Private Jewish Tours Munich

Not far from the Alps and Italy, Munich is Germany’s most beautiful city, famous not only for Oktoberfest but also for its elegance, high-fashion boutiques and a special mix of tradition and modernity. This unique vibrancy applies to Jewish Munich as well. Have a meal at Einsteins, located in the heart of the new Jewish Munich with its excellent selection of Jewish food and wine and you will see that this special joie-de-vivre is shared by the Jews of Munich, too!

Munich boasts a host of famous citizens: the Nobel prize-winning author Thomas Mann, the modern abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky, the Jewish conductor Bruno Walter, who was the Royal Bavarian Music Director in the 20th century, and author Lion Feuchtwanger, who captured the complexities of the Jewish German identity better than any other writer. Feuchtwanger would go on to predict much of what became the terror of the Holocaust. Munich was also Hitler’s power base. A golden streak on a city street marks a detour taken by people who did not want to salute the ‘shrine’ installed for Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. A memorial stands on the site of a missing synagogue with the following words in Hebrew: “Remember that the enemy scorned you.” It compells everyone to take on the double task of enjoying the city while never forgetting its dark past.

Looking forward to a future of hope and renewal, Munich has just opened a spectacular new complex of Jewish institutions in the heart of the old city. Here, on St. Jacobs Square stands a new synagogue, community center complete with a kindergarten, and a state-run Jewish museum whose multimedia exhibit covers the rich Jewish history as well as contemporary Jewish life of Munich. This new architectural complex is the lasting symbol of a community that is experiencing one of the most dynamic changes in the country – a community returning to the heart of the city.