The teams behind the doors, and contributors

“All actual life is encounter”, said the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. Enabling encounters is also the aim of Expedition Münsterland, whose excursions were the starting point for this exhibition.

 

Here we would like to introduce the people without whose dedication and personal commitment the doors would not have come into being. We would also like to take the opportunity to facilitate further encounters and networking.

 

The website https://www.uni-muenster.de/2021JIMSL/ also brings together activities, research and courses at the University of Münster on the theme. The University of Münster’s “knowledge.life” slogan is very appropriate here: in research, but also in teaching, transfer and science communication, as well as in cultural events.

 

The people behind the doors introduce themselves below:

Introduction to the Innovation Office (AFO)

Idea of Expedition Münsterland and the project “Searching for traces: Jewish life in Münsterland”

The door team of the Innovation Office:
Nina C. Nolte M.A. (project management, exhibitions), Dr. Wilhelm Bauhus (director of the Innovation Office, 1990-May 2021), Andreas Wessendorf (media design and installation), Kerstin Schneider (design), Irmgard Lobermann (back office)
Expert advice: Ludger Hiepel M.A.

Mikvah
Borken-Gemen

Idea: Dr. Wilhelm Bauhus
Text: Claudia Ehlert, regional
writer for Münsterland, 2017

Cemetery and synagogues, Telgte

The “Telgte door” was created by a team comprising members of the “Erinnerung und Mahnung Telgte” association.

Founded on 30 November 1998, this association aims to study and document the history of Telgte’s Jews.

To commemorate the murdered Jews and other victims of National Socialism, the association initiated the creation of memorial sites in the town. The association also conducts guided tours of the town that follow the footsteps of the Jews of Telgte, as well as staging information events and exhibitions, contributing to teaching in schools, and organizing trips to places of Jewish life. The association has published the “Memorial Book for the Telgte Victims of National Socialism”, whose second edition was published in 2017. The association also has a website, www.erinnerung-und-mahnung.de, which provides information on the history of the Jews in Telgte, and on the fate of Jewish and non-Jewish persons persecuted under National Socialism. The door was created by Renate Becks, Dr. Barbara Elkeles, Arnold Michels, Kordula Rüter, Ursula Rüter, Gertrud Stümper and Franz-Josef Nospickel.

Jewish cemetery, Münster

Prof. Dr. Marie-Theres Wacker
Foto: Susanne Haverkamp
Dipl.-Theol. Ludger Hiepel M.A.
Foto: Stephan Kube

Prof. Dr. Marie-Theres Wacker | Ludger Hiepel M.A. | Association for the Promotion of the Jewish Cemetery on Einsteinstraße, Münster

For several years, the Seminar for the Exegesis of the Old Testament at the University of Münster’s Faculty of Catholic Theology worked with the Jewish community of Münster to create a digital documentation of the Jewish cemetery at Einsteinstraße, which was made available in 2015 at www.juedischer-friedhof-muenster.de. The “Association for the Promotion of the Jewish Cemetery at Einsteinstraße, Münster” was founded in the Jewish community hall in Münster in November 2017, its purpose being to give both cultural and scholarly support to the old Jewish cemetery on Einsteinstraße in Münster, to maintain the cemetery, and to preserve it as a memorial – in particular by maintaining this internet domain and its scientific documentation of the cemetery.

Marie-Theres Wacker was Professor of Old Testament and Women’s Theological Studies at the Faculty of Catholic Theology until 2018. Ludger Hiepel is a research assistant at the Department of Contemporary and Religious History of the Old Testament at the Faculty of Catholic Theology. Both are board members of the Association for the Promotion of the Jewish Cemetery on Einsteinstraße, Münster.

Prof. Dr. Marie-Theres Wacker
> wacker@juedischer-friedhof-muenster.de

Marks-Haindorf Foundation, Münster

Ludger Hiepel M.A.

Ludger Hiepel is a research assistant at the Department of Contemporary and Religious History of the Old Testament at the Faculty of Catholic Theology. His research and teaching are concerned not only with the Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, but also with Judaism. Together with Prof. Dr. Marie-Theres Wacker, he has documented the Jewish cemetery on Einsteinstraße. He has been a board member of the Association for the Promotion of the Jewish Cemetery on Einsteinstraße, Münster, since 2018, and is also involved in Christian-Jewish dialogue.

Ludger Hiepel worked in an advisory capacity for the Expedition Münsterland/Innovation Office. Among other things, he provided the ideas for the documentary film about the Jewish community of Münster.

His creation of the door to the Marks-Haindorf Foundation was motivated by the recognition that this institution has played an important role in the history of the Jewish community in Münster and the Münsterland region. The link to other doors and the film episodes show the importance of the place, and why it should be included in such a project.

Ludger Hiepel M.A.
> ludger.hiepel@wwu.de

Jewish school, Burgsteinfurt: its history and the last teacher

Irmgard Walbaum
Foto: privat
Kerstin Schneider
Foto: privat
Nina Nolte
Foto: privat

Irmgard Walbaum, Nina Nolte and Kerstin Schneider

I am Irmgard Walbaum, and I was born and grew up in Burgsteinfurt; I am interested in the history of my birthplace. I have already explored the life of Hermann Michel, who returned to Burgsteinfurt from the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1945. The results of this work can be read in “Helden und Außenseiter. Zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus in Westfalen nach 1945”, which is available in the library of the Burgsteinfurt local history society and on the internet.

 

Presenting the history of the Jewish school in Burgsteinfurt as part of an exhibition was a chance for me to increase people’s awareness of the fate of Burgsteinfurt’s Jewish community. And so I read the books of Willi Feld, searched in the Steinfurt municipal archives, spoke with Burgsteinfurt residents, and wrote a text that became the basis for the creation of the doors.

As an anthropologist and new resident of Burgsteinfurt, Nina Nolte is interested in cultures and the local people, and she took over the editing and coordination for the project; the graphic designer Kerstin Schneider then ensured that the doors have an appealing layout.

Hermann-Leeser-Schule Dülmen

Pupil-led project

As in the book, the aim is to implement Yad Vashem’s educational principle of tracing the names of Jewish victims and giving them back their individual stories, collecting and documenting them in pictures, text, sound and film, and telling and presenting these stories in an exemplary way – here, by using the story of Helga Becker-Leeser from Dülmen.

Dr. Andrea Peine
Hermann-Leeser-Schule
Städt. Realschule für Mädchen und Jungen
Charleville-Mézières-Platz 2
48249 Dülmen

Dr. Stefan Sudmann
Stadt Dülmen / Stadtarchiv

Hakhshara Hof Stern, Westerkappeln

Gisbert Strotdrees


Gisbert Strotdrees, historian and editor at Wochenblatt für Landwirtschaft und Landleben (Münster) (Weekly Journal for Agriculture and Rural Life), first came across a brief reference to the Hakhshara vocational institution “Hof Stern/Kibbutz Westerbeck” in Westerkappeln in 2014 when he was doing research for the Jewish Museum of Westphalia in Dorsten on “Jewish farmers and landowners in Westphalia”.

The people and events surrounding the farm in Westerkappeln have never left him since. He has now tracked down documents in ten archives, including in Israel and the USA, and he is preparing a detailed publication. Gisbert Strotdrees has begun a detailed online project on these and other peculiarities of Jewish rural life in Westphalia as part of the celebrations for “1700 years of Jewish life in Germany”:

www.wochenblatt.com/juedisches-landleben

Riga – Münsterland’s
site of deportation

Jewish cemetery,
Billerbeck

Matthias M. Ester M.A.

Foto: Andreas Wessendorf

Matthias M. Ester M.A.

The historian, who focuses on “Jews in the modern era – integration and exclusion”, and “Jewish life in the 19th and 20th centuries”, designed and led the four Expedition Münsterland excursions (2014-2019). Other central themes of his research are “Commemorative culture and the work of remembrance”, which also extends to sites of terror in the Shoah in occupied Europe. Ester has organized several exhibitions in cooperation with Villa ten Hompel (Münster), including the special exhibition “The Deportations from Münsterland, 1941/42” (2008) and the mobile exhibition “Resistance to National Socialism in Münsterland” (2011). He has focused for some years now on “Riga as a crime scene and place of remembrance of the Shoah”, with Ester investigating the “whereabouts” of the Westphalian Jews who were deported and the fate of the Latvian Jews in Riga between 1941 and 1944. The actual sites in Riga are explored during study trips for pupils, teachers, and staff working at memorial sites. Ester is the spokesperson for the “Stolperstein Initiative Warendorf”, which has now laid about 35 Stolpersteine.

Memorial path, LWL clinic

The Lengerich memorial path

We are members of the “Lengerich memorial path” working group, and were involved in planning and realizing the Lengerich memorial path, which opened on 21 September 2017, as well as annual events on the same day.

In the course of this work, we had already discovered the traces of seven Jewish patients, and it was therefore a matter of course for us to participate in the doors project.

It was important to us to present the seven Jewish patients in the context of the total of 440 patients who were deported for killing, and to make them tangible.

Work on the door project was intensive both technically and emotionally, and brought us especially close to the fate of the people affected.

With respect and gratitude for this work:

Project team: Monika Zintel, Mandir Tix, Jörg Wittenhaus
Technical team: Carpenter: Klaus Wiethölter; Locksmiths: Jan Hruschka, Manfred Kemper; Painter: Dimitri Hartmann.

Rheine, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
Britta Mrohs
Tel.: 05971-91279-100-139
B.mrohs@lwl.org


Contact: Secretariats of the LWL clinic, Lengerich
Lengerich, Nursing Directorate
Marita Unterauer
Tel.: 05481-12377
Marita.unterauer@lwl.org

Mandir Tix
Foto: privat
Monika Zintel
Foto: privat
Dr. Jörg Wittenhaus
Foto: privat

Traces of Jewish life in Borghorst

Stolpersteine initiative, Steinfurt-Borghorst

Alfred Homann, Willi Ahlmer, Werner Bülter, Claude Heimann, Beate Kater, Jupp Ernst, Alfred Flügemann

Stolpersteine Lengerich

Stolpersteine project group in the local history society, Lengerich

Contact: Klaus Adam, Bernd Hammerschmidt

Jewish life today

The seven film episodes

Title: Jewish life today
Subtitle: From the life of the community in Münster
Year of release: 2020

A production of the University of Münster’s FilmLAB. In cooperation with the Jewish community of Münster. Supported by the University of Münster Innovation Office. At the suggestion of Expedition Münsterland (EMSL – an Innovation Office project).

Editing and direction: Lynn Bürger, Axel Linnenberg
Production manager: Olaf Glaser
Camera: Johannes Hölker
Cutting: Paulina Peschken

Thank you

We thank you for your support and commitment:

the Geschichtskontor Münster for the expert guided tours | all residents, initiatives, schools and associations who made it possible to experience traces on site during the excursions| the teams behind the doors | the trades at the University of Münster, especially carpentry and precision mechanics | the FilmLAB team | the Jewish community of Münster | the design service team at the University of Münster | the University of Münster travel and transport service | everyone who accompanied and made the project possible with their openness, curiosity and interest.