Germany Guide
Hesse
Jüdisches Museum
Address: Mainkai
Opening time: Tues & Thurs– Sun 10am–5pm, Wed 10am–8pm
Price: €4
Website: www.juedischesmuseum.de
The Jüdisches Museum occupies a Neoclassical mansion that once belonged to the Rothschilds. Its displays on the history of Frankfurt's Jewish community are a little dry and the progression from one section to another isn't always clear, but there are English-language texts to help make sense of it all. In the early nineteenth century Frankfurt's professional classes played a key role in the birth of the Jewish Reform movement, which introduced preaching and prayers in German, organ accompaniment for choirs, and rescinded the strict separation of men and women. On the eve of the Nazi takeover, the city's Jewish community numbered 30,000, among them the young Anne Frank. In the years 1938 to 1942 more than seven hundred despairing Frankfurt Jews took their own lives; deportations of the rest to the ghettoes of Łódź, Minsk and Riga began late in 1941. The postwar community, founded in 1948, has grown in recent years and now has more than seven thousand members.