To Jerusalem, with Love

 

“This city touches everyone’s hearts”: In Frankfurt, German actress Iris Berben read from her book on Jerusalem.

 

“It was a trip for life,” is how Iris Berben describes her first visit to what was then the young nation of Israel in 1968. When Berben, who is now 65, talks about that trip you can really feel the hopes the then 17-year-old had that things would turn out for the good. “We had the idea that we’d get it rolling, that it was a new era,” Berben narrates. Brought up a strict Catholic, she went to boarding school and, so she says, “grew up in a glass jar”. Her questions about the Second World War going unanswered in the Germany of the 1960s, she found Jerusalem to be something that unlocked her heart and soul. “The three weeks I had planned turned into three months, and it was one of the most intense times in my life.” Forging a strong link to the city, which she has visited countless times since.

 

Today, almost 50 years have passed since that first visit. “Fifty years is a long time for a person but just a blink in the eye of this ancient city.” And Iris Berben has now written a book about the city of her heart. In “Jerusalem. Menschen und Geschichten einer wundersamen Stadt” in a host of short pieces she traces the countless sides to the city: its colourful markets, the way Jews, Christians and Muslims live side by side and interact, the zestful 1960s and the present, which is not always so easy. “Anyone who has not yet been to Jerusalem simply cannot imagine it: How a place can be so infused with spirituality. It’s as if the air was shimmering with all the worship and reverence, conducted with such seriousness and dignity,” she writes. On 9 October 2015 she read from the book at the German National Library in Frankfurt/Main, followed by a discussion with journalist Alfons Kaiser.

 

Berben recounts how it was essentially a coincidence that the book came about at all. Photographer Tom Krausz e-mailed her a selection of images from Jerusalem and asked whether she could comment on them. “I looked at the photos and asked myself: How can that be possible? Someone has the very same view of Jerusalem as I do.” Initially she wanted to pen a short preface, but “one thing led to another”. Krausz captures life in Jerusalem in moving black-and-white images. A Christian woman praying in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, lost in worship, a bundle of candles in her hand. Juice sellers with marvellously wrought metal carafes on their backs. Ultra-orthodox Jews in the Mea Shearim district, small boys kicking a ball around, scenes at the Damascus Gate. People and life in a moving city.

In Germany, Iris Berben is best known for her work in TV and film. She has been President of the German Film Academy since 2010. Most recently, she had parts in the movies “Miss Sixty” and “Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein” as well as the TV films “Der Clan – Die Geschichte der Familie Wagner” and “Ein weites Herz”. In 2009, she was nominated as best actress at the Emmys for the production “Krupp – eine deutsche Familie”.

 

For decades now she has not hidden her fascination for Israel and has publicly defied anti-Semitism and called on people not to forget the past. She regularly visits schools and speaks about Israel. In 2002, with Michael Verhoeven as director, she read juxtaposed passages from Anne Frank’s diaries and the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. On behalf of Germany’s ZDF TV channel, she produced a documentary on Israel as a roving reporter.

Iris Berben was awarded the 1st Class Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her committed political efforts and the Central Council of Jews in Germany bestowed the Leo Baeck Prize on her. In 2013, Jüdisches Museum Berlin chose her for its Prize for Understanding and Tolerance.

“I am not here because I need the limelight,” the actress commented with a smile in Frankfurt. After all, over the last four decades she has enjoyed more than enough of it. “I want to be the voice that calls on you all to perhaps shed your prejudices and take this city into your hearts,” she said.

That she takes a stance today is because of a responsibility she embraced a long time ago in Israel. An episode in her book illustrates vividly how this happened. Berben engaged in a lengthy, very personal conversation with a Jewish woman of perhaps 70 years old: “She patiently answered each of my questions I asked in astonishment – and it was her, the tortured and stigmatised Jewish woman who had endured so much at the hands of the Germans, who took me in her arms and dried my tears of shame.” These experiences made an impression on the young Iris from Germany. “I had assumed a responsibility. Namely the responsibility to not look away wherever antisemitism, racism and intolerance are running rampant.”

For many years now Iris Berben has championed the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is home to young people who work and research together; they come from all over the world and from different religions. Jews, Christians and Muslims. The university stands for universal values that are of especial relevance in crisis-ridden regions such as the Middle East. “There, the idea of working together is what counts,” comments Berben. “There are so many sides to Israel over and above religion.”

    

“Jerusalem. Menschen und Geschichten einer wundersamen Stadt,”

Iris Berben & Tom Krausz, Corso Verlag