Ehemalige Jüdische Mädchenschule

The former Jewish Girls’ School in Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood is a must-stop address for art connoisseurs and foodies. Under its roof can be found two of the most respected commercial galleries, the contemporary Eigen + Art and photography-focused Camera Work, as well as the The Kennedys Museum, and three restaurants: delicatessen Mogg and The Kosher Classroom.

The building is a place with a haunted past and current tenants have done a good job of memorializing. Its industrial style architecture (an example of the “New Objectivity” genre) has a warehouse type feel with thick walls, huge plate-glass windows and an imposing brick facade. The history of the space, too, inspires reverence. In 1933 its student body more than doubled after the Fascist Regime’s law of segregation kicked children out of secular schools. Starting in 1938, every day more desks were empty as Jewish families were ripped from their homes and sent to concentration camps. In 1942, the school, along with all Jewish schools in Europe were closed. For the remainder of World War II, the building acted as a military hospital for the Nazi party.

In 1950 the Bavarian writer Bertolt Brecht, a proclaimed communist, reopened the school in the heart of the Soviet-controlled East Berlin. In 1996 the building was abandoned and remained empty until 2009 when the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany ruled that the property be reinstated to the Jewish Community.