2023-08-24 16:09:02
Anti-Semitism in German Baltic Sea resorts was not an invention of the Nazi era. The term spa anti-Semitism came up as early as the 19th century, and anti-Semitism was not only found in the seaside resorts and not only in Germany. It existed in Austria, Switzerland and the USA. There it was called resort anti-Semitism, and a year ago you could hear about it in Barrie Kosky’s All-Singing, All-Dancing Yiddish Revue at the Komische Oper, which staged the music of the Borscht Belt. In this area of the Catskill Mountains near New York City, Jews built summer hotels and casinos in the 1950s and 1960s because rampant racism barred them from other hotels. And that’s where an entertainment culture of its own emerged.
This past is now being confronted on the Baltic Sea. The exhibition “Whether the seagulls sometimes think of me” can be seen in the Ahrenshoop Art Museum on the Darß until October 3rd were undesirable. Conversely, places where a liberal atmosphere still prevailed were considered “Jewish baths”. In 1937, however, almost all seaside resorts and beaches were forbidden to Jews.
The exhibition draws heavily on the book of the same name by Kristine von Soden. In addition to historical documents and postcards, texts from letters and diaries by, for example, Else Lasker-Schüler, Victor Klemperer and Mascha Kaléko are on display.
Ad | Scroll to read more
In contrast to Prerow, which is also on the Darß and which underlined its “recognized National Socialist character” as early as 1929, there were still niches for the persecuted and the politically endangered in Ahrenshoop for a long time, as the show describes it. She quotes from the Ahrenshoop prospectus, printed in 1932, which states: “Informality and tolerance are our carefully guarded qualities, which also apply to politics.”
#Ahrenshoop #faces #history