Jubilee Year
Jubilee Year 2021–1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany
In 2021, under the patronage of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, we celebrated the festival year "1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany", with events initiated and organized by the association “321–2021: 1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany”.
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On December 11, 321 CE the Roman Emperor Constantine issued an edict at the request of the city elders of Cologne allowing them as a “general law” to admit Jews to the city council. Transmitted in the Codex Theodosianus, a 5th century collection of laws, the edict is regarded as the earliest written evidence of Jews living north of the Alps in Late Antiquity.
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To learn more about the historical background, download the brochure “The Decree of 321: Cologne, the Emperor and Jewish History” (MiQua. LVR-Jewish Museum in the Archaeological Quarter, Cologne).
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Information about the diverse activities of the anniversary year can still be found here.
Germania Judaica, the Cologne Jewish Library, was cooperating in two other exciting projects:
Jewish Cologne on the Right Bank of the Rhine
The Jewish Cemetery in Deutz and its Historical Contexts – in cooperation with the Steinheim Institute for German-Jewish History at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
321 inscriptions from the Deutz cemetery are presented with a wealth of information in the epigraphic database epidat of the Steinheim Institute.
Please note: Due to the hacker attack on the IT systems of the University of Duisburg-Essen in autumn 2022, epidat is currently still offline. As soon as epidat is accessible again as usual, you will find the link to the database here.
As part of the project, a biparcours app "Jewish Cologne - right bank of the Rhine. Searching for traces in Cologne-Deutz", which can be downloaded here.
For the presentation of the project on site on 29.08.2021, you can find a detailed report with many photos here.
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Boaz Kaizman. Green Space.
An exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne
(September 3, 2021 – January 9, 2022)
Read our blog post by curator Barbara Engelbach.
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