Global Neighborhoods: Jewish Quarters in Paris, London, and Berlin

Chapter 3: Berlin’s Jewish Quarter

Chapter 3 Berlin’s Jewish Quarter The Local History of the Global Scheunenviertel, the historic Jewish quarter in Berlin, provides an exemplary illustration for the study of the local history of the global.1 Globality is anchored in localities as nodes of its performances, as markers of its heterogeneity, and as signs that map its geography. Every locale brings its own set of constraints and limitations that choreograph the deployment of the global in distinct ways. The history of the Berlin Jewish quarter reflects the Fascist, Communist, and democratic regimes that have fashioned its built environment.2 In a process that mirrors the unmaking, remaking, and transformation of the globalized locality that we have just examined in Paris, the Nazis were responsible for the destruction of the Berlin Jewish quarter during World War II and the ensuing Communist regime treated it with indifference and neglect, while the democratic federal government after reunification developed policy guidelines for the renovation of the neighborhood and the protection of its historic sites. While the Nazis caused the extermination and global dispersion of the local population and the Communists added Jewish-owned houses to the state-owned stock of housing as part of the scheme of nationalization of private property, the reunited Germany of the European Union, in contrast, allows owners to recoup their former homes.3 In analyzing the local history of the global, this chapter seeks to extend the preceding analysis to explain the implosion of the global in the local as a central mechanism in the production of the neighborhood . It discusses singular aspects of the “security” issue as it is constructed and understood from within Germany and shows how the global engenders the local. It further shows how the microprocess of the globalization of the local has singular features because the issues confronted by a locale are not identical to those of other sectors of society. It proposes that the local, in this case the Berlin Jewish quarter, 37 38 Global Neighborhoods provides us with a site that needs to be decoded to understand hidden aspects of globality that may help us to better grasp the variable geometry of the transnational circuit of relationships of the Jewish diaspora and the inscription, incorporation, and integration of the neighborhood in both the city and the global network. In so doing, it sheds light on the articulation of one of the nodes to the transborder network of sites that make up the malleable cultural infrastructure of transglobal diasporic urbanism. The Post-Holocaust History of the Jewish Quarter Scheunenviertel was a vibrant Jewish neighborhood before the period from 1934 to 1939, when the first anti-Jewish German legislation was enacted. With World War II and the Holocaust, which lasted from 1939 to 1945, Scheunenviertel was abruptly destroyed. Since then, it has not been able to rebuild itself as a place with a dominant Jewish population. According to the president of the Jewish Cultural Center: there are about ten Jews who live here. I know four, maybe there are another five that moved in. Maybe a few American Jews have moved in lately. Most Jews live in the former West Berlin in Charlottenburg near the Reform synagogue. Of course, the more money they have, the better they live, so more well-off Jews live in Wilmersdorf. There are also Jews in Rykestrasse, near the Lauder Foundation, and they have a yeshiva there. As an object of study, the Jewish neighborhood of Scheunenviertel thus is more symbolic than real. The buildings are there, but not the people. Scheunenviertel joins the network of Jewish diasporic sites not as a neighborhood community, but as a collection of buildings and institutions . This highlights the heterogeneity of sites that constitute the infrastructure of transglobal urbanism; some of these may disappear while new ones may appear. This process shows the resiliency of transglobal urbanism and explains that the architecture of its organization may change, but not the nature of its transborder urban identity. The post-Holocaust history of Scheunenviertel is marked by three singular events: the division of the city into East and West Berlin, which lasted from 1949 to 1989, the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, which prevented individuals and families from freely moving from one side of the city to the other, either for resettlement or to visit family members, and the reunification of the two Berlins in October 1990, 39 Berlin’s...