The birthplace of Herschel Grünspan Herschel Grünspan grows up here in Burgstrasse before living in Paris as an illegal immigrant. Whilst there, he hears of his family’s deportation to Poland. His shooting of an official at the German embassy provides the National Socialists with the long-awaited excuse to radically intensify their anti-Jewish measures. Hanover: Ballhofplatz…
Königsworther Platz alias “Horst-Wessel-Platz” Murderers and their victims. The story of two villas located on the same square. “Villa Simon” had belonged to the Jewish Berliner family of entrepreneurs since 1895. In 1941, it was acquired by the Hanover city authorities. Its Jewish occupants were deported. A few blocks away stood the villa housing SS-District…
The Technical University and Theodor Lessing A castle turned university: the main building of present-day Leibniz University not only looks like a castle, it was actually built as a Guelph palace. However, after the war against Prussia was lost in 1866, the Kingdom of Hanover ceased to exist. Hanover became the Prussian provincial capital. Shortly…
Jewish community centre in Ohestrasse At the end of the 19th century, a community centre was established on the edge of Calenberger Neustadt, which offered teacher training, a boarding school, a day nursery for children and a religious school. After the Second World War, the buildings become the most important place of refuge for Jewish…
Jewish community house in Lützowstrasse Once a centre of Jewish life: on the site where a bland multi-storey car park now stands, there once stood the community house, a centre of Jewish life in Hanover. The commission for its design had been awarded in 1875 to the architect Edwin Oppler who, not long before, had…
Old Jewish cemetery The Old Jewish Cemetery in Nordstadt, not far from the Christuskirche, is an amazing sight: a mound in the middle of the residential district, upon which stand hundreds of old gravestones set beneath tall trees, a walled island of the departed. Hanover: “Juden-Kirchhof” [Jewish churchyard]: The cemetery hill depicted on a drawing…
Memorial at the site of the New Synagogue “In the German Style”: in 1870, the New Synagogue, designed by the eminent Jewish architect Edwin Oppler, is inaugurated at its location on an open square in Calenberger Neustadt. Its scale and architectural style express a new self-confidence and the belief that as Jews they are now…
Stolen artefacts in the Museum August Kestner The Museum August Kestner is the oldest museum in Hanover. In 1884, Hermann Kestner donated the sizeable collection of Ancient Egyptian antiquities and art belonging to his uncle August Kestner, his own private art collection and that of his father Georg Kestner to the city of Hanover…
Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover [Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum] In the 1920s, Hanover was a modern industrial city, yet at the same time in terms of general artistic tastes it was a “stiff and starchy provincial backwater” (Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers). Nevertheless, there did exist a few pockets of avant-garde art in the form of the Kestner Society…
The Mellini affair The Mellini Theater was located in present-day Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse (known at that time as Artilleriestrasse) opposite the junction with Odeonstrasse. It was a variety theatre or boulevard theatre. During the Second World War, it was converted into a “Kraft-durch-Freude-Theater” [Strength through Joy Theatre], designed to boost morale (by inspiring a spirit of resilience…