The Conference on Jewish Mysticism, Magic and Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Judaism, which met in Frankfurt a.M. in December 1991, was the Fifth International Conference on the History of Jewish Mysticism in Memory of Gershom Scholem. It was the first such conference to meet outside of Jerusalem, and the first to be dedicated to a geographical region rather than a historical period.
The Frankfurt Conference, the only one among the six dedicated to a region, expressed the intensification of interest in the history of Jewish mysticism in Germany and central Europe, the area known in Hebrew as 'Ashkenaz'. Some of the major developments which marked the emergence of Jewish mysticism in Europe in its various schools and tendencies occurred in Germany in the late twelfth and during the thirteenth century. After that, this area did not cease to be one of the centers of Jewish mystical creativity. Even when the main centers of Jewish mystical schools were in the Provence and in Spain, in Italy, in the Ottoman Empire and in Ereẕ Yisrael, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, there were always connections with groups and schools in Germany. Every major development elsewhere had an impact, an echo, or further development, in the German realm.