Salomon Korn's grandfather was a
rabbi in
Lublin, Poland. He was born as the eldest of three brothers in the
Lublin ghetto. 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. In 1964 he married Maruscha Rawicki. The couple has three children. 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. His brother
Benjamin Korn (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." 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. 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. In May 2006, the State of Hesse awarded him the title of Professor in recognition of his contributions to the field of "remembrance". Since October 2006, he has been an honorary senator of Heidelberg University, and from 2008 to 2017 he was a member of the University Council of Heidelberg University. He published works on social science and architectural history. In the 1990s, Korn made critical contributions to the debate about a central
Holocaust memorial. In 2014, he took a stand in the controversy about the
Stolpersteine by Cologne artist
Gunter Demnig, favoring their collocations also in Munich. ==Quotation==