25 Years
Jewish Museum Berlin

Open to All. Ever Since.

Jewish culture belongs to Germany. The Jewish Museum Berlin (JMB) has been highlighting that past and present for twenty-five years. It is a place for dialogue, learning, and encounter. For its twenty-fifth anniversary, the JMB invites you to take a look back, but also offers new perspectives on the present day and even a glimpse of the future. A colorful program awaits: exhibitions, concerts, family sundays, digital projects, and events for all ages.

Join us in marking twenty-five years of the Jewish Museum Berlin. Discover the anniversary program and be part of the celebrations.

Slices of cake and blue letters on lila background.

All Anniversary Specials

Accompanying Events & Tours

Family Sundays, Summer Festivals, Concerts, and More: All Dates At a Glance

Exhibitions

Between the Lines: Daniel Libeskind and the Jewish Museum Berlin
The Opposite of Now: Artistic Paths to a Different Present

Publications

Staying Curious!: the Anniversary Issue of the JMB Journal

Collections and Projects

GLAM on tour at the JMB: Workshop Weekend in Collaboration with Wikimedia Germany
Family Collections at the JMB: The Papers and Mementos of German-Jewish Families

26 New Objects in 25 Years

(26 items)

“The architect’s way of thinking is through the eyes.”

Zvi Hecker, Jewish Primary School Berlin: design drawing “Rainwater Collection,” Berlin, 1993, purchased in 2001
How to Create Community with Spice Boxes

Paula Newman Pollachek, Havdalah Besamim Set, Oakland (California), purchase, 2002
An Important Moment for the Zwilsky Family

Rededication of the Jewish Hospital Synagogue, Berlin, 3 June 1946, gift of Klaus M. Zwilsky, 2003
Rabbinical Studies in the Capital of Nazi Germany

Identification card for Wolfgang Hamburger, College for the Science of Judaism, Berlin, 1939–1942, gift of Wolfgang Hamburger, 2004
Artworks for Children

Tom Seidmann-Freud, Eser sihot li-yeladim (Kleine Märchen, Eng: Little Fairy Tales), Jerusalem 1923, purchased in 2005
On the Way to a Poetic-Political Utopia

Else Lasker-Schüler, Durch die Wüste Sinai (Through the Desert of Sinai), about 1935, purchase, 2006
A Testament to Trade Relationships between Jews and Non-Jews in the Eighteenth Century

Der vollkommene Pferdekenner (The Complete Horse Connoisseur), Uffenheim 1764, purchased in 2007
“... there is, however, a definite want of a good Jewish cookbook.”

Complete Practical Cookbook for the Jewish Kitchen, by Bertha Gumprich, née Meyer. Fourth edition, significantly expanded and improved, Trier, about 1900, gift of Herbert and Elisabeth Simon, 2008
An Anonymous Letter

Documents and jewelry from the estate of Alice (1879–1943) and Georg (1874–1942) Dorpalen, anonymous donation, 2009
“Well-balanced silver utilitarian objects that make you feel good”

Emmy Roth, Tea and Coffee Service, 1931, purchased in 2010
A Solomonic Judgment

Key ring from the house owned by the Ziegler family in Velten, ca. 1990, donated by Ruth Ziegler, 2011
Laissez-passer

Grande Armée Curfew Pass for Maurice Bouchard, Berlin, 1808, gift of Dr. Walter Borchardt-Ott and Ruth Jarecki (née Borchardt-Ott), 2012
A Concert in the Cabin

Concert announcement, Onchan Internment Camp, Isle of Man, 1941, gift of Ms. Anne Marx in loving memory of her husband Carl Theodore, 2013
Testimonial to a Family

Torah shield (Tas) and box, Kitzingen, 1711/12, purchased in 2014
“Ma première photo”

Ilse Bing, Self-portrait, Frankfurt am Main, 1913, purchased in 2015
A Mirror with Memory

Daguerreotype of Pauline Stern, Breslau, 1849, gift of Dr. phil. Fortunatus Schnyder-Rubensohn, 2016
Making the Invisible Visible

Samson II by Ernest Neuschul, 1923–1955, purchase in 2017
A Persian Bar Mitzvah in Hamburg

Video recording of Rabin Yaghoubi’s bar mitzvah, 1984, gift of Rabin Yaghoubi, 2018
Collecting the Present

Krätzchen Carnival Cap (Kölsche Kippa Köpp Carnival Society), gift of Aaron Knappstein, 2019
First Family Selft-portrait during Passover

Hanna’s first seder during Covid-19, submission to the “Passover in Times of Corona” call for collection items, 2020
“The museum is a storehouse of memories”

Embroidered traditional blouses, ca. 1920–1930, gift of Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, 2021
The Lanzmann Collection

Audio cassette tape from the Lanzmann collection, donated by the Association Claude et Felix Lanzmann (A.C.F.L.), represented by Dominique Lanzmann, 2021/2022
Voices from the GDR

Jewish Perspectives on Life and the Political System, eyewitness interviews, as part of the Audiovisual Collection of the Jewish Museum Berlin, 2023
Jazzband (Weintraubs Syncopators)

Max Oppenheimer (1885–1954), 1927, oil on canvas; Jewish Museum Berlin, originally the property of Dr. Hugo Staub, who was stripped of ownership in 1933; purchased by a private party in 1962. Acquired by the JMB in 2024 following a just and fair solution facilitated by the Grisebach auction house, with funds from a bequest by Gisela Schwandt to the Deutsche Bank Foundation, 2025
Portrait Therese Manheimer

by Julius Moser, Berlin, 1832, black chalk, white heightened; Jewish Museum Berlin, gift of Nina Parris, photo: Roman März, 2025
Het Onderwater Cabaret

Curt Bloch’s Satirical Underground Magazine, Jewish Museum Berlin, collection/816, Curt Bloch Collection, gift of Charities Aid Foundation America, thanks to the generosity of the Bloch family, 2026

History of the Museum: Ideas, Debates, Decisions, Inauguration (4)

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Ideas, Debates, Decisions, Inauguration

Here is the four-part history of our origins – from the forced closure of the first Jewish Museum in Berlin in 1938, and the original museum’s inspirational influence on our collecting principles, until the present day.
How We Came to Be

West Berlin, 1971: the idea emerged for a Jewish Museum to be connected to the Berlin Museum. Finally, in 1992, the cornerstone was laid for the building dedicated to this purpose and designed by Daniel Libeskind

History of the Museum
1971–1992
Controversies and Contradictions

In the 1990s, the conflicts between advocates of an independent Jewish museum in Berlin and those who saw it as part of the Berlin Museum continually intensified

History of the Museum
1990s
Political Decisions

The appointment of W. Michael Blumenthal as Museum Director and the transfer of the seat of government to Berlin eventually led to an independent Jewish Museum Berlin, which opened on 13 September 2001

History of the Museum
2001
Since the Museum Opened

With its exhibitions, publications, educational work, and diverse events calendar, our museum developed into a lively forum for reflecting on Jewish history and culture and, more broadly, on migration and social diversity in Germany

History of the Museum
2001 until the present day