Bertha-Pappenheim-Haus

The Neu-Isenburg Girls' Home is located in Neu-Isenburg (Hesse) and commemorates an early refuge for Jewish girls and women. It is also known as the Home of the Jüdischer Frauenbund, the "Isenburg" Home, Jewish Children's Home, or Jewish Girls' Home.

The home was established in 1907 at the initiative of Bertha Pappenheim; it was one of her central social projects alongside the founding of the Jüdischer Frauenbund. Its purpose was to take in uprooted, predominantly Eastern European girls who had been abducted, as well as unmarried mothers with their children. On the site of four houses, more than one hundred people sometimes lived there. Education and vocational training were intended to give the residents new prospects.

Under National Socialist rule, the home's activities declined sharply from the mid-1930s. During the November pogroms of 1938 the building was set on fire; thereafter state repression and fear shaped everyday life. In 1942 the last residents, together with the remaining Jewish inhabitants of Neu-Isenburg, were deported and murdered; the home was forcibly dissolved.

In the 1950s the city of Neu-Isenburg acquired the site and later used it for various educational institutions. Today the former home houses the Hessische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung. A memorial established in 1996 at Zeppelinstraße 10 commemorates the life and work of Bertha Pappenheim. The site still accommodates a kindergarten and playgroups.