Hermann Parzinger honours Hermann Simon: A formative museum man goes into retirement
Press release from 08/27/2015
Director of the New Synagogue Berlin Foundation - Centrum Judaicum hands over his well-ordered house to his successor after almost thirty years - Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation presents him with a season ticket for the Berlin museums
The President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Hermann Parzinger, has described the Director of the New Synagogue Berlin - Centrum Judaicum Foundation, Hermann Simon, as "formative for Berlin's cultural landscape". After 27 years at the helm of this very special Berlin institution, which radiates far into the world, Simon will retire next Monday.
"Hermann Simon's life's work will always be associated with the reconstruction of the New Synagogue in Oranienburger Straße. Begun in the final years of the GDR and completed in reunified Germany, this building was rescued from oblivion and turned into a completely new type of Jewish museum. Anyone who comes here realises how fascinating and intense Jewish life in Berlin must once have been before the Nazis almost wiped it out. But looking back was always too little for Hermann Simon. He turned the former place of worship with its striking golden dome into a contemporary meeting place for people and religions, especially for Christians and Jews alike. The Centrum Judaicum is a living archive that always poses questions to the European present. Hermann Simon was a philanthropist to me and, in his hands-on Berlin manner, a good, reliable confidant, for example when it came to keeping German-Russian cultural relations going. Very few people know that Hermann Simon began his museum career in the Coin Cabinet of the National Museums in Berlin. For this reason, we are giving him and his wife a season ticket, because we look forward to his visits in the future, but even more so to his advice. Mazel tov, Hermann Simon!"