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City is reminiscent of Jewish booksellers and cultural mediators
On April 1, 1925, Alfred Bodenheimer (1898–1966) founded Darmstadt bookstore on the corner of Rheinstraße/Saalbaustraße . 100 years later, the city science city recognized the cultural heritage of the Jewish bookseller and cultural mediator. Mayor Hanno Benz emphasizes:
"Alfred Bodenheimer has made a valuable contribution to the literature and cultural life of our city with his bookshop."
The bookstore was much more than one bookstore. In the 1920s it quickly became a meeting point for the Darmstadt literary, art and music scene . Readings, exhibitions and concerts created a low -threshold, inspiring offer. Among the guests were Arnold Zweig and Kurt Tucholsky , works by Käthe Kollwitz , Picasso and Vlaminck .
Meeting point for free spirits
The bookstore was a place of openness: no need for purchase , red armchairs and shelves , tea for the guests - a room for encounter and education. After the takeover of power by the National Socialists in 1933, the situation became increasingly precarious. secret meeting point for free people until 1935 , before Alfred Bodenheimer had to hand over it to the Berlin bookseller couple Robert and Marianne d'Hooge .
In the course of the November pogroms in 1938 , Like many other Darmstadt Jews, Jews were deported to Buchenwald , severely abused, but later released. He managed to escape through England to the USA, where he lived in Baltimore . There he initially worked as a brush seller , later in a library. He died lonely in 1966 and forgotten in exile.
Cultural history on Friedensplatz
The original bookstore was destroyed in the 1944 air strikes. After the war, Marianne D'Hooge and later Hans-Dietrich continued to Megede and Jeanette Seitz the bookstore under the name "Darmstadt Book Tube" . In 1999 the business was finally closed.
Today a plaque in Saalbaustraße of Alfred Bodenheimer - a man who has shaped the literary and cultural landscape of Darmstadt for decades .
(Darmstadt - Red/PSD/Fre/DK)
