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…
Precious metals handed over to the Lending Office The city authorities were also involved in robbing and marginalising the Jewish population. In the spring of 1939, the Jews in Hanover and the surrounding area were forced to bring all their valuables made of precious metal to the municipal Lending Office at Am Hohen Ufer. Today…
State Tax Office [Oberfinanzpräsidium]: Legislated robbery After the liberation from National Socialism, very few perpetrators from the top echelons of the Party, Gestapo, SS, industry and judiciary were punished. However, the repression and robbing of the Jewish population had many accomplices in public office and administrative departments: pen-pushing perpetrators. Terror and bureaucracy went hand in…
The Holocaust memorial at Opernplatz Inaugurated in 1994, the memorial next to the opera house commemorates Jewish citizens of Hanover that were deported and murdered. Although faced with a measure of opposition, the civic initiative Memorial association [Memorial e.V.] succeeded in erecting this important site in the heart of the city. The costs for the…
Neues Rathaus: the New Town Hall in Hanover Four scale models of the city vividly illustrate Hanover’s development, from the time it was the small residential seat of the House of Guelph (or Welf) (1689), to an industrial city on the eve of the Second World War (1939); then from the almost completely destroyed city…
ZeitZentrum Zivilcourage Located in the heart of the city, opposite the Neues Rathaus [New City Hall] in the Rathauskontor building complex, the ZeitZentrum Zivilcourage [Centre for Moral Courage] is an educational centre designed to appeal to all sectors of the community. It was opened in March 2021 and welcomes schoolchildren and all visitors with an…