Our tour provides visitors with an insight into the living conditions of Ashkenazi Jews in the Middle Ages. The families of Jewish traveling salesmen had settled along the main trading routes up and down the Rhine River. The Jewish communities that formed in Speyer, Worms and Mainz became significant as centers of Jewish cultural and spiritual life in this period. This tour through the world of the Middle Ages investigates the political and social circumstances of life in this era within the context of the Jewish community, which revolved around the synagogue, the bath house, the Torah school, the communal hearth, dance halls and inns. On the threshold of the Early Modern Era, Jewish experience during the Crusades was marked by pogroms, oppression and exile, which determined the daily and religious life in the area comprising today's Germany.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)
Duration: 60-90 minutes

The experience of peddlers and traders, military suppliers and court agents leads into the west and south of Germany. In the many tiny principalities of Early Modern Germany, most Jews lived in extreme poverty. Merchants and cattle-traders found an economic niche as middlemen moving between town and country. The broad dispersion of their community led Jews to develop new social structures in small rural communities. Piety shaped the daily lives of Christians and Jews, and the two groups interacted as neighbors more closely than they had done in the towns. In contrast, court Jews led spectacular lives as financiers and diplomats dependent on the will and whim of their German lords. A tiny minority, they moved continuously between two worlds: that of the noble courtiers surrounding their lords and that of the Jewish rural communities.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)
Duration: 60-90 minutes

What does "kosher" mean? Is artificial light allowed on Shabbat? Why are Jews circumcised? The answer to these questions elucidates Jewish faith as a way of life, in which the religious and the mundane are inextricably entwined. The Halakhah, Jewish religious law, shapes the activities of practicing Jews in all facets of life: family, work and interaction within the Jewish community. With the changing conditions of life, religious rituals, too, evolved over the centuries. Likewise, the broader society in which Jews lived influenced their religious practices. The laws governing food (kashrut), Shabbat as the highest holiday and the life cycle all help illustrate the significance of traditions passed on by generations of Jews.

This tour may be booked in German Sign Language.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)
Duration: 60-90 minutes

This tour concentrates on the Haskalah, the period of the Jewish Enlightenment that began in the eighteenth century, and on its most famous proponent, Moses Mendelssohn. As no other, Moses Mendelssohn embodies the spirit that sought to open Jewish tradition to neighboring cultures. Jewish men and women began to adapt their language and traditions to their environment. As a representative of the Haskalah, Mendelssohn championed the synthesis of both cultures – Jewish and Christian. He lived as a cosmopolitan, enlightened thinker and glowing supporter of Frederick the Great, while strictly observing Jewish religious law. The commitment of Mendelssohn and others like him to greater interaction between the Jewish and the Christian worlds met with opposition from contemporaries on all sides. Orthodox Jews saw their traditions jeopardized; Christians were loathe to show tolerance.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)
Duration: 60-90 minutes

Industrialization created new opportunities for social mobility, and in Europe of the nineteenth century, a German-Jewish middle class emerged. But how could Jews integrate into German society and still remain Jewish? This tour discusses different models for German-Jewish identity: Some Jews, like Heinrich Heine, succumbed to the pressure of their Christian environment and converted to Christianity. Others became champions of the political left - they included both Ferdinand Lassalle, who wanted to overcome discrimination with his vision of a more just society, and Karl Marx, who viewed religion as the "opium of the masses." Many were drawn, along with its founder Theodor Herzl, to the Zionist movement, while others hoped to gain recognition by serving their German fatherland.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person
Duration: 60-90 minutes

With the end of the nineteenth century, a new pace began to dictate German urban life, especially in the young capital city of Berlin: technological innovations, cultural developments and new means of communication increasingly defined daily life; the social and natural sciences brought new aspects to bear on academic research; banks and big businesses modernized economic life. Throughout this tour, music, theater, film, art, literature, new popular media and examples drawn from the modern, consumer world marked by retail stores and ready-made clothiers provided an impressively thorough picture of this era. The contribution made by Jews to the modern world was diverse, and extended to all facets of urban life. Their professional opportunities were circumscribed by a tension between their wish for respect and recognition, on the one hand, and the calumny and discrimination they endured, on the other.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)
Duration: 60-90 minutes

In the first years of National Socialism, exclusion and expulsion characterized the life of Jews in Germany. After 1941, they feared being deported and exterminated. This tour focuses on the responses of German Jews to their disenfranchisement and persecution by the National Socialist régime in the context of the Nazis' policy of persecution.

We consider the reaction of Jewish institutions and individuals. Personal objects and documents offer visitors an impression of this time, in which Jews fought to preserve their dignity, to resist, and to survive.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)
Duration: 60-90 minutes

This tour follows the footprints of women from the creation of the world to the Middle Ages and the Modern Era right through to the present. Personal objects and biographies attest to the close ties between family and vocational life. Above all, the exhibits show the importance of piety, for centuries central and self-understood, shaping every aspect of women's lives. With time, fulfilling traditional religious duties became less important for Jewish women. The reform movement of the nineteenth century engendered a new consciousness of women's rights and opportunities. New developments at the close of the twentieth century include egalitarian services in synagogues. Jewish and non-Jewish women alike confront fixed notions of the roles that women were expected to play in religion, society and politics. To this day, these roles continue to be subjects of debate.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)
Duration: 60-90 minutes

This tour seeks out places and themes that highlight the primary features of the exhibition "Two Millennia of German Jewish History," and offers visitors an overview of the history of Jewish settlements and culture in Germany from late antiquity through the present. We present selected outstanding and characteristic objects in their cultural and historical context, inviting our visitors to further explore the museum on their own.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)
Duration: 60-90 minutes

The museum building designed by Daniel Libeskind has given Jewish history in Germany a new and challenging architectural presence. Is architecture a special form of Jewish identity? The history of the buildings that have housed Jewish institutions or that have been inhabited by Jews is closely linked to the general development of human settlements, and it can be traced by examining Jewish community buildings, cultural facilities, commercial architecture and private homes. Touching upon a range of topics, including the evolution of Jewish architecture, the restrictions it was subjected to, and its ultimate destruction, the "Architectural Observations" tour of the museum building provides telling insights into the varied history of Jewish life. Weather permitting, participants will also have a chance to view both the exterior and the grounds of the museum.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)
Duration: 60-90 minutes