German Jews Today

In 1961 and 1962, Leonard Freed turned his lens toward the Jewish community of West Germany. It was not his first time focusing on Jewish subject matter. As early as 1954, he had photographed Orthodox Jews in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, where he was born and raised. In 1958, he published his first book, Joden van Amsterdam, containing fifty-two photographs from an extensive series on Jewish life in Amsterdam.

For his project in Germany, Freed primarily took photographs in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, and the surrounding regions, but also in Bad Sobernheim, Berlin, Dachau, Essen, Hamburg, Cologne, Mainz, Munich, Nuremberg, Offenbach, Warendorf, Worms, the Westerwald mountains, and Reichenstein Castle. Nearly every picture features people – but not as conventional portraits. Rather, the images reflect situations and moods.

Historical Context

The Holocaust was less than twenty years in the past. West Germany’s few Jewish communities were small, with around 25,000 Jews residing in the country altogether. Their presence in the “land of the perpetrators” could not be taken for granted. Most were there for lack of other options, living with “packed suitcases,” as the saying went. Observers abroad were also perplexed by their decision to live in Germany, where antisemitism remained mainstream and the process of reckoning with the legacy of Nazism was only getting started, and at a snail’s pace. After the 1961 Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, two more years went by before the second Auschwitz trials began in Frankfurt. Israel did not establish diplomatic relations with West Germany until 1965. That year, the Bundestag debated whether the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes had expired. Many Germans wished to “draw a line” under the past. In 1966, the World Jewish Congress held a special discussion in Brussels on the theme “Germans and Jews: A Problem Unresolved.” Such an event would have been unthinkable then in Germany.

Freed’s Concern

With his photographs, Leonard Freed sought to counteract Germans’ ignorance about the invisible Jewish minority in their midst. This was an important concern for him, as he observed Germans’ refusal to confront their recent past. This impression was reinforced when he met his future wife Brigitte and visited her at her parents’ home in Dortmund. Alongside this educational motivation, his quest for his own Jewish identity played a formative role in this long-term project.

Realization of the Photo Project

By the early 1960s, Brigitte and Leonard Freed were already living in Amsterdam with their young daughter, Elke Susannah. In order to travel together to different German cities for the photography project, they often left their daughter with her grandparents in Dortmund. Brigitte served as Freed’s interpreter, organized photography appointments, and accompanied her husband during the shoots. Later, she developed prints in the darkroom and labeled the photographs.

Out of several thousand images, Leonard Freed selected fifty-two for the ninety-six-page book, which he published in 1965 under the title German Jews Today. The book was designed by renowned designer Willy Fleckhaus, and essays by prominent Jewish intellectuals accompanied the photographs, juxtaposing powerful writing against Freed’s visuals. For each image, Freed wrote his own captions, some of them quite detailed. Unlike the subjective impressions he recorded in his other books, these captions were written in a neutral and informative style.

The Arrangement of the Photographs

No doubt the sequence of photographs was also deliberate. Leonard Freed’s camera captures both skepticism and hope. The book is divided into five thematic sections linked by accompanying texts. It opens with a panorama, presenting various themes via individual photographs. The very first image depicts marble busts along a wall of the old Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt am Main; the identities of their subjects are unknown. The second photograph shows the Jewish cemetery in Worms, one of the oldest in Europe. Both images highlight the long tradition of Judaism in Germany and the profound rupture the Holocaust represented.

The book includes three images with direct visual references to Nazi atrocities, all of which appear in the first chapter of photographs. The first shows a woman’s arm tattooed with a concentration camp number from Auschwitz; the second, a prayer book containing photographs of murdered family members; and the third, spaced wooden boards over a blood trench at the site of Dachau concentration camp.

The second group of photographs is dedicated to religious aspects of Jewish communal life, including several images from the Polish-Jewish prayer room in Frankfurt as well as scenes from a Jewish wedding and a Bar Mitzvah. The following section depicts various professions, such as a stonemason, a textile manufacturer, and two scenes from a kosher slaughterhouse. The penultimate section features well-known individuals. Finally, Freed turns his lens to young people, children and teenagers. This conclusion, with its largely open-ended and optimistic images, reinforces the photographer’s hopeful outlook. Freed’s photos are marked by empathy, sensitivity, and seriousness but also have humorous touches.

A US Perspective on Germany

Alongside Jewish themes, Leonard Freed had been photographing other aspects of Germany since the early 1950s, which he compiled in the 1970 book Made in Germany. Freed was fascinated by the country and its people; his introduction wondered what it would look like in twenty-five years. Particularly notable are a series of short texts at the end of the extensive pictorial section, titled Trauma I–IV, which recount personal stories and experiences of prejudice and antisemitism from Freed’s perspective.

Freed later wrote, “I feel being born in the United States gives me a fresh or extra eye to observe what the average German will overlook.” (fax from Leonard Freed to Ute Eskildsen, 1990; Leonard Freed Archive). This is undoubtedly true of the pictures he took in the 1960s for the German Jews Today series.

Theresia Ziehe, Curator of Photography and of the exhibition

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“The rift is still unbridged. There is no going back, because there can be no forgetting and no consolation.”
Manès Sperber (Kesten, p. 156)

In 1964, the Munich-based Paul List Verlag published a paperback whose title ich lebe nicht in der Bundesrepublik translates to I Don’t Live in the Federal Republic – in other words, West Germany. The book was edited by the writer Hermann Kesten, who had fled the Nazi regime in 1933 – first going to France, and later to the United States. A US citizen since 1949, he repeatedly returned to Germany to visit, but never settled back down in his birthplace. The book features contributions from 34 authors, many of them Jews who had emigrated from Germany. As Kesten mentions in the introduction, the book was inspired by another paperback, ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik (I Live in the Federal Republic), which had been edited by journalist Wolfgang Weyrauch and released by the same publisher in 1961. The earlier anthology presented critical self-reflections on Germany by fifteen well-known German authors.

Leonard Freed’s photographs were taken mostly in 1961 or 1962, and his book of photography, Deutsche Juden heute (German Jews Today), was released in 1965 by the Munich publisher Rütten & Loening. The thematically grouped photographs are interwoven with essays by well-known Jewish intellectuals examining the state of Jewish communities in West Germany and the relationship between Jews and Germans. Three of the authors – Hermann Kesten, Ludwig Marcuse, and Robert Neumann – had also contributed to I Don’t Live in the Federal Republic. In his essays for both books, Kesten vividly describes his ambivalent relationship with Germany, which ruled out the prospects of staying for long periods, let alone returning permanently, despite his deep emotional ties to the country.

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“During this time, many people asked me: ‘Do you feel more German or Jewish?’ I don’t know what they mean by ‘do you feel?’. But I know for sure that I am above all Jewish, Jewish, Jewish—as long as Jews are persecuted.”
Ludwig Marcuse (Freed, p. 68)

What kind of country was Leonard Freed capturing on film? 

These books offer diverse perspectives on the political and social landscape of West Germany, less than twenty years after the Nazi dictatorship. The country had two faces. “The intellectual and moral climate of the Federal Republic of Germany is contradictory and peculiar enough. The contrast between decent, feeling individuals and unfeeling cynics, whether conscious or unconscious, seems sharper than ever,” Kesten writes in his introduction, “The Eternal Exile” (Kesten, p. 20). Recurring themes include anti-communism; the Germans’ relentless industriousness paired with the related desire to forget their recent past, and the burgeoning prosperity of West Germany’s “economic miracle,” with its rebuilding of cities devastated by the war. “The whole country appears renovated,” Kesten remarks (Freed, p. 79). 

The Federal Republic of Germany was a liberal democracy with a free press and separation of powers. Yet, alongside committed democrats, former Nazis once again occupied prominent positions. “The murderers are walking around free,” writes Robert Neumann (Kesten, p. 127). The courts had only begun reckoning with Nazi crimes, and antisemitic attitudes persisted, even though they were officially shunned and punishable by law. At the same time, a kind of philosemitism tinged with guilt was commonplace. The country’s Jewish communities lived “in that atmosphere, a peculiar blend of bad conscience and goodwill,” as the journalist Hans Hermann Köper, editor of German Jews Today, observed (Kesten, p. 8). 

Home on cursed ground?

The weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, which had hundreds of thousands of readers, published a special issue about Jews in Germany on 31 July 1963, addressing all these themes. “Home on cursed ground?” ran the cover story headline. The issue also included an interview with Hendrik G. van Dam, the Secretary General of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and an article titled “Antisemitism Among Us?” written under a pseudonym by Der Spiegel’s publisher, Rudolf Augstein.

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“I believe that the Federal Republic of Germany should be politically designed in such a way that Jews can live here as Jews.”
Hendrik van Dam (Der Spiegel, 31 July 1963, the whole interview in German)

The questions raised in these three publications remain timeless and no less pressing: As a Jew, where do I want to live? Where can I live? Where wouldn’t I live? And why?

Leonore Maier, Curator of Collections and of the exhibition

Eleven of the 52 photographs in the German Jews Today series were taken in Düsseldorf. In the early 1960s, when Leonard Freed took photographs there, the city’s organized Jewish Community had around 1,000 members and was home to some of postwar Germany’s most important Jewish institutions, such as the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland (General Weekly Newspaper of Jews in Germany) under editor-in-chief Karl Marx (no relation), and the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

Freed primarily focused his camera on individual members of the Jewish community. However, he also took an interest in the place where Düsseldorf’s Jewish residents came together for celebrations, social gatherings, events, and religious services: the newly built synagogue, inaugurated in 1958, and the associated community center. This street view was taken on a sunny summer day in the Golzheim district.

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Leonard Freed, New synagogue and new community center, Düsseldorf, 1961; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2008/305/3. 
Further information about this photo can be found in our online collections (in German)

The image shows the synagogue at the corner of Zietenstrasse and Mauerstrasse (the community center, behind it, is out of view). The visual symbolism makes clear that this is a Jewish house of worship. Above the closed door is a seven-branched menorah or candelabrum, a central symbol of Judaism. Below it, a Hebrew inscription from Psalm 26:8 reads, “O Lord, I love Your temple abode, the dwelling-place of Your glory.” To the right, a tall stained-glass window is adorned with the emblems and Hebrew names of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

In the foreground, children of elementary school age are playing; a teenager strolls past them casually. The surviving contact sheets of this published photograph also show parked Volkswagen Beetles and other cars along Zietenstrasse – status symbols of West Germany’s ongoing “economic miracle.” Yet the apparent tranquility of the quiet residential neighborhood is deceptive: one of the two boys lying prone on the sidewalk, facing each other, is holding a toy gun. And we know that not long after the synagogue was consecrated in 1959, it became the target of swastika graffiti.¹

The Papers of Hermann Zvi Guttmann

In 2017, the Jewish Museum Berlin received the personal papers of Hermann Zvi Guttmann, the architect of the Düsseldorf synagogue, as a gift from his family. Visitors to the JMB’s permanent exhibition can explore parts of the collection digitally through the interactive Family Album display.

The collection includes extensive materials related to the design and construction of the synagogue and its adjacent community center, as well as documentation and media coverage of the consecration. This treasure trove is closely linked to Leonard Freed’s photograph, which was taken less than three years after the consecration ceremony in the summer of 1961.

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Hermann Zvi Guttmann, Street view of the Düsseldorf Synagogue, Frankfurt am Main, ca. 1954–1958, diazo print, gouache, watercolors; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2017/311/406, gift of Dr. Gitta Guttmann and Dr. Rosa Guttmann.
Further information about this object can be found in our online collections (in German)

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Hermann Zvi Guttmann, Perspective of the Interior of the Düsseldorf Synagogue, Frankfurt am Main, ca. 1953–1962, watercolor on diazo print paper; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2017/311/404, gift of Dr. Gitta Guttmann and Dr. Rosa Guttmann.
The synagogue has approximately 400 seats: 250 on the ground floor for men and another 150 upstairs in the surrounding women’s galleries. Further information about this object can be found in our online collections (in German)

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Leonard Freed, Before service in the synagogue, Düsseldorf, 1961; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2008/305/17.
One of the women’s galleries is partially visible in this image. Further information about this photo can be found in our online collections (in German)

The synagogue’s consecration ceremony on 7 September 1958 is exceptionally well-documented among Guttmann’s papers. This includes the synagogue’s invitation card to Mr. and Mrs. Guttmann, featuring an illustration of the entire building complex, as well as the brochure Die neue Synagoge in Düssel­dorf (The New Synagogue in Düsseldorf), which contains messages from politicians – including West Germany’s Chancellor Konrad Adenauer – as well as Jewish representatives, each reflecting on the significance of the synagogue’s construction nearly twenty years after the “Kristallnacht” pogroms and the destruction of the old synagogue.

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Front (left) and inside (right) of the invitation card for the synagogue’s consecration, addressed to architect Hermann Guttmann and his wife, 7 September 1958; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2017/309/196, gift of Dr. Gitta Guttmann and Dr. Rosa Guttmann.
The invitation reads: “The Düsseldorf Synagogue Congregation cordially invites Mr. and Mrs. Hermann Guttmann, certified engineer, to the formal consecration of the new synagogue at the corner of Zietenstrasse and Mauerstrasse in Düsseldorf on Sunday, 7 September 1958 – 11:00 a.m.”

Chancellor Adenauer’s congratulatory message invoked the “successes” of West German “reparation policies” in lights of the re-emergence of Jewish houses of worship. Meanwhile, Hendrik van Dam, a representative of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, quoted Rabbi Leo Baeck’s notion of the eternal dennoch (“nevertheless”) as a running theme of Jewish history. In the immediate aftermath of the Shoah, it seemed unthinkable that synagogues would be rebuilt and Jewish communities would have a lasting presence in Germany. In an article titled “A Testament to Survival: What Does the Consecration of a Synagogue Mean?” and published on 5 September 1958, Karl Marx, editor-in-chief of the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland, wrote:

“Today, there is no longer any doubt about the future of Judaism in Germany – just as there is no doubt about the past. Knowing that we cannot simply continue where the threads were abruptly cut, we have resolved to shape the present with remembrance of the past. … All that matters is the fact that Jews have a future in Germany.”

Despite the stark differences in their perspectives, all these texts bear witness to the profound symbolic significance attributed to the new Düsseldorf synagogue and its community center in the rebuilding of Jewish life in Germany after the Shoah.

Leonore Maier, Curator of Collections and of the exhibition

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Leonard Freed, Young couple, Düsseldorf, 1961; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2008/305/39. 
Further information about this photo can be found in our online collections (in German)

The photograph shows a young man and woman in an intimate pose with their faces close together, just as Leonard Freed captured them in Düsseldorf in 1961. In 2015, this print was displayed at the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf as part of the exhibition Von Augen­blick zu Augen­blick – Juden in Düssel­dorf nach 1945 (From Moment to Moment: Jews in Düsseldorf after 1945), on loan from the Jewish Museum Berlin along with other photographs from the German Jews Today series.

During the preparations for that exhibition, the previously anonymous couple was finally identified: Ruth and Herbert Rubinstein. They are both still living in Düsseldorf today and have since maintained a close relationship with the Jewish Museum Berlin for several years.

Ruth Rubinstein 

Ruth Rubinstein was born in 1942 in Tel Aviv and grew up in nearby Herzliya. Her mother was from Bad Nauheim, outside Frankfurt, and her father grew up in Cologne, but the two met in Palestine, where they started a family. They ran a small grocery store, but life was difficult, and after suffering multiple heart attacks, her father realized that he could no longer risk his health.

So, in the autumn of 1956, the family relocated to Cologne, her father’s birthplace. At the time, Ruth was 15 years old. She did not want to leave Israel and could not understand why her parents would choose to return to Germany, of all places. She and her sister, who was four years younger, were not allowed to tell anyone about the move. They left the country without saying goodbye – an especially painful experience for Ruth.

In Cologne, the family lived across the street from the synagogue on Roonstrasse, which was reconsecrated in 1959. Through the window, Ruth could see the synagogue. She spent much of her free time there, singing in the choir and taking part in activities at the youth center. Her dedication to the Jewish community would remain a constant throughout her life. Her parents ran three menswear shops in Cologne. She helped out there occasionally, but ultimately became a kindergarten teacher.

Herbert Rubinstein

Herbert Rubinstein was born in 1936 in the city of Czernowitz, which was then in Romania and is now Chernivtsi, Ukraine. He and his mother survived the Holocaust, but his father was shot by the Nazis in 1945.

After the war, his mother met Auschwitz survivor Max Rubin, who was originally from Düsseldorf. The new couple brought Herbert to Amsterdam, where they married. In 1956, Herbert relocated with his mother and stepfather to Düsseldorf. The family started small. Max Rubin had a business manufacturing women’s belts.

Herbert also cherished the companionship of his fellow Jews and became very active in youth work for the Jewish Community.

A Life Together

Ruth and Herbert Rubinstein met at a Hanukkah ball in Düsseldorf. Herbert was attending with his best friend, Paul Spiegel; Ruth had come from Cologne. They danced together – a moment that would change their lives.

In 1964, they were legally married at the registry office in Düsseldorf, followed shortly after by a Jewish wedding at the synagogue on Roonstrasse in Cologne. They soon moved to Düsseldorf, where their daughter was born in 1965, followed by twin sons in 1972.

Jewish friends and neighbors remained a strong source of support for them as a family, and to this day, they remain deeply involved in Jewish life in Düsseldorf. Ruth Rubinstein is the honorary chair of the local Jewish Community and served on its board for more than twenty years. Herbert Rubinstein also serves on the Community’s board and continues to speak as an eyewitness to history and Holocaust survivor, frequently sharing his wartime experiences with schoolchildren.

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The Rubinstein couple, Düsseldorf, 2018; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2018/314/0, photo: Stephan Pramme

The Rubinsteins and the JMB

For the 2018 Jewish Museum Berlin exhibition A Is for Jewish: Journeys through Now in 22 Letters, the couple was photographed again, fifty-seven years after Leonard Freed’s original image. This time photographer Stephan Pramme captured them in a nearly identical pose at the same location: the Rhine Promenade in Düsseldorf.

For the current exhibition German Jews Today. Leonard Freed, Ruth and Herbert Rubinstein provided the museum with key details about the people and situations depicted in Freed’s photo series. Their contributions have recontextualized the fifty-two images, assembling biographical details and personal experiences of the individuals portrayed.

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Ruth and Herbert Rubinstein looking at the photo book German Jews Today by Leonard Freed; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession Presse/3136/2, photo: Theresia Ziehe

At the end of 2024, they visited the exhibition with their family, now including three children, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Not all of them could attend, but four generations were represented.

As in 2018, this new encounter with the couple was deeply moving. They had recently celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary, and each describes the other as their greatest stroke of luck; their deep appreciation for each other is palpable. Herbert Rubinstein calls his wife “the best woman in the world.” In turn, Ruth shared a story about her father. Once, when she asked why their family had left Israel, her father responded, “If we hadn’t emigrated, you never would have met this golden treasure.”

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Ruth and Herbert Rubinstein in the exhibition German Jews Today. Leonard Freed; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession Presse/3136/1, photo: Theresia Ziehe

Theresia Ziehe, Curator of Photography and of the exhibition