Welcome!

The Jewish Museum Gailingen exemplarily documents the Jewish history in Gailingen and the High Rhine region and the living environment of the Jewry of Gailingen. It includes in a smaller scope also the rural Jewish communities of the Hegau region – Randegg, Wangen and Worblingen. And it portrays the regional interrelations of the Jewish community Gailingen with Constance/Kreuzlingen, Winterthur/Zurich and Waldshut-Tiengen and the multifaceted reference to the Jewry in general as well as to the state and the society.

With the guiding idea “home Gailingen” the exhibition preserves the commemoration of the Jewish fellow citizens and their share in the development of the location and the region. Thereby it makes aware the loss of creative power for the location and the loss for the society. It goes without saying that also the issues of the barbarity of the disruption of the civilisation by deprivation of rights, by persecution, deportation and mass murder of Jewish fellow citizens are addressed.

Despite the extermination of the Jewish community of Gailingen the location is till today a reference centre of the descendants of former Jews from Gailingen scattered throughout the world. An example is the Jewish cemetery of Gailingen. Descendants of Jewish families visit Gailingen to do their roots till today.

The Jewish Museum Gailingen is located on the first floor of the community centre, the former Jewish school and community house, which was build 1845-47 opposite the synagogue. Yet this location is of great importance and therefore an exhibit itself: the Jewish school and community house and the synagogue were the centre of public Jewish life in Gailingen.

The museum includes a ritual bath (Mikvah) in the basement of the building, which remained preserved, and the newly-arranged Leopold Guggenheim room, in which cult objects and the furniture of the prayer room of the Jewish community of Kreuzlingen/Switzerland found a new home.

The Jewish Museum Gailingen is held by the Verein für jüdische Geschichte Gailingen e.V.