The Jüdenstraße is a street in central Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, the capital of Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It is in the borough of Mitte

Mitte

Mitte is the first and most central borough of Berlin. It was created in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform by the merger of the former districts of Mitte proper, Tiergarten and Wedding; the resulting borough retained the name Mitte. It is one of the two boroughs which comprises former West and...

 and runs between Rathausstraße and Stralauer Straße, next to the Rotes Rathaus

Rotes Rathaus

The Red City Hall is the town hall of Berlin, located in the Mitte district on Rathausstraße near Alexanderplatz. It is the home to the governing mayor and the government of the Federal state of Berlin...

, Berlin's town hall. It is one of the oldest streets in Berlin, dating from the late 13th century.

Its name preserves the old East Central German

East Central German

East Central German is the non-Franconian sub-group of Central German dialects, themselves part of High German. It comprises:*Standard German*Thuringian*Upper Saxon German*Lausitzisch-Neumärkisch, whose best-known form is the Berlinerisch dialect...

 expression for Jews, which was Jüden, instead of New High German

New High German

New High German is the term used for the most recent period in the history of the German language. It is a translation of the German Neuhochdeutsch...

 Juden. The Yiddish term for Jews «יידן» (transliterated: Yidn) is based on the same German dialect form, with the German umlaut ü being represented by a «י» (here pronounced ɪ). As the name of the street suggests, it once ran through the Jewish district of medieval Berlin, which was no ghetto

Ghetto

A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...

-like obligatory residential area for Jews. An alley of Jüdenstraße named Großer Jüdenhof harboured the synagogue, school and miqveh. They were founded on an estate of the Margrave of Brandenburg within his immunity district

Sovereign immunity

Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine by which the sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution....

 (landesherrliche Freiheit) not under Berlin's city council jurisdiction. Many Jews preferred to live close to these congregational institutions, until Elector Joachim I Nestor expelled the Jews from Brandenburg in 1510.