ABSTRACT

Jacob Lestschinsky, the well-known Jewish demographer, economist, and journalist, once observed that in urban terrain Jews often became conspicuous even in those localities where their population was relatively small. Indeed, the few thousand Yiddish-speaking eastern European Jews, or, in the somewhat contemptuous German term, Ostjuden, formed a visible minority in Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century: they looked different, often with dark curly hair and wearing clothes that were unusual for a German city, they spoke a peculiar Germanic vernacular, and they lived many to one house. Alexander Granach, who came to Berlin in 1906, where he gained his first acting experience as a Yiddish actor and later established himself as a significant German theatre and film actor, remembered, among other things, the community life of the Alexanderplatz area. Multi-talented Yiddish men of letters, veterans, and young hopefuls, would visit various cafes, including the Cafe am Nollendorfplatz, favoured by emigre Russian bohemians.