Cologne uncovers an ancient Jewish past

By Christoph Driessen Jul 17, 2011, 2:06 GMT

Cologne - The remains of an ancient Jewish quarter - right in the centre of the German city of Cologne, and still being uncovered - are little short of an archaeological sensation.

The excavations, which began in 2007, have already revealed remains of a synagogue, hospital, bakery, community hall and mikveh, or bathhouse used for ritual purification.

The city now plans to enclose the entire site to create a new Jewish museum outside the former Cologne city hall.

Residents of the city, however, are not sure they need a museum which will occupy a significant part of the picturesque central square.

Yet the city authorities believe the 50 million euros (70 million dollars) it will cost are well worth it.

The city council decided this week to stump up the 37 million euros required from the city coffers - with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia providing the rest -, confident that a subsequent increase in tourism income will ultimately pay for it.

Locals are now confronted with having their lovely central square turned into an archaeological dig, but the archaeologists are enthusiastic.

The site will 'make headlines round the world', according to Samuel Gruber, a world-renowned expert on Jewish architecture, who has visited the excavations from his base at Syracuse University in the state of New York.

'I believe they haven't fully realized what they have found here,' Gruber said. The area currently bears the mundane title of an 'archaeological zone'.

A panorama window from the neighbouring Wallraf Richartz Museum offers a view out over the excavations, revealing a labyrinth of alleyways that provide a taste of what the city must have been like in the Middle Ages.

The roads were much narrower, reflecting the cost of space in a city surrounded by a city wall. But it all becomes more real when one descends to the level of the medieval street and walks through the ruins.

These walls were built more than a millennia ago. More than that, this is not simply a part of the largest German city at the time of the knights and the medieval Minnesingers, but the remains of the oldest Jewish community north of the Alps.

Gruber describes Cologne of the day as a city with a wonderful mix, with the Jewish quarter right at the heart of this major trading centre, not at the edge as in many other European cities.

He played a major role in convincing the city authorities of the advantages of a museum, pointing out that the Jewish museums in Amsterdam and Prague draw hundreds of thousands of visitors a year - and they do not even have a subterranean city of this order.

Cologne residents remain sceptical. The city is known as the centre of a Catholic carnival that reaches its high point in the dark days of deep winter, and not as a Judaic centre.

Some also ask whether Germany needs another Jewish museum, even if the one in Cologne will be very different from those in Berlin or Munich.

But Gruber believes the locals will soon catch on and begin to value their Jewish heritage once they know more about it.

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