In July 2021, the World Heritage Committee named the ShUM sites in Speyer, Worms and Mainz Unesco World Heritage. In the anniversary year, which looks back on 1700 years of Jewish life in Germany, the buildings and cemeteries of the three Jewish communities on the Rhine have become more of a public awareness.
In addition to buildings such as synagogues and Torah schools, the mikwaot in Worms and Speyer have also been preserved. These baths were an integral part of community life and were built as early as the 12th century. Since the basins can only be operated with running water from a spring, with rainwater or groundwater, they are mostly located in structures that reach deep into the earth. They may only be entered after a thorough body cleansing and serve for spiritual and spiritual cleansing through complete immersion.
The photographer Peter Seidel not only photographed these two “bathhouses” in the late 1980s. His photographic and archaeological voyages of discovery took him to Austria, France, Italy and Spain, where he found other mikwaot, most of which are no longer used today.
Seidel, born in Marburg in 1951, wanted to “explore spaces below the surface of everyday life”. For him, the mikveh project was the further development of his work “Unterwelten – Orte im Verborgenen”, which appeared as a book in 1993 and was presented as an exhibition for the first time in the historical wastewater treatment plant in Frankfurt am Main.
First exhibition at the Center for Photography at Woodstock
His mikveh cycle began in 1987 when he photographed the mikvah in Friedberg, Hesse. He descended into the sacred rooms with a studio flash system to bring light into the darkness. “I wanted to create the room so that it looked as natural as possible,” he says in an interview with star. With his photographs, which were taken over a long period of time, he opened windows into the Jewish past and saved them from oblivion.
Finding a publisher and an exhibition location for his photographs was even more difficult than overcoming official obstacles in his work. Initially, a selection was made in 1997 Woodstock, New York State shown. In Europe it took until 2010 before the mikveh pictures were exhibited as large-format color slides in light frames in the Vorarlberg Jewish Museums in Hohenems, in Frankfurt am Main, Fürth and Vienna.
Seidel has attempted “to transform historical and lesser-known sites into art through his photography,” writes art historian Gail Levin in the catalog published for the exhibition. “By recording these witnesses of the past, he reminds us of the Jewish communities in Europe, some of which still exist while others have long since disappeared.”
After 18 stops, the traveling exhibition “Quite pure!” In these weeks returned to the place where the project began: Friedberg. The Wetterau Museum is showing Peter Seidel’s photographs until January 9th; further exhibition locations are being planned. Just a few streets away, the mikveh from 1260 can also be viewed in Friedberg.
sources: www.wetterau-museum.de and www.peterseidel.de
Also read:
– Jewish culture trail in Switzerland: where a synagogue clock strikes the hours
– Cohesion in diversity – This is what everyday Jewish life looks like in Germany
– When a synagogue becomes a fitness center: In search of Jewish life in Eastern Europe