The legacy of Börneplatz is visible and hidden at the same time.

The wall to the Jewish cemetery on Battonnstrasse with the 11,000 names of the Frankfurters deported by the National Socialists is a reminder of the atrocities of the Nazi regime.

The outline on the black mastic asphalt floor shows where the synagogue once stood, which was destroyed in the night of the pogrom in 1938.

You can't see it in full - part of it was where city employees are now having lunch in the canteen.

Theresa White

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The commemorative plaque on the brick building of the municipal building inspectorate tells of the history of the place - anyone who remembers the construction of the building may also think of the protest that rose in the late 1980s when the remains of the Jewish ghetto were found during the construction work the Judengasse Museum was set up in the building as a compromise.

There, visitors can now explore the traces of everyday Jewish life in the early modern ghetto.

Making the Jewish Renaissance visible

But something is missing.

The time between emancipation, the end of the ghetto and the brutal annihilation of Jewish life in Frankfurt: the Jewish renaissance.

With the synagogue, a hospital and the adjoining Ostend with more than 100 prayer rooms, Börneplatz was once a focal point of Jewish life that has so strongly shaped the city.

“This time has become strangely invisible,” says Mirjam Wenzel, director of the Jewish Museum.

Together with the Archaeological Museum and the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, she planned the event "Mapping Memories - Ver (answer) ortung Börneplatz" in partnership with Node - Association for the Promotion of Digital Culture.

"You cannot make something cure that cannot be cured"

The project is the first in the Metahub series, which aims to make culture, mediation and art visible in public and digital space. It is funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation, the RheinMain Cultural Fund and the city's cultural department. According to Ina Hartwig (SPD), Head of the Department of Culture, the special thing about it is the interlinking of analog and digital content, which also creates an interface for the various actors. From September 9th to 12th, the Börneplatz will be used in this context. The Jewish renaissance should be made visible, the organizers want to talk to the citizens of Frankfurt and ask how it should be remembered. On the square there are seating blocks made of pallets, which are also a tribute to the archaeological finds,which were rescued during the construction of the municipal building and stored on pallets.

Thorsten Sonnemann's archaeological work can be viewed by video on one side of the square, while stones tell of the past on the other.

For the duration of the commemorative festival, the remains of the Torah shrine from the synagogue have been returned to where they once stood in display cases.

The architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller brought it to this place in an “architectural intervention”.

The fragments of the marble shrine were not put together.

The fragments that were recovered from the underground car park shaft during construction work by the scientists still show the destruction.

At the opening of the event, Wolfgang David, Director of the Archaeological Museum, explains why: "You can't put something back together and make something heal that can't be healed."

In the next few days, Börneplatz will also become a stage: panel discussions on the change in the practice of remembering and remembering in art, but also a concert and the work of Helgard Haug (Rimini Protokoll) and a performative tour by the Israeli artist Ariel Efraim Ashbel will explore this Past and now. Ashbel deals with his own life and his Jewish heritage. He looks more to the present - for example to his Bar Mitzvah, which is supposed to take place next year when he will be 40 years old. “In Germany, people know a lot about Jewish death, but little about Jewish life,” he says. He wants to change that.

The program can be found on the Internet at metahubfrankfurt.de, there is no admission fee. The Judengasse Museum can also be visited free of charge until Sunday. Parts of the exhibition are also made digitally accessible on the website.