Cultural Program in March 2015

Lecture

"From a Berlin Farce to a Story of Success"
A discussion as a prelude to the Jewish Museum Berlin’s academic book series

The Jewish Museum Berlin continues to be one of Germany’s most successful museums and the Libeskind Building a landmark of international renown.

How did it come about that the former Supreme Court building in Kreuzberg’s Lindenstraße, which housed the historic city museum of West Berlin founded in the 1960s, is now home to the Jewish Museum Berlin? How did the project of expanding the Berlin Museum to include a Jewish department become a national museum of German-Jewish history under the patronage of the Federal Republic? In discussion with the curator Inka Bertz and the ZEIT journalist Heinrich Wefing, the author Daniel Bussenius talks about the 30-year history of the Jewish Museum Berlin in the years from 1971 to 2001.

A cooperation with Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Publishers

Academy Programs

"Osama bin Laden schläft bei den Fischen" (Osama bin Laden is sleeping with fishes)
Reading and discussion with Ahmad Milad Karimi as part of the series "New German Stories"

When he is thirteen years old, Ahmad Milad Karimi has to flee from war-torn Afghanistan with his family. After numerous detours, they reach Germany in 1993 and find accommodation in a home for asylum seekers. Against all odds, Karimi struggles his way through the German education system. A refugee attending lower secondary school becomes a student whose doctoral thesis is on Hegel, who translates the Koran into German and is eventually appointed professor at the University of Münster. In his autobiographical book, Ahmad Milad Karimi tells with subtle humor how new things arise from crossing cultural borders and that "home" need not be tied to one place.

Moderated by Yasemin Shooman

Showcase Exhibition

"Pictures Galore and Collecting Mania - Advertising in Miniature"

The Jewish Museum Berlin continues its series of exhibitions on consumer and economic history with this exhibition about advertising. The starting point is a comprehensive collection of advertising stamps – stamp-sized images used mainly for corporate and product advertising that were donated to the museum by a private collector. Before the First World War, millions of these stamps were in circulation, sparking a veritable "collecting mania".

Installation

Robot writes Torah scrolls

In the installation "bios [torah]" by the artist group robotlab, a human-sized robot takes on the role of a sofer, a Torah scribe whose task is to copy Torah scrolls. The robot picks up the copying labor of the sofer. The writing arm with its calligraphic nib and ink will work for ten hours every day at a human writing speed. By the end, it will have written more than 914.415 Hebrew letters and three Torah scrolls in the right-to-left direction of Hebrew script. The robot-written Torah cannot be used in the synagogue. It does not satisfy the requirements imposed upon a Torah scribe, who must write the text onto parchment obtained from kosher animals and use a quill pen with special ink. When the robot writes, it is devoid of intention, knows no blessings, and does not have the inner devotion of the trained sofer.

robotlab / Matthias Gommel, Martina Haitz, Jan Zappe

"bios [torah]" (2007/14), Robot Installation

Work on Hebrew calligraphy and typesetting: Sahar Aharoni, Karlsruhe

With the kind support of: ZKM Karlsruhe, KUKA Augsburg, LAMY Heidelberg, PAPIER UNION Karlsruhe, CORDIER Papier Bad Durkheim, WINTOPO Biggleswade/UK