Grief for Kay Zareh: The man who created this important memorial place on the banks of the Berlin Havelufer

This memorial location is closely connected to the city and can be found in a prominent place: Since 1989 is the memorial on the Spandau old town bank, directly on Spree corner Havel, where once Spandau’s synagogue by Rabbier Arthur Löwenstamm. The rabbi was chased away, the church burned down and torn down by the Nazis. To this day it will be Berlin’s large river mouth reminds of this crime.

The architect, who created this memorial together with his wife Ruth Golan, died a few days ago. His name: Kay Zareh.

“He died after a short, serious illness at the age of 82. We remember him with gratitude“, Writes the memory representative of the Evangelical Church in Spandau, Gudrun O’Daniel-Elmen in her obituary.

The funeral found a few days ago on the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee instead, although Kay Zareh not Jewish faith Was like O’Daniel-Elmen knows: “The grave is in the field for couples with only one Jewish partner.”

His father was born in Tehran, he was in Spandau

Spandau was his homehere he was born in the war in 1943 – as the son of a German and an Iranian from Tehran. This is also worth mentioning these days, because during his studies of architecture at the TU Berlin, he fell in love with one Israeline from Jerusalem: Ruth Golan. Together they founded an architecture office.

Zareh was too Readers of the Tagesspiegel newsletter for Spandau And has always got involved. Because in 1990 he also contributed to another well -known Spandau building: on the Bertolt Brecht School.

She is with 1200 young people Spandau’s largest school And has a lively history. After asbestos finds in 1990, the old school was closed at the time, next door was the substantive building at a frenzied speed. “Everything in the urgent procedure,” Zareh once said in the Spandau newsletter. “Our replacement building should last for eight, for a maximum of twelve yearsso that one would plan and build a solid new school building over a reasonable period of time. “

The BBO substitute building still stands today And is still in operation 35 years later. A new building next door is planned, but this time without Kay Zareh and his wife Ruth Golan. It died in 2012 and also known to the city: “It was that House and courtyard chest of the Jewish community“At that time the” Jewish Allgemeine Zeitung “wrote.

The architecture firm participated in many more places in the city, also in downtown Berlin – for example on the Synagogue in Pankower Rykestrasse.

After the burial was also in the Tagesspiegel In many funeral ads Reminded of friends and family of Tareh – and his preference for a refreshing sport: “We have lost a particularly gracious person, our early morning fellow swimmer in the Schlachtensee.”

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