cook dinner for each other and talk about how society plans to keep them down based on their reproductive organs.  Sorry girls.  This feminist declines.

And finally:

A last ditch effort.  Just minutes after he posted, I called the writer of a no nonsense post, visited within the hour and had an offer to live with a totally normal person in a totally normal apartment that happens to be across the street from (ok about to nerd out big time) one of my favorite monument/historic sites in the city, which memorializes the Berlin Wall.  

From there I just had to survive a few more weeks before I could officially move into the new place.  Well, the idea of more time with just a door between me and my ogreish (it´s a word - i checked) roommate was more than I could handle.  So, what did I do?  Well first of all, as the holiday of Purim was about to take place, I baked large numbers of hamentaschen (triangular shaped cookies that recall another evil person, the antagonistic Haman of the Megillah) hoping to quiet the evil beast with and toss cookies at him, should he attempt to attack (i think it works with bears).  I also invited dear Hopkins friend and former (good) roommate, Anna Y, for a last minute visit from London to Berlin.

Finally, a friend helped me move my things to the new apartment, and then it was so long to Berlin for two weeks.

The Longest Concert in the World

On Friday, February 25, I began my second adventure to Sachsen-Anhalt, this time to see the city of Halberstadt and meet with the director of the historic synagogue and museum there, Frau Jutta Dick.  Like many of these smaller cities, getting directly from Berlin to Halberstadt would have been quite a trip, and arriving in time for my scheduled appointment with Frau Dick at 10 would have been... impossible.  Fortunately, some friends in Braunschweig, a medium size city in the state of Niedersachsen (yeah there are three states in Germany with the word Sachsen somewhere in their name) invited me to come visit and spend some of the weekend with them.  Braunschweig and Berlin are only 1.5 hours apart, and Braunschweig and Halberstadt are also about 1.5 hours apart.

The trip from Braunschweig to Halberstadt required that I change trains in Vienenburg.  Unfortunately, strikes in western parts of Germany were causing major delays, and the message over the loudspeaker indicated that it was impossible to predict when/if a train might come...  By this point, standing on the platform, I had already begun to make friends with the other stranded would-be travelers.  Stu, who was also waiting for the train inquired about my work, and on learning of my interest in old buildings, pointed out that the train station in Vienenburg (which is about all there seemed to be in Vienenburg - population 10,000) was actually the oldest standing train station building in Germany - dating to 1840 (wikipedia has confirmed).  Unfortunately (and fortunately), before Stu and I could go exploring (it seems there is a museum inside the train station - and I am pretty sure I have already mentioned several times in this blog how much I love transportation/transportation museums) a bus driver showed up and herded all three of us onto our replacement vehicle.


The trip from Vienenburg to Halberstadt took approximately three times as long by bus as it should have by train, but I´ve got time, and it was kind of beautiful.  We stopped in every village EVERY VILLAGE between the two towns.  In other words, Stu and I basically became best friends over a lovley discussion of debunked myths about life in the USA (being American is not EXACTLY like what you have seen on tv, but yes, CSI Miami is pretty crazy, and Los Angeles has a major traffic problem).


I finally arrived in Halberstadt, and using the very helpful street signs, was able to find my way to the Klaus Synagogue on Rosenwinkel Street quite easily, and with only a one hour delay.  Frau Dick was very kind and understanding.  She took me directly upstairs into what had been the prayer room of the Klaus, and began telling me about the building.


The Klaus Synagogue was built in 1857 on the site of a previous synagogue.  It was not a gemeinde synagogue, in other words, the congregation for the community in Halberstadt did not meet there. In fact the building took the name Klaus in a play on words with the word Kloister.  It was used as a school and yeshiva that was known throughout Jewish Europe.  The 3 rabbis who were at any given time active there (and lived within the building) did not have the stresses or responsibilities of gemeinde/congregational rabbis.  They educated generations of orthodox rabbis in Europe.  However, people in the Halberstadt community would often come to these rabbis precisely BECAUSE they were not the congregational rabbis and were seen as more impartial to community matters.  They and their families lived in the Klaus synagogue.



The Jewish community of Halberstadt at its peak made up 10% of the population of the city (1000 people out of about 10,000 in the early 19th century )  The population grew in number, but not in percentage, in the early 20th century with the immigration of Eastern European Jews, for whom Halberstadt had particular meaning as the orthodox capital of an otherwise quite reformed Jewish Germany.



During the Pogrom night on 1938, the building was spared any major damage because the landlord at the time was not Jewish.  The other synagogues in the city  were destroyed, except for a piece of the wall of the synagogue across the street from the Klaus.


During the war people lived in the building.  In the post war era, in the 1960s, people were aware of the Klaus Synagogue, which was being used as housing and had thus been structurally altered.  Several local men took interest in the building and protecting it, although they didn´t have a particular interest in that it represented Jewish history, just that it represented Halberstadt history (one guy made this clear saying that if it had been an eskimo house he would have researched eskimos, that it was a Jewish house meant he researched Jewish history in Halberstadt).



After the fall of the wall the organization which had been responsible for housing in the DDR continued to exist, and at this time altered the building more than previously, painting over the ceiling decoration  and making a permanent division where the women´s gallery had been to divide the sanctuary into two usable floors.

In the early 1990s, as the restitution claims conference was held, it was brought to light that the Nussbaum family, a Jewish family from Halberstadt, then residing in Los Angeles, had owned a lot of property in the city of Halberstadt before the war.  People in the community became anxious that their homes would be taken away as a result of restitution.  As a peace offering of sorts, Nussbaum purchased the Klaus from the city and helped organize a foundation concerned with Jewish history and tolerance in Halberstadt.  Restoration of the Klaus began in 1998, and the building has been kept quite plain, almost empty, so as not to distract from the events and programs that take place within the building. 


A few years later the buildings across the street from the synagogue (which also belonged to the foundation, by that time associated with the larger Moses Mendelssohn Foundation) were prepared for use as a museum.  The museum is located just behind the ruins of the former synagogue, the site for which is memorialized as a garden which stones showing where various parts of the synagogue stood.  The museum itself narrates the history of the Jewish community of Halberstadt, giving special attention to the community´s role as an orthodox center of education.


Of course I asked Frau Dick about the significance of having an orthodox historic site administered under the guise of the Moses Mendelssohn Foundation - the father of the Jewish enlightenment.  It bothers the occasional orthodox tourist from the US or Israel, she explains.  But, she reminds me, Mendelssohn had a lot more to do with the secularization of Judaism than the development of the reform movement that followed.  The Jews of Halberstadt, she insists, though mostly orthodox, were deeply influenced by this 18th century move in the direction of secularization.  In the museum exhibit rooms from the pre-Mendelssohn era face inward and exhibits on the post Mendelssohn era face outward.


Frau Dick then invited me to lunch in the museum´s Jewish-style but definitely not Kosher cafe, and explained how such a restaurant came to be a part of the envisioning of this museum and historic site.  The building, she explains, already belonged to the complex.  When a Russian Jewish immigrant woman expressed her interest in cooking, it was a natural progression.  Even if the restaurant didn´t take off, with no need to pay rent, there wasn´t much to lose.  The restaurant, which specializes in Russian Jewish cuisine and recipes passed down from the descendants of Halberstadt Jews, was pretty tasty, and attracted visitors to the museum and gave a space for programs about Jewish holidays and laws of kashrut.  Locals only started to eat at the restaurant in the last two years.  Before that it was considered strange, foreign, maybe the negative side of exotic.  


After our meeting, I was free to spend the rest of my day exploring Halberstadt, before returning to Braunschweig that evening.  Halberstadt, population 42,000, has a beautiful historic center, with several large churches and a maze of fachwerk style houses (this is the typical style of architecture where you see exposed wooden beams often in exes).

Just as I had no problem finding the Klaus, the whole city is extremely well labeled with signs and maps for any visitors.  So, of course I was intrigued to see signs directing me towards the longest concert in the world. 


Despite the excellent signage, the usefulness of said signs was, debatable at best.  Sometimes signs for the same site seemed to point towards one another as though the longest concert in the world were taking place somewhere inbetween the tip of one arrow and the empty ground before the other.  I began to wonder if it might be possible to get so lost as to miss the longest concert in the world, in which case, it must not be such a long concert afterall.


In any case, I resolved to do my favorite activity in Germany, asking for directions.  I love to ask for directions in Germany, because its almost like having a conversation in German, and it is a socially acceptable way to interact with strangers.  The trouble is, as willing as most Germans I have encountered are to help a stranger find her way, they give quite possibly the least instructive directions imaginable.  Geradeaus, they tell you.  Translated this means straight ahead, but rarely is the destination sought straight ahead.  And, repeating the word geradeaus, geradeaus, geradeaus while flapping one´s arms vaguely in a particular direction will also not assist in the task at hand.  

Example: I ask, "Where do I find the longest concert in the world?"  They respond, "See that house? the one with the window? next to the tree?  Turn left there, spot the small brooke and then geradeaus geradeaus geradeaus and you´re there."


Well, eventually I arrived in a large courtyard, in which several buildings stood.  One building, which resembled an old stone church had a sign on the door which read, "Ring the bell to visit the longest concert in the world".  I rang the bell.  

A face emerged from a second story window.  "I´d like to see the longest concert in the world," I said.


"I´m sorry," replied the man, "you´ll have to ring the other bell... over there." He pointed to a stone cottage across the way.  

I marched over, rang the bell, and a cartoonish woman in her 60s burst over the threshhold.  "I suppose you are here to see the longest concert in the world!" she exclaimed (what was the give away?).  


I explained that I was, and she proceeded to lead the way back over to the church, for which she produced a rather auspicious key, and began to tell the story of the main event.  This she explained, was an experience about time, about the future, about life.  Everyone experienced this concert differently, and I shouldn´t be concerned to take my own time and my own space to really appreciate the concert.  John Cage, the American composer, had written this piece for the organ and instructed that it be played "as slowly as possibe".  The piece had begun on September 5, 2001 with a rest that lasted a year and a half.  The first note emerged from a pipe on February 5, 2003.  The piece will play until September 4, 2640.  Note changes are not often.  Only recently did the piece play its first chord.  When the notes change, large crowds often gather.  Other than that she entertains tourists now and again, more in summer of course.  

As for the building itself, it is an old Nun Kloister.  The building dates back centuries but fell into disuse and indeed misuse, housing livestock.  The nuns, she told me, would like it better this way.



We entered.  


The building was cavernous.

It groaned.  And hummed.  And sang.


She stood back and let me be at one with my own tiny moment of history.

Towards the middle right apse of the building, behind glass, stood several pipes - the source from which the great endless sound resonated.  I wandered around for a few moments.  I tried to feel the presence of the last 600 years and the next 600.  It was hard to keep from laughing.  This was indeed a glorious and ridiculous project.  Realizing that I didn´t really want my moment of history to commune with this ringing in my ears, I returned to my hostess to ask a few more questions.  The plaques around the wall.  There are 639 of them, she explained, one for every year of the concert.  They are available for sponsorship. 

The House of the Absent Neighbors

Day two of my escapades in Sachsen-Anhalt.

After leaving Gröbzig and returning to Halle, I had plans to meet up with a friend.  Actually, this is the same woman I was fortunate enough to befriend on the train from Italy back to Berlin - I may have looked her up online and emailed her (is that creepy?).  In any case, it was great to see her again.  Then it was off to Magdeburg, the second largest city in Sachsen-Anhalt, where I stayed in a hostel for the night before setting off for Haldensleben in the morning.  Sachsen-Anhalt, by the way, feels humongous, since it takes me HOURS to get from one of these little towns to another.

This may be a good moment to interject and explain that almost all of my sites (of which there are 15 at the moment) are in small towns or villages (Centrum Judaicum and Erfurt being the main exceptions).  The reason for this is that many of these buildings survived 1938, because they were no longer synagogues.  The Jewish communities, thanks to the industrial revolution, left a lot of smaller towns and villages in the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries for bigger cities.  This was often the case for Eastern European Jews, like my ancestors as well.  Opportunities for better employment were available in places like Berlin, Warsaw, New York (and even Baltimore) that couldn´t be imagined in a Gröbzig or a Haldensleben.

That being said, Haldensleben is much larger than Gröbzig at a whopping 19,000.  It is the first place I have been in Germany where I have seen blatant antisemitic graffiti and swastikas in plain view.

I was to meet with the director of the Haldensleben city museum who also oversees the synagogue.  Thanks to a tourist map outside the train station, I made my way to the museum, and was greeted by Herr Hauer.  We decided that before we talked too much, he would show me the synagogue a short walk away.  On the walk over I told him a bit more about my project - historic synagogues, former East Germany, open to the public - he stopped me.

Well, ours isn´t exactly open, he explained.  We´d like it to be.   But it just hasn´t worked out yet. 

The Haldensleben synagogue is known today as Das Haus der anderen Nachbarn, "The House of the Other Neighbors".  It was built in 1822 - far enough into the emancipation process of the Jews in Germany to have a spot on a main street rather than in a protected court yard.  And, to be honest, it doesn´t really look like a "typical" synagogue.  It has gothic style windows.  In the middle ages Jewish structures were just about as likely to be gothic style as non Jewish buildings, but the neo gothic architecture of the 19th century was pretty much only popular among Christians.  An extremely visible Jewish structure in the 1820s built in a very non Jewish style, could tell a lot about how integrated the Jews of Haldensleben were with their non Jewish community.

By 1907 there were only 3 Jews left in the town, so the synagogue was sold to the Neoapostolischer Church, which occupied the building until 2002, when they decided to move to a larger building.  That was when Herr Hauer and others became concerned that something would happen to this historic building, and so, in the hopes to preserve the building, the idea of the House of the other Neighbors was hatched.

The idea was that here was a building that had belonged to two religious minorities in Germany and had been freely sold or given over by each group without pressure of unfriendly governments or neighbors.  Here was a building that had not been touched by the horrors of the Second World War.  Here was a building that could teach tolerance... period.

It was a beautiful idea, and the local governments agreed.  The House of the other Neighbors was funded, restored, and reopened in April 2007.  Outside it is pink with those distinctive gothic windows, inside it is painted light yellow.  There are outlines of where various religious furniture (arks and pulpits) were located when the building was a synagogue or church.  There are models of the building during each time period (the synagogue faced east, the church faced west, the synagogue had a women´s balcony, the church did not).  The second floor, for purposes of architectural historical accuracy, once again exists where the women´s gallery once was.  Mostly the room is filled with folding chairs and wooden chests where, Hauer explains, each religion or minority group that lives in Sachsen-Anhalt can fill a chest with information, important objects, etc.  Groups can come and learn about diversity in an historic space.

"Great", I said.  "How is it going?"

"It´s not."  He replied.  For one thing, none of the groups they have called on to help fill the chests seem to get it.  The various churches, when they have filled boxes, have filled them only with paperback bibles and information about how to convert.  Most of the chests are empty.  One group suggested that only Judaism and Christianity be explained, since the building was only ever a synagogue and a church (aka they would be willing to discuss Islam or Buddhism or Shintoism, etc only in the case that the building had at one point been a mosque or a temple, etc).  "They missed the point.  It has only been 4 years, but so far they all have missed the point", Hauer said.

At a very very basic level, Hauer achieved his goal.  The building was saved.  If you aren´t occupied with this type of work, saving a building might be a difficult concept to wrap your head around.  But, saving the building is almost always goal no. 1.  Call them Buildings of Dreams - If you restore them, they will come.  Or at least, that is what we in this business, so to speak,  like to think.  If only the roof didn´t leak and the decorations were historically accurate.  If the walls were sturdy and the electricity were up to code...

Hauer has just that.  The building is beautiful.  Beautiful and empty.  He has taken to enticing school groups with free educational space and tour groups with free bathrooms.  The house of the free bathrooms.

Having seen the swastikas across from the train station, I asked, "Aside from a lack on interest, have you had any negative responses?"

He explains.  Like most places in the GDR, no one really knew there was a synagogue here.  That is was given over to the church already in 1907, no one really remembered there being a Jewish community here.  Just before we reopened the synagogue, I published a piece spreading the word in the community about the historical presence of the Jewish community and the synagogue.  Just after that someone through a bottle through the window. It made a mark in the wall, which as you can see, I left.  Historical evidence of the first and only recorded evidence of antisemitic acts directed at the synagogue in Haldensleben, 100 years after it ceased to be a synagogue.

And what about Jewish tourists?  Do people ever call up asking to see the synagogue?  Are there families of Haldensleben Jews who have sought it out?  Do people ever just pass through and want to know about Jewish life here??

He told me, "You are the first."