What goes around comes around. After nearly five years of construction and several delays, the time has finally come on October 21. Then the Jewish Museum Frankfurt will open its new building and the renovated Rothschild Palais to visitors. Then the museum will be able to offer over 2,000sqm of exhibition space, on which, in addition to changing special exhibitions, Frankfurt's Jewish history from the Enlightenment and Emancipation to the present will be shown in a new permanent exhibition with new focal points.
Frankfurt's head of culture, Ina Hartwig, is proud of this expansion of the Jewish Museum and its significance for the city: "With this museum complex, Frankfurt is gaining a new center for Jewish history and the present. The fact that the museum will celebrate a reopening at its old location and at the same time its new address, Bertha-Pappenheim-Platz 1, is something extraordinary," said Hartwig. "Soon this new house, which so skilfully combines history and tradition, the existing building of the Palais, and the present, the Lichtbau, will open its doors to visitors. Despite the Corona pandemic, the contractors were able to stay on schedule, so nothing stands in the way of an October opening."
Mirjam Wenzel, director of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt, is also eagerly awaiting the opening date: "The Jewish Museum team has long been preparing for the opening of the renovated Rothschild Palais with a permanent exhibition on three floors, as well as the Lichtbau by staab Architekten with a library, a deli, a museum shop and the first temporary exhibition ‚The Female Side of God'. We look forward to opening our new museum to visitors."
The Jewish Museum Frankfurt is the oldest museum of its kind in Germany, having been the first Jewish museum established in Germany after the Shoah. It opened on November 9, 1988, in the Rothschild Palace. In 2015, the city of Frankfurt decided to build an extension. The decision was followed by the start of construction work in the winter of the same year. The opening, scheduled for spring 2020, had been delayed due to complications with the restoration measures, among other things. The new permanent exhibition on 1400 square meters will be presented on three floors in the renovated Rothschild Palais on Mainkai. The extension offers around 600 square metres of space for temporary exhibitions. The first temporary exhibition, "The Female Side of God," will be open to the public from October 23.
Between the new light building and the historic Rothschild Palais is a new museum forecourt that opens onto Frankfurt's ramparts. It has been named Bertha-Pappenheim-Platz since 2019 and is the museum's new address. At the junction of the old and new buildings, visitors will find an eleven-meter-high sculpture by Ariel Schlesinger consisting of two trees cast in aluminum, one supporting the other in its treetop.
You can also find all further info at: www.juedischesmuseum.de
