This year we are celebrating the festival year “1700 years of Jewish life in Germany”. I thank the Evangelical Church of Hessen-Nassau for inviting me on this occasion to give the keynote speech at the Reformation celebration. I was very happy to accept this invitation. You don't have to fear now that I will give you a lecture on 1700 years of German-Jewish history in all its facets - then we would still be here tomorrow. No, I just want to take a quick look at this rich history and then share with you a few thoughts on the present that are important to me.

The festival year for 1700 years of Jewish history in Germany is not a jubilee year. That is why we are not talking about an anniversary. Because everyone who has dealt with this story knows: It is shaped by ups and downs, not just by lows - by the deepest abysses! I think it is right that the association "321 - 1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany", which was founded in Cologne, declared a festival year. We are concerned - I am one of the founding members of the association - our aim is to create awareness in Germany of how long Jews have been living in German countries, how much they have shaped the culture of our country and how Jewish is Shaping life today.

Because unfortunately there is very little knowledge about it in the population.

Most Germans associate the Holocaust with Judaism.

Without knowing much about the Holocaust, however.

There are so many testimonies to Jewish life.

First I want to take a look at Cologne, because Cologne is the oldest Jewish community north of the Alps.

The churches' former hostility towards Jews has been handed down to this day

In the year 321 AD, the Roman Emperor Constantine signed an edict in which the appointment of Jews to the Cologne city council was permitted for the first time. This is the first written record of Jewish life in Germany. The oldest existing copy of this edict could now be admired in Cologne for several weeks. And in a few years the Miqua, the archaeological zone in the center of Cologne, will be accessible, where valuable remains of a Jewish quarter from the 12th and 13th centuries can be seen.

The ShUM sites are even more famous and rightly recently Unesco World Heritage Sites. Anyone who visits the Speyer Judenhof, the Worms synagogue district or the old Jewish cemeteries in Worms and Mainz will notice how strongly Judaism has influenced culture in Germany. However, German-Jewish history is also, if not primarily, a Christian-Jewish history. For for centuries Jews were dependent on the favor of Christian rulers. For a long time these rulers were ecclesiastical dignitaries in personal union. If they lowered their thumbs and incited hatred of Jews, terrible pogroms and expulsions ensued.

The churches' former hostility to Jews is also handed down in many testimonies to this day and unfortunately is still present in people's minds with age-old anti-Jewish stereotypes.

These testimonies include Martin Luther's “Jewish writings” as well as stone images: the statue “Ecclesia”, which represents the victorious Christian church, and the figure of the “synagogue”, which symbolizes Judaism in a derogatory way, can be found in numerous cathedrals.

The so-called "Jewish sows" in many old churches are even more repulsive.

Here Jews were ridiculed in the worst possible way.