Jewish-Euro History | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘Jewish-Euro History’ category

Past and present histories of Jewish communities and culture in AT, DE

25T12 Berlin-Kreuzberg

E11, B06.

Mehringplatz, Lindenstraße, Zimmerstraße, Friedrichstraße.

Hallesches Tor, Jüdisches Museum, Checkpoint Charlie, Bethlehemkirchplatz.

Here are a few sights of mine, after an afternoon in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district.

*One Wall Mehringplatz (2014), by Shepard Fairey* 🇺🇸.

*Jewish Museum Berlin: In 1935, Regina Jonas became the first woman in the world to be ordained as rabbi in Germany.*

*Jewish Museum Berlin: In 2010, Alina Treiger became the first woman to be ordained as rabbi in Germany after the Holocaust.*

*DPA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur): the German Press Agency’s central editorial office. In front are statues of 3 politicians who saw and navigated big changes in 1989 and 1990.*

*George Bush 🇺🇸, Helmut Kohl 🇩🇪, and Mikhail Gorbachev 🇷🇺 : the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; and German reunification in 1990.*

*Checkpoint C: Friedrichstraße at Zimmerstrasse, facing south. Note the line of bricks across the street and the horizontal metal “plate” at lower right.*

*Checkpoint C: Friedrichstraße at Zimmerstrasse, facing north. Note the line of bricks across the street and the horizontal metal “plate” at lower left.*

*The line of bricks traces the former Berlin Wall (1961-1989).*

Memorial to Peter Fechter who died at the Berlin Wall on 17 Aug 1962. Trying to escape into West Berlin, the 18 year old was shot by border guards, and bled to death alone in the border strip. The stele and paving with red-basalt circular-disk stone marks the spot where he died, on the East Berlin side, next to the Wall.

*“Peter Fechter, 1944-1962: All he wanted was freedom.”*

*This street ran along the Berlin Wall from 1961 to 1990. Construction worker Peter Fechter was shot here trying to escape from East to West on 17 August 1962.*

The “mobile & me” needed a boost. Phone got some charge, as I sat inside a bakery from one of the national chains, Kamps, with a Milchkaffee (latté) and Zitronenkuchen (lemon cake). Nothing “heavy”!

*Stadtmitte U-Bahn station entrance “J”, in the middle of Friedrichstraße.*

I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 19 May 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

25T04 Anne Frank, from Frankfurt

E03, F03.

A lack of consistent sleep and a punishing yet rewarding Saturday meant Sunday and travel day 4 was tuned way down. But the forecast was sun and +23C. I’m on the move, but on a gentler pace around the city.

Dornbusch

With the U-Bahn north to Dornbusch, the underground passage leads to a small memorial wall, emphasizing the presence and traces of the Frank family in the neighbourhood until their move to Amsterdam in 1933. Artist Bernd Fischer created the memorial wall which the city inaugurated in 2009. The picture is one of the last family portraits, made by patriarch Otto of his wife, Edith, and two daughters Anne and Margot; the location is believed to be in the city, possibly near Hauptwache. All three women in the picture perished in the Holocaust. Otto survived and went to join his relatives in Basel where he spent the rest of his life.

*One can almost hear the two daughters pleading with their dad to get on with it so they can get going, even as mum tries to placate them.*

*Dornbusch station: U2 southbound to Südbahnhof.*

Neuer Börneplatz

Once the centre of the city’s Jewish community, the synagogue was destroyed in the 1938 Pogrom. The surviving adjacent cemetery is an important part of the city’s Museum Judengasse. On the wall surrounding the cemetery are over 11-thousand blocks, each with a name and representing a person from Frankfurt who died in the Holocaust. This is the memorial where I find the names: Edith Frank, Margot Frank, and Annelies Frank.

I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 11 May 2025. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

25T03 Night of Museums

E02 (Europe day 2), F02.

Good timing is everything. Only yesterday did I learn Frankfurt is hosting Nacht der Museen today (10 May). Over 40 museums and institutions open their doors tonight at 7pm, and close between 1 and 2am. One nifty 17€ price purchasable online includes access to all participating venues, as well as public transport.

I decide to visit the Jewish Museum from 845pm to 1030pm, and the Städel Art Museum from 11pm to 145am.

*Queue to the Jewish Museum Frankfurt (JMF). JMF staff went down the queue and took orders for drinks at the patio bar.*

*Frankfurt, 1929: 3-year old Margot Frank with her baby sister Annelies. Photo likely taken by their father Otto.*

*Frankfurt, 1929: Frank family nanny Katherina Stilgenbauer with baby Annelies as her big sister Margot looks on.*

*42 internationally translated versions of Anne Frank’s diary.*

Otto Frank displays the Auschwitz number tattooed on his left arm. “It’s a miracle that I’m still alive,” he said. On Otto’s maternal side, the Frank family have been present in Frankfurt since the late 17th-century.

*Städel Art Museum. The queue to the east was about 100-people deep. The queue to the west was “only” 20 deep; I chose wisely.*

*There’s very little doubt who and what these figures represent.*

*“Untitled (Genoa Riot)”, by Armin Boehm, 2007.*

*“Mountain King (Tunnel) 2 Planets”, by Joseph Beuys, cast 1971.*

*Very appropriate for Frankfurt: “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe”, by Andy Warhol, 1982.*

I made all images above with an iPhone15 on 10 May 2025. I received neither request nor compensation for this content. This post composed within Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

David Oppenheimer: Germany to Vancouver

Featured: Alter Markt, facing southwest to the former Schloss Blieskastel at upper-centre: Blieskastel, Saarland, Germany (X70).

David Oppenheimer: ✵ 1 January 1834 – 31 December 1897 ✟

As a child of the city, I learned the name of Vancouver’s 2nd mayor, David Oppenheimer, who served in the top post from 1887 to 1891. Escaping the violent revolutions spreading through Europe, David Oppenheimer and his brothers had long been immigrants from Germany, and after time in New Orleans and California, they arrived in what is now southwestern British Columbia and developed business success with their supply stores during the Gold Rush, and with wholesale trade and real estate in the newly incorporated city of Vancouver, where the national railway established its western terminus one year later in 1887. The Oppenheimers stamped their civic legacy not only with the location of the railway terminus, but also with an expansive infrastructure program including a new grand city park, fire department, extensive roadworks, a city-wide electricity grid, streetcar public transport network, and a city cemetery. On 11 April 2008, the Government of Canada’s Historic Sites and Monuments Board designated David Oppenheimer as a National Historic Person.

There’s little doubt the Oppenheimers spent plenty of time in what are now Vancouver’s Chinatown and Strathcona with their business interests and connections to the city’s Jewish community. These are neighbourhoods, respectively, where my parents sought closer ties with the Chinese-Canadian community, and where they bought a new house to raise their family. Decades later, I’ve flown out from Vancouver, and I’ve been on the train from Frankfurt to southwest Germany’s Saarbrücken for its proximity to the Völklingen Ironworks world heritage site. I also recently learned David Oppenheimer was from the area and born in the city of Blieskastel. I arrange to meet with a representative of Stadtarchiv Blieskastel (city archive), and I make my way to Blieskastel to see what I can learn about the Oppenheimer family.

( Click here for images and more )

24T88 Frankfurt: beginning and end

(E87)

Travel day 88: double eight, double happiness!

Europe day 87.

Three days remain, and I end where I began when I arrived in Europe on travel day 2: Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

The familiarity of the train station, the sight of the city’s towers, the taste of “Frankfurter Grüne Sosse”.

I have a few project goals in mind, but it’s become apparent these past few days that I’ve reached the end after my self-imposed breakneck pace of the last few months. But I still look, and I still want to document what I see. These below are some of the final observations from Frankfurt.