Opening of the new exhibition “Shalom” at Villa Seligmann and the State Museum of Hanover
On the evening of November 8, the new exhibition “Shalom—Synagogues Through the Ages” opened at Villa Seligmann. As part of an event commemorating the November pogroms of 1938, Dr. Ulrich Knufinke (Technical University of Braunschweig) led a preview tour of the exhibition. Accompanied by musical performances by Matthias Flierl on the organ and the North German Synagogue Choir under the direction of Martin Lüssenhop, historian Dr. Peter Schulze gave a lecture on the New Synagogue in Hanover and its destruction in November 1938.
On November 9, the exhibition opened at the Landesmuseum Hannover with an exclusive preview tour.
Integrated into the “Worlds of Art and People” exhibitions at the State Museum and into the exhibition on the New Synagogue at Villa Seligmann, wooden models of destroyed synagogues open up new perspectives and demonstrate that Jewish culture has been part of European history since late antiquity. With the synagogues destroyed during Kristallnacht, visible sites of a Jewish-European culture that had developed over centuries disappeared. Researchers at “Bet Tfila – Research Center for Jewish Architecture in Europe” at the Technical University of Braunschweig are now bringing these destroyed sites of Jewish life back to life: Their architectural models reconstruct what Nazi terror once destroyed.
The exhibition is open to the public at Villa Seligmann through March 31, 2027, on Mondays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
More about the exhibition and the accompanying program
Below is an overview of the media coverage of the exhibition opening and the commemorative event: