The ShUM Cities Today: Symbolic Topography or Jewish Spaces?

The ShUM-cities Speyer, Worms and Mainz are in the process of applying as UNESCO-World Heritage. Regarding UNESCO’s political direction, the institutions and people involved into the ShUM project must define this heritage clearly as Jewish and not withdraw under terms such as “religious minorities”.

The lecture will start with a glimpse into the application process.

The main part will discuss the Jewish spaces in ShUM. For example, the reconstruction of the medieval Worms’ synagogue in the late 1950s (after it was burnt down in November 1938) is often recounted as a success story of early post-Shoah German-Jewish reconciliation. The Jewish spaces in ShUM were long presented as primarily historical, ethnographic spaces, administered by cities, tourism offices, and archives. This well-meant interest in preserving the remains and let tourists stroll there was also connected to some self-referential “coming to terms with the past,” without any connection to the Jewish perspective. These spaces were transformed into what Eszter Gantner has named “symbolic topography”. Spaces can change – as monuments and in intellectual means. For decades the Jewish cemetery in Worms was open to tourists on Shabbat and on the High Holidays. Since 2015 new opening hours were implemented that respect the space’s origin. This is one significant step in “recapturing” spaces as part of a Jewish reality. The discussion on these symbolic topographies is the same in many places and spaces – from Berlin to Warsaw and I hope to inspire a debate about this.