By Ally Godsil
This summer, Rice senior Ally Godsil was awarded a Desirée and Max Blankfeld Fellowship to travel to Frankfurt, Germany, to do research for her senior thesis in the history department.
This past May, I used the Jewish Studies Blankfeld Scholarship to travel to Frankfurt, Germany. While in Frankfurt, I conducted archival research for my senior history thesis. For my thesis, I am looking at how Frankfurt’s city government responded to efforts to memorialize the historical Jewish presence in Frankfurt in light of the Holocaust. Before the Nazi regime, Frankfurt was the location of the second-largest population of Jews in Germany after Berlin. The Jewish community in Frankfurt was notable for its achievements in scholarship and commerce. The Frankfurt School was founded by a group of scholars all with personal connections to Judaism at Frankfurt’s Goethe University in 1932. The famous banking family, the Rothschilds, were originally from Frankfurt.
I spent most of my time reviewing German primary sources primarily in the Frankfurt City Archive, located in a former Carmelite Cloister and in the neighborhood of Frankfurt’s old city. Reading primary sources all in German drastically improved my German reading skills. From these sources I learned about a commission created by the city government in 1961 to research Frankfurt’s Jewish history, as well as efforts to restore Frankfurt’s historic Jewish cemetery and neighborhood.
When I was not working in the city archive, I explored the city in search of remnants and memorialization of Frankfurt’s Jewish past. I visited the Jewish Museum, located in the Rothschild Palace, which includes history and information on Jewish communities all over the world as well as on Frankfurt’s Jewish community. I visited the other campus of the Jewish Museum, the Museum of the “Judengasse” or Jewish ghetto. This museum showcases the archeological remains of the Frankfurt Jewish ghetto and includes information on the conflict over the preservation of the site, when the city of Frankfurt tried to build a public utility building over the archaeological remains of the Jewish ghetto in 1987. Directly across from the Judengasse Museum is the Jewish cemetery, its walls having been turned into a memorial to the Frankfurt Jewish community which was lost in the Holocaust.
I also made trips to important sites of the current Jewish community. The Westend Synagogue is the largest synagogue in Frankfurt, and survived Kristallnacht and World War II mostly unscathed and was restored between 1948 and 1950. While I was not able to go into the synagogue, I was able to enjoy the monumental facade and the unique architecture which towers over the neighborhood close to Goethe University.
Close to the Westend Synagogue is the Jewish community center, a large modern building which hosts community events and a school. Immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union has increased the population exponentially, and by the end of 2019 there were 6,316 Jewish community members. The Jewish community of Frankfurt spans religious practices; the largest synagogue in Frankfurt, the Westend Synagogue, offers both Hasidic and egalitarian services.
On the weekends, I traveled in the Rhein region to cities which have a historic medieval Jewish presence such as Mainz, Speyer and Worms. While in these cities, I admired the historic architecture and their Jewish museums. During my trip to Frankfurt and the Rhein region, I collected the primary sources I need to complete my history thesis and immersed myself in the history and current state of Frankfurt’s Jewish community.