Salomon Korn (born 4 June 1943 in Lublin, Poland) is a German architect and an honorary senator of Heidelberg University. Since 1999 he has served as chairman of the Jewish Community of Frankfurt am Main and since 2003 as vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
Salomon Korn's grandfather was a rabbi in Lublin, Poland. He was born as the eldest of three brothers in the Lublin ghetto.[1] After the fall of the Nazi regime, he and his parents were transferred to a camp for displaced persons in Frankfurt-Zeilsheim. The family had planned to emigrate to the USA or to Israel, but moved emigration over and over again. Korn visited the Helmholtz School during this time. His father successfully established a real estate business.[2] In 1964 he married Maruscha Rawicki. The couple has three children.[3] Korn studied architecture and sociology in Berlin and Darmstadt. In 1976, he achieved a PhD with a study of the reform of the prison system.[4] His brother (born 1946) became a theatre director.
Korn became the architect of the Jewish Community Center in Frankfurt am Main that opened in 1986. On that occasion, he stated: "Someone who builds a house, wants to remain — and hopes for security."[5] A week after the opening ceremony, he was elected to the board of the Jewish Community of Frankfurt. In 1999 he became the chairman.
Korn serves in several foundations and cultural and scientific institutions, such as the Ludwig Börne Foundation and the Foundation for the Promotion of the Scientific Relations of Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. He is member of the board of trustees of the Ignatz Bubis Award for Mutual Understanding, of the foundation Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and of the Senate of the Deutsche Nationalstiftung; he is also a Board Member of Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste. He serves in honorary functions for the Opera in the Abbey ruins of Bad Hersfeld, the German Film Institut and the Sigmund Freud Institute, both in Frankfurt/Main. He is a member of the advisory council of the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, of the Kuratoriums of the Leo Baeck Instituts and of the Federal Foundation Jüdisches Museum Berlin. He also serves in several scientific committees.[6]
In 2003 he was elected vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. He has repeatedly declined to be a candidate for the presidency of this institution.[7] [8]
He published works on social science and architectural history. In the 1990s, Korn made critical contributions to the debate about a central Holocaust memorial.[9] In 2014, he took a stand in the controversy about the Stolpersteine by Cologne artist Gunter Demnig, favoring their collocations also in Munich.