A Guide Through the Jewish Museum

The Digitized Guide About the First Jewish Museum in 1933

The first Jewish Museum in Berlin was opened on 24 January 1933. It displayed not only religious art, but also sought to take “all cultural manifestations of Judiasm” into account, as the first director of the museum, Karl Schwarz, emphasized in the foreword to this illustrated guidebook.

The guide provides a detailed insight into the exhibtion:

The entry hall was dominated by two large-format paintings: Jeremiah by Lesser Ury and The Prophet by Jakob Steinhardt. The following rooms presented further works of contemporary art and a portrait gallery of important Jewish men and women.

Objects of religious use were spread over three rooms. A further room has been dedicated to archaeological discoveries from Palestine and explains the development of the Hebrew alphabet. A hallway which has been designed for temporary graphic art exhibitions showed images related to Jewish communities. The final rooms of the exhibition displayed parochets (Torah curtains) and other objects from synagogues.

The first page, also called the half-title page, of the guidebook to the first Jewish Museum in Berlin.

A Guide Through the Jewish Museum from the collection of the Jewish Community of Berlin, Berlin 1933

Digitized Books About the First Jewish Museum

Book cover of the report on the founding meeting of the Jewish Museum Association Berlin, decorated with menorah

Digitized Books: Read Our Books Online (7)

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