Published: 2 August 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Festivities marking centuries of German Jewish life are marred by continuing concern over antisemitism.
The first documented presence of Jews north of the Alps dates back to 321 CE, when the Roman emperor Constantine issued a decree allowing Jews to be members of Cologne's town council. The documents are stored in the archives of the Vatican.
The Roman edict provides definitive evidence that Jewish communities have been an integral part of European culture since ancient times, according to the office of the German government's commissioner for Jewish life in Germany and the fight against antisemitism.
On the occasion of the edict's 1700th anniversary, the association 321-2021: 1700 Jahre Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland, together with the German government, decided to mark the event through projects and festivities.
Andrey Kovacs, Executive Director of the association, said his group was overwhelmed and thankful for the participation of civil society and political figures, with the resulting number of events far exceeded initial expectations.
"We had over 840 project partners in all 16 states," he explained. "That really overwhelmed us. And then there were also projects that took place without sponsorship and did not show up in the statistics. These also included events in over 20 German government representations abroad, because the foreign office also participated in the festivities," Kovac said. "It became probably the biggest post-war German cultural festival."
Altogether, far over 2,400 events were held all over Germany. Included were exhibitions of Jewish artefacts from the Middle Ages as part of the "Shared History” project and celebrating the Jewish festival of Sukkot in 13 cities across Germany.
But in the city of Kassel, the idea that German-Jewish life is to be celebrated has been challenging. Another antisemitic exhibit has surfaced at the documenta art exhibition, where management is accused of burying its head in the sand.
On Wednesday, the public learned that another antisemitic exhibit had been discovered at the art show within a booklet displayed on tables in Kassel's Museum Fridericianum, as announced by the Research and Information Center on Antisemitism in Marburg.
In a 1988 brochure contains photos and images of a feminist archive from Algeria entitled "Presence des Femmes," among them drawings by Burhan Karkoutly, a Syrian artist, said to contain antisemitic stereotypes.
The works were created in the year of the first Palestinian uprising known as the Intifada, documenta press spokeswoman Susanne Urban told Germany's epd news agency.
Two of the images in question picture Israeli soldiers as dehumanised robots with bared teeth, in one image a gun barrel threatens a young man and in the other, one of the robot soldiers grabs a child by the ear. Another image has a woman kicking the groin an Israeli soldier with an oversized hooked nose in the tradition of antisemitic caricatures.
The latest controversy follows claims from the Alliance Against Anti-Semitism Kassel earlier this year that Palestinian artists at the current exhibition, documenta 15, are anti-Israeli activists who are violating Germany’s strict antisemitism laws.
The Kassel exhibition space of the artists’ group Question of Funding was broken into and vandalised with graffiti alleging the installation was antisemitic. The graffiti in turn prompted claims of Islamaphobia.
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New antisemitism scandal at Germany's documenta art exhibition (DW)
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Photo: A tram decorated to celebrate the 1700-year anniversary of Jews in Germany (1700 Jahre Jüdisches Leben)
