Frankfurt's Judengasse: The Street and Family that Shaped the Modern World

Lecture by Jonathan Wolff, FBA, Emeritus Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Emeritus Fellow, Wolfson College Oxford. President: The Royal Institute of Philosophy

From 1462 to 1811 the Jews of Frankfurt am Main were required to live in a single street - the Judengasse - a walled, gated, often locked, ghetto said at one time to be the most densely populated place on earth. For much of its existence, the number of legal marriages was also restricted. As a result there is close family relationship between many of the residents. Their descendants include some of the most important intellectual and cultural figures of recent centuries: Marx, Freud, Rosa Luxemburg, Rosalind Franklin, Anne Frank, the Mendelssohn’s, Wittgenstein, Durkheim, Proust, Heine, Niels Bohr, and dozens of others of similar renown, many of whom are also direct relatives of each other. In this talk the speaker will discuss the remarkable history of this street and the emancipation of the mind that accompanied the long struggle for the emancipation of the Jews of Frankfurt.