»Wir musizieren – trotzdem!« – Die Stuttgarter Jüdische Kunstgemeinschaft

Abstract The Stuttgarter Jüdische Kunstgemeinschaft (Stuttgart Jewish Art Society) existed only five years from 1933 to 1938 before the November Pogrom put an end to Jewish cultural work in Stuttgart. In just these five years, however, the Kunstgemeinschaft had become a nationally known and celebrated institution of Jewish cultural work – despite and in reaction to the National Socialists’ repressive policy of exclusion and surveillance. The Kunstgemeinschaft offered working alternatives for Jewish artists who had become unemployed and cultural events for the Jewish population excluded from society. In addition, the idea of »geistiger Widerstand« (intellectual resistance) found its way into the work of the Kunstgemeinschaft. But the real achievement of the Kunstgemeinschaft was its sheer existence in times of adverse and constantly changing political circumstances: it offered the Jews of Stuttgart and Württemberg a place of cultural enrichment and a home in difficult times.