“Visit Berlin’s Yiddishland” Walking Tour
In the early twentieth century, Berlin’s Scheunenviertel was the most visible Jewish place in the city, where Yiddish was spoken on the street and Jewish immigrants and refugees from eastern Europe made a temporary home.
Today the traces of this once vibrant neighborhood have been almost entirely erased. On this twilight tour full of music and family stories, we try to reimagine Jewish life on these streets and, by participating and remembering, bring it back.
Basics
- Language: English with Yiddish music (full Yiddish tours also available)
- Price: €12 per person for a public tour. Group and private tours also available by request
- Meeting point: Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin (near the U2 subway entrance)
- Duration: Roughly two hours
- Ending point: The tour ends on Gormannstraße, about a 10 minute walk from the starting point, near the U8 Weinmeisterstraße station
Dates
The public tour is currently scheduled for the following dates:
- 28 May 2023, 7:30–9:30 pm
- 1 June 2023, 8–10 pm
- 22 June 2023, 8–10 pm
Private and group tours are available by appointment. I also schedule public tours to coincide with visitors to Berlin. Tours also occasionally include cameos by descendants of neighborhood residents.
Register
To register for one of the public tours or request a private or group tour, email Jake Schneider.
Photos from a tour with students at Bard College Berlin, courtesy of the college
An Exercise in Time Travel
There are hardly any noticeable historic sights in the Schneunenviertel, which is now a gentrified, mostly residential area in central Berlin. However, if you know how to look, there is plenty of cultural history written in the streets.
The tour covers many aspects of Jewish immigrants’ lives in this busy neighborhood from 1900 to 1938, including domestic life, music, theater, education, politics, religious practices, and day-to-day work, all from the perspective of the individuals and families who lived here.
You will get to know them personally, hear Yiddish music originally recorded right here, and enter another era as the sun sets.
Perspective
This tour was originally developed in Yiddish for the participants of the 2022 Yiddish in Berlin summer program.
By popular demand, it has been adapted into English and has since been offered to university classes, tour groups, and the general public.
The tour is still from the perspective of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Berlin, although it is accessible to a general audience and also describes their relationships with neighbors of other cultural and religious backgrounds.
Traces of Berlin’s Yiddishland
Testimonials
