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Employees of the Jewish Museum Berlin answer the question.

“My public events of the year were the Olympic and the Paralympic Games in London. (An extra: black-striped cross-eyes the next morning.) There were incomparably more pictures of the Paralympics than ever before: the photos of people sprinting with artificial legs had a particular symbolic power for me: flying over hurdles!”
Ines Rösler, Collections
(editor’s note: Our blog posting for the 31. August 2012 was dedicated to Ludwig Guttmann, father of the Paralympics.)

“For me the discussion about the bestowal of the Adorno Prize on Judith Butler was the event of the year, because the verbal chasm between Butler’s style of argumentation and the colloquial style of the critics who questioned her worthiness to receive the prize deeply dismayed me. A few meals with friends during those late summer weeks threatened to turn into evenings of heated discussion, with all the charm of a plenary assembly for ASTA.”
Mirjam Wenzel, Media
(editor’s note: Four days after the Adorno Prize event, on 15. September 2012, a long-planned panel discussion with Judith Butler and Micha Brumlik discussed “Does Zionism Belong to Judaism?”)

“My event of 2012: the Good Friday procession in Perpignan with its bells and drums.”
Johannes Rinke, Visitor Services

The Gregorian calendar, according to which we are now counting the year 2013, begins on circumcisio domini, the day on which Jesus was circumcised. Last year, the act of circumcision was at the center of a political debate which discussed the relationship between non-Jewish Germans, German Jews and Muslims and Jews in Germany. The editors of the Jewish Museum’s website nominate the so-called circumcision debate as the event of the year 2012.

“One event of 2012 is still visible all over the city in 2013: The bancruptcy of the drugstore chain “Schlecker.” Empty store windows on every corner promising better quality of life in the neighborhood. But most will likely end up being storerooms for fitted kitchens.”
Martina Lüdicke, Exhibitions

Detail of the Garden of Exile © Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jens Ziehe

It’s not only Jewish history in Germany that continually surprises us with its complexity: the visitors to the Jewish Museum can also be as unexpected as they are diverse. During my tours through the permanent and temporary exhibitions, I have had remarkable encounters. This year among the most unusual was with a group of theologians from the city of Qom, who came to experience the museum at the beginning of October. Most Iranian preachers and imams graduate from the theological seminary at Qom, not far from the capital Tehran and considered, in contrast to the liberal Najaf for instance, a bastion of conservative learning. (more…)

Constantin Brunner (1862–1937) is one of the philosophical authors whose work remains to be discovered. On the occasion of his 150th birthday and the 75th anniversary of his death, the Jewish Museum hosted a conference that traced the whole range of his thought and personality.

The German Jewish philosopher, pen-named Brunner while originally named Leo Wertheimer, was born in Altona outside of Hamburg. He studied religion, philosophy, and history in Cologne, Berlin, and Freiburg, and subsequently lived and worked in Hamburg as an editor and writer, until devoting himself to the development of his own philosophical system, starting in 1895 in Berlin and then from 1913 in Potsdam. (more…)