City without Jews
The Dark Side of Munich’s History

Throughout 2008 Munich is celebrating its 850th anniversary. Such jubilees are often seen as occasions to look back on a city’s history with pride, to identify with it, and to awaken the residents’ awareness of its history. But how is a museum – whose task is to promote the history and culture of a certain section of the community – supposed to react to such a festival year, when for more than 400 years in the city’s 850-year history, that very community was involuntarily and often forcefully excluded from taking part?

In its contribution to the city’s anniversary, the Jewish Museum Munich has chosen to trace precisely those times during the last 850 years when Jews were not allowed to live there, when Munich was a “city without Jews.” At the same time, the reasons for their expulsion, persecution, and settlement prohibitions have been highlighted and the issue of the dark side of Munich’s history broached.

The twelve exhibits, which render predominantly negative events in the city’s history visible, are complemented by video boards in the exhibition. Students at the College for Television and Film in Munich have collated statements by historians and experts in the fields of literature, politics, and cultural affairs, related to Munich’s topography and which refer to events of exclusion, persecution, and annihilation that actually happened. This allows visitors to the exhibition “City without Jews: The Dark Side of Munich’s History” to see the objects in a broader historical context while at the same time linking them to specific sites in Munich.