Neualtland: A Layered Local Jewish Narrative

Meitar Tewel

Neualtland is the outcome of a year-long architectural and historiographic exploration carried out by Meitar Tewel, an Israeli architectural designer and researcher based in The Netherlands.

Referring to Theodor Herzl’s canonical Zionist mass Altneuland (1902), which lays out a utopian vision of Jewish life in the Holy Land, the reversed title Neualtland shifts the attention back to the traces of traditional Jewish life in Frankfurt’s rebuilt cityscape in the years following World War II. The project strives to unearth spatial and cultural layers of the historic city center, focusing on the modern urban fabric which was built on the ruins of the Judengasse, the centuries-old Jewish ghetto.

The project holds onto two seemingly disconnected ends of the local Jewish history: one is the violently segregated and oppressed - yet culturally rich and intricate historic Judengasse, and the other is the surroundings of An der Staufenmauer street, which were built in the same area after World War II.

Regarding all layers as indispensable fragments of the place’s story, the project negotiates between the scant traces of the historic fabric and the postwar urban blocks which obscure them from the cityscape. It culminates in a proposal for a detailed architectural intervention in two office buildings which were built in the 1960s on the site of the Hauptsynagoge. The project’s mission involves the interpretation of ordinary buildings and urban environments into spaces which carry a layered past, but possibly also a hopeful future. This attempt expands the means through which architectural heritage can be understood and appropriated; it thus invites the contemporary local Jewish community, along with other publics in Frankfurt, to reclaim a lost chapter in the city’s history, and to continue writing its story while fully embracing the complexities and conflicts it might bring forth.

About the space

The residential and commercial buildings in An der Staufenmauer were constructed in the 1950s-1960s on the ruins of the heavily bombarded Börnestrasse, formerly the Judengasse. Until recently, it was believed to contain no material remains from the time of the ghetto.

In the early 2010s, the building was purchased by Azko Iimori, a restaurateur and businesswoman and her partner, the cardiologist Michael Damm, who initiated a long and thorough refurbishment process. The basement, which was used as a storage space by the property’s previous owner, was covered with a meter-thick layer of dirt. Following several years of exhaustive construction efforts, the space has now finally been revealed in all its glory. Dating in parts to the 18th and in parts to the 19th century, this basement is the only fully preserved room from the time of the Judengasse that is known to this day. Mrs. Iimori and Dr. Damm graciously agreed to host an exhibition and public events in this space, and to invite the public to witness, for the first time, this extraordinary testimony to the place’s history.

UNDER THE ASPHALT, BEHIND THE WALL

While the urban structure of Frankfurt’s old city has radically changed in the post-war decades, a single street, in which you stand now, still follows the footprint of the historic Judengasse, creating an imaginary line to the nearby Judengasse Museum. In the western part of this block, a small segment of Staufenmauer - the historic city wall, remains intact. To its north is Konstablerwache, the largest square in the city center.

The tension between the anonymity of the generic postwar buildings in the curved street, now called An der Staufenmauer, and what seems to be the last urban trace of the Judengasse, invites reconsideration of the agency of architecture concerning memory, heritage and multiculturalism in contemporary Frankfurt, and raises fundamental questions:

How can a site embody memory without becoming a memorial?

How can memory be unearthed in a place from which all physical traces have been wiped out?

What could be the role of ( forgotten, neglected, lost) local Jewish material cultures and spatial practices in the everyday life of modern, often secularized and assimilated, and culturally diverse Jewish communities?

What could be the contribution of historic Jewish spatial sensibilities to other publics in Frankfurt?

At the risk of romanticizing life in the Judengasse, the artistic project Neualtland suggests unearthing and reinterpreting everyday aspects of Jewish spatial tradition in order to expand the cultural, social and political freedoms of the contemporary Jewish community and of other minority groups in Frankfurt. Rather than monumentalizing the irreversible damage of the Holocaust, or institutionalizing Jewish presence in the city, the proposed design strives to challenge spatial and cultural paradigms related to architecture “with a Jewish context” in contemporary Germany, in order to make this history not only accessible, but also valuable to different publics in the city. This project sees urban intervention as an incremental process of unearthing and negotiation. As such, it opposes practices which reduce a place’s narrative into a single historic layer.

An erased urban fabric

Location of the Judengasse and the Hauptsynagoge (1711) in relation to the post-WWII urban fabric.

A HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

Since the Judengasse’s early days, the Hauptsynagoge, located at its center, has functioned as its religious and cultural heart. Three synagogues were built on that same central plot between the 15th and 19th centuries. An analysis of the physical conditions under which the synagogues operated reveals some persisting spatial principles: to their north was a small alley, which isolated the synagogue from the ghetto’s closely-packed fabric; the main façade of all three faced the axis of the ghetto; parts of the façade of the earlier two synagogues formed a garden wall; and finally, they all had a large room used as a prayer hall.

The synagogue functioned as a house of worship, but also served as a venue for non-ritualistic public events, such as charity activities, celebrations and feasts, occasionally including non-Jewish visitors. The ambiguity in the use of the Hauptsynagoge is not coincidental: the Greek word synagogue corresponds to the Hebrew term Beit Knesset – literally meaning a house of assembly. As such, a synagogue is not considered as a sacred space and therefore requires no liturgical purity; it is merely a vessel which can, regularly or occasionally, accommodate Jewish prayer.

The last Hauptsynagoge, built in 1860, was destroyed during the November pogrom in 1938. Two generic mid-rise postwar office buildings were built on the plot in the 1960s. Their east-facing front façade overlooks the broad motorway Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse, and their rear western façade faces An der Staufenmauer street. While their architectural value can be easily overlooked, the story that they tell reinforces the importance of recognizing them as a valuable piece of cultural heritage. However, today these buildings fail to give voice to the layered past they hold.

The proposed design aims to negotiate between the architectural expression and cultural value of the erased Hauptsynagoge, and the current physical conditions on site. While the evident Jewish chronology of this plot cannot be denied, this project deliberately challenges the inclination to generate an institution designated exclusively for the Jewish community. It is not a synagogue, but a house of assembly, which could, at certain times, serve as a venue for Jewish prayer. At other times, it could host other forms of gatherings.

With special attention to Jewish spatial sensibilities, the suggested buildings’ new architectural form is revealed through a surgical process of subtraction and reinterpretation of existing building elements. The removal of building parts and the introduction of new programs bring forth technical and didactic challenges, which become a catalyst in the design process.

ENTRY SEQUENCE

At the meeting point of the historic Judengasse route and the new urban grid, an entrance to the garden is formed. The entry into the garden reveals a covered pathway stretching towards the building’s entrance.

An intimate transitional space leads from the entrance hall of the northern building to the large void carved out of the southern building. The rather awkward encounter between the two buildings’ structural grids is not concealed behind a wall, but rather embraced and celebrated as the entrance to the hall.

Towards a layered narrative for a city

Returning to the street and to the concept of Eruv, the proposed operation might not even be visible to passersby at first glance. The memory registered in the streetscape and in the selected buildings serves almost as an anti-memorial, and thus as an environment which could accept further changes and adaptations, and which could be appropriated and used by a variety of individuals and communities.

Mixed-media model, scale 1:100

Imprint

An architectural exhibition hosted by the Jewish Museum Frankfurt

Exhibition design and graphics: Meitar Tewel

Exhibition design assistant: Marijke Wehrmann

Research, design, video, texts, illustrations, models: Meitar Tewel

Architectural guidance: Daniel Rosbottom, Mark Pimlott, Koen Mulder; Interiors Buildings Cities, The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft, The Netherlands

Mapping Memories - Judengasse Extended

This exhibition took place in the context of the festival "Mapping Memories - Judengasse Extended.