(Music Arc Discovery Passport)

In order to open up the heritage of Leipzig's Jewish musical culture and make it accessible to the younger generation, we have developed the Notenbogen-Entdeckerpass (Music Arc Discovery Passport) for children 8 years and older. The passport contains information on biographies of Jewish musicians or buildings they visited in their everyday lives. This way, Jewish culture – then and now – can be experienced in a more comprehensive way.

The Notenbogen-Entdeckerpass helps to provide a valuable approach to broadening perspectives and discovering German-Jewish history. It can be used in school lessons as well as individually with the family or by school groups during visits in the city. The chronological arc featured in the Notenbogen-Entdeckerpass covers the past 170 years since the founding of the Jewish Religious Community of Leipzig. This highlights both the cultural richness brought about by the exchange between German and Jewish culture and its loss through the exclusion of Jewish fellow citizens under National Socialism.

The Discovery Passport consists of three parts:

Part 1 illustrates preserved buildings as well as sites of destroyed buildings closely associated with Jewish musical culture and located in the immediate vicinity of the planned Notenbogen. The texts and interactive discovery tasks were developed with the cooperation of a Free Waldorf School in Leipzig.

Part 2 accompanies ten musicians and publishers who are connected to the above-mentioned buildings. They have acted as ambassadors between Jewish and German culture and their lives illustrate the eventful history of the coexistence of people with German and Jewish roots. The texts were prepared by students of the University of Leipzig with music as a minor subject.

Part 3 deals with interesting facts about Jewish musical culture, such as music in Orthodox synagogue services and Jewish festivals. The texts have been prepared by people with special knowledge and experience as well as pedagogical skills.

In addition to the Notenbogen-Entdeckerpass (Music Arc Discovery Passport), a didactic handout  for teachers is available on this homepage (German only). Further information on Jewish composers (with audio samples) can be found here.

Here you can download the Notenbogen-Entdeckerpass (German only).

You can also obtain the Notenbogen Entdeckerpass for a nominal fee of €2.50 at the Leipziger Notenspur office at Wintergartenstrasse 2 (Tel.: 0341/25354860), at the Tourist Information Office (Katharinenstrasse 8) and at the Mendelssohn House (Goldschmidtstrasse 12).