Jews 45|90 – From very far away

The exhi­bi­tion explores the worlds of mem­o­ry that immi­grants brought with them from their home­lands. To this end, one floor of the Jew­ish Muse­um Munich has been trans­formed into an ​“East­ern Jew­ish Muse­um.” Numer­ous migrants from the for­mer Sovi­et Union respond­ed to the call to share their per­son­al mem­o­ries and sto­ries pub­licly. Twen­ty-three Munich res­i­dents today each linked an object they brought with them to indi­vid­ual, often deeply per­son­al, mem­o­ries. They also recount­ed their migra­tion jour­neys and offered insights into their per­spec­tives on emi­gra­tion, Jew­ish­ness, iden­ti­ty, and home.

These mem­o­ries — from Riga to Tashkent — are com­ple­ment­ed by select­ed pieces from the col­lec­tion of Julius Genss (1887 – 1957) from Tar­tu, one of the most impor­tant col­lec­tors of Jew­ish art in Esto­nia before the Sec­ond World War. His grand­daugh­ter, Julia Gens, trav­eled to Berlin with her hus­band in 1991, ini­tial­ly on a tourist visa, and lat­er to Munich. She was able to res­cue some frag­ments of her grand­fa­ther’s art col­lec­tion and library, which had been destroyed by the Nazis, and bring them back to Germany.

On a sec­ond exhi­bi­tion lev­el, the paths of the immi­grants to their new home are traced. The migra­tion process from the for­mer Sovi­et Union to Munich is accom­pa­nied by auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal texts from the author Lena Gore­lik, who came to Ger­many from Saint Peters­burg in 1992 and now lives in Munich.

Cat­a­logue

The rich­ly illus­trat­ed cat­a­logue for the exhi­bi­tion illu­mi­nates Jew­ish immi­gra­tion from the for­mer Sovi­et Union from a vari­ety of per­spec­tives. In addi­tion to a per­son­al essay by the writer Lena Gore­lik, in which she recounts her own migra­tion expe­ri­ence, 23 oth­er indi­vid­u­als share their sto­ries. Using objects they brought with them from their for­mer home­land, they tell of their emi­gra­tion and their lives in Germany.

Spe­cial atten­tion is giv­en to the art col­lec­tion of the Eston­ian bib­lio­phile Julius Gens. Frag­ments of this col­lec­tion, which his grand­daugh­ter once brought from Tallinn to Munich, are dis­cussed in detail in the catalogue.