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Cologne divided over Jewish artefacts

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Cologne divided over Jewish artefacts
10:07 CEST+02:00
An archaeological dig in the western German city of Cologne has unearthed myriad traces of daily life in one of Europe's oldest and biggest Jewish communities. Yet opinion is divided on where to display the historical treasure trove.


And they include many piecing together Cologne's little-known but rich Jewish history.

But plans to display the findings, discovered since 2007 by head archaeologist Sven Schütte's team at the 10,000 square-metre (32,800 square-foot) city centre dig, in a new museum have proved divisive.

Just over 400 kilometres (260 miles) away, Berlin already hosts a large Jewish museum, and critics argue that Cologne cannot afford a new cultural project when its coffers are already in the red.

"For a very long time, archaeologists quite simply ignored the Jewish past of Cologne," said Schütte.



Its prosperous Jewish community numbered nearly 1,000 at its height. On Hebrew-inscribed fragments of slate, aspects of daily life from the Middle Ages have intriguingly come to light via school children's teachings, rules and regulations, a bawdy knight's tale and even a bakery's customer list.

The history of the city's Jewish quarter spans 1,000 years, from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, and far from being closed-off from the rest of the city, it was open and adjoined the Roman governor's imposing palace and later the city hall.


He pointed to the synagogue's Gothic style and richly-decorated altar, believed to have been constructed by French craftsmen employed on the nearby cathedral construction site.

But two events finally sounded the death knell for the Jewish quarter - a crusader massacre in 1096, followed by its eventual annihilation in 1349 when the Christians made the Jews the scapegoat for a black plague epidemic.


"It won't be a so-called ghetto museum limited to presenting religious artefacts but a museum tracing this quarter's daily life, its integration in to the Christian city, with the positive and negative aspects," Schütte said.


"And elsewhere someone engraved a swastika," he added.

Meanwhile the opposition conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) on the local council have attacked the plan over its cost and condemned as "madness" spending more than €50 million when the city is already deeply in debt.




"Social expenditure is being cut independently of the museum's construction. If it isn't built, nothing will change," he told the weekly Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung.

AFP/The Local/kkf

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