In January 2024, the granddaughter of BDA member Fritz Epstein approached the BDA Frankfurt. The Frankfurt BDA board then arranged for the remaining work to be viewed and the history of Fritz Epstein to be compiled. In collaboration with the curator Susanne Thimm, the photographer Moritz Bernoully and the graphic designer Elmar Lixenfeld, the board of the Frankfurt BDA group organized the exhibition "Searching for Traces - The Architect Fritz Epstein" in the BDA office and made the personality visible in the "Frankfurt History App" in collaboration with the Historical Museum.against the current background, the question arose as to what happens when people are excluded from their professional activities or even expelled from their place of residence due to political changes. In architecture firms, many colleagues from all nations, backgrounds and religions work together to shape the built world. This diversity is a valuable asset that must not be jeopardized by political polarization. The exhibition refers to this topicality by looking back at the historical events around 1933 and making them visible on Holocaust Memorial Day.

The architect Fritz Epstein (1877-1960) planned, built or remodeled around 150 buildings in Frankfurt and thus strongly influenced the cityscape of the time. His work led from buildings characterized by the Wilhelminian style to the modernism of the 1920s and 1930s - and then came to an abrupt end. Due mainly to war damage, only a few of his buildings remain today. Some of them are photographically documented in the exhibition with their structural changes. Perhaps today's owners are not aware of the history of the work. Fritz Epstein worked as an architect from the beginning of the 20th century. In 1909, he carried out a major renovation of the community center in Allerheiligenstraße for the Jewish community in Frankfurt, among others. He was the architect for the Rothschild family and renovated the large synagogue on Börneplatz. At the same time, he was actively involved in numerous Jewish and non-Jewish associations and organizations, describing himself as a Zionist and showing great professional interest in the "New Building" in Frankfurt and Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s. Epstein thus contributed in many ways to intellectual, technical and aesthetic exchange. He was a member of the Association of German Architects (BDA) until 1933. The statutes of the BDA were changed in the fall of 1933 after the National Socialists came to power. Since then, the BDA was only to consist of members of "Aryan descent".

Fritz Epstein had to leave Germany in 1933, but we encounter his buildings in everyday life in Frankfurt. As a Jew, Fritz Epstein was "deleted" from the federal list of members, as he was informed in a letter from the BDA on October 4, 1933. By then, he was no longer living in Germany. Epstein had already fled to Tel Aviv in May 1933, as the living situation for Jews in Germany had quickly deteriorated drastically. He and his family thus became refugees, while many other members of his family were murdered by the National Socialists. He also worked as a freelance architect in Tel Aviv, but was less successful and recognized than in Frankfurt and returned to Germany in 1956, where he lived until his death in 1960. Fritz Epstein was readmitted to the BDA in August 1956.Fritz Epstein's architectural office had the Frankfurt address Zeil 81 in 1933. In January 2019, the four stumbling stones to Fritz, Margarethe, Werner and Alfred Epstein were laid at his home at Unterlindau 29 by the Initiative Stolpersteine Frankfurt am Main e.V. The role and work of the BDA during National Socialism was examined in a chronicle by the BDA Bund. In 1930, the BDA had 41 members in Frankfurt, presumably including 8 Jewish colleagues.

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