a small town
in the city
For those who have strayed
The streets and squares on Union-Gelände it are signs: time travel that reminds us of the beauty of life, the creative power of hope, and the courage to resist.
European Promise Square
It is a tribute to the eponymous square in Bochum, in front of the Christuskirche church. The forecourt was designed by Jochen Gerz. From 1933 to 1945, the Christuskirche church in Bochum was a place of resistance against National Socialism. The theologian Hans Ehrenberg, who staunchly opposed the Nazi regime, served as the center of the Confessing Church here. The Bochumer Confession reaffirmed that Christians and Jews share the same fate. Today, the Christuskirche church stands as a memorial against war, violence, and exclusion.
Anielewicz Square
This square commemorates the brave fighters of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto and one of their leaders, Commandant Mordechaj Anielewicz. On April 19, 1943, they launched an attack and offered unwavering resistance until the very end.
Berggasse 19
The address of Prof. Dr. Sigmund Freud’s private practice in the 9th district of Vienna was like a code for initiates. Convinced that mental illnesses have their origins in the personal history of the individual, Freud developed psychoanalysis. For only those who understand themselves can find a place in this chaotic world. Just in time, in 1938, after the German invasion, he and his wife and daughter Anna managed to flee to England.
Neuturmstraße 5
On January 1, 1933 – 29 days before Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor – „Die Pfeffermühle“ premiered here at the Münchner Revuetheater „Bonbonniere“. The „literary“ and decidedly anti-fascist „Cabaret“ was founded by Erika Mann, her brother Klaus, the composer Magnus Henning, and the actress Therese Giehse. But soon after the premiere, they emigrated to Zurich.
Nationals Street
This is the address of the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Fürstenberg an der Havel. One of the inmates was Milena Jesenská. Kafka’s letters to her are world-famous. But few know that the journalist and translator was also a courageous resistance fighter. She organized the escape of Jews and non-Jewish émigrés and hid Communists from the Gestapo. She is said to have always encouraged her fellow prisoners, reports say. But she no longer experienced liberation. On May 17, 1944, Milena Jesenská died of the consequences of a kidney operation.
Rosenthaler Straße 39
The Blindenwerkstatt in Mitte, Berlin, where brushes and brushes were manufactured, still exists. During the Third Reich, the small entrepreneur Otto Weidt, himself blind, hid his Jewish employees here. Today it is a museum.
Roscherstraße 16
This Berlin street was home to the famous children's book author Erich Kästner from 1929 to 1944. The address was chosen because this is where the young actor Hans Albrecht Löhr, who plays „Little Tuesday“ in the film „Emil und die Detektive“, befriended his great role model Kästner.
Meinekestraße 3
„Auschwitz can happen again at any time,“ is the bitter realization of the Hungarian writer Imre Kertész. It is written on the memorial plaque at the house at Meinekestraße 3 in Berlin, where he lived from 2001 to 2012. In the „Roman of an Unfortunate One,“ for which he worked for 13 years, he described his experiences in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. In 2002 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Wilhelm-Wild-Straße 8
The philosopher Ernst Bloch lived here when he taught in Leipzig in the 1950s. And it was here that he edited „Das Prinzip Hoffnung.“ This three-volume work of a „concrete utopia“ is now a philosophical classic. The utopia is concrete because it is possible. The dreams of a better life can become reality.
Nelly-Sachs Street 5
In the Nelly Sachs House in Düsseldorf, named after the literary Nobel Prize winner who fled to Sweden before the Nazis, Jewish community members can spend their final days. One of their most prominent residents was Rose Ausländer. A poet like the namesake, whom she greatly admired, devoted herself entirely to writing and received only few visitors. Rose Ausländer and Nelly Sachs did not know each other personally, but both linked their friendship with Paul Celan and their intense engagement with the traumas of the Holocaust.
Grüneburgweg 95
In 1894, the composer Engelbert Humperdinck, known for his opera „Hänsel und Gretel“, and Heinrich Hoffmann, the doctor and author of „Struwwelpeter“, lived here in Frankfurt am Main. From 1851 to 1888, Hoffmann was the director of the „Institution for the Insane and Epileptic.“ He is considered a reformer of youth psychiatry and is responsible for the modern construction of the clinic in the west of the city on the Affensteiner Feld. Hoffmann, who lived with his family and „his patients“ under one roof, believed that the doctor’s entry into a ward had to have something to do with the sunrise.
Ardi Goldman Kunst-
und Kulturstiftung gGmbH
Uniongelände
Hanauer Landstraße 188, 60314 Frankfurt am Main