Abraham Uhlfelder

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Abraham Uhlfelder (* around 1748 in Markt Uehlfeld ; † 1813 in Munich ) was a Bavarian court factor and head of the Jewish community in Munich . In addition to David Friedländer in Berlin , he did the most important preparatory work in Munich for the emancipation of the Jews .

Live and act

The goldsmith Abraham Uhlfelder came to Munich from Mergentheim in the 1770s, coming from the Uehlfeld market, a town in Middle Franconia with an above-average proportion of Jewish people . On the basis of a protective Jewish patent , he became court factor of the Bavarian Elector Karl Theodor . Around 1800 Uhlfelder had his own banking and trading company in Munich, which also took care of larger financial transactions. “He was considered a character to whom the courts gave impartial testimony to his righteousness, peaceful behavior and diligence in maintaining order among all Jews. He found the same respect among his co-religionists, whose affairs he directed autocratically, energetically, purposefully and roughly practical for many years. "

In 1797 he tried to actively shape the legal situation of the Jews in Munich by applying to be appointed Oberhofaktor in order to be the official contact person to put an end to the abuse of patents and to ensure a better settlement of any problems that arise. But the electoral authorities showed no interest in a fundamental settlement. First in collaboration with the very old Abraham Wolf Wertheimer, then in his successor Abraham Uhlfelder grew into a leading role in Munich's Jewish community.

In 1799, Elector Maximilian IV. Joseph succeeded Karl Theodor from the Wittelsbach branch of the Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld line . He declared all court factor patents issued by this to have expired. His position towards the Jews - then 254 in Munich, 0.7% of the population of around 36,000 - was fluctuating. New patents were not initially issued; But the previous court factors - including Abraham Uhlfelder - remained in office because they were indispensable, as they used loans to maintain the extremely threatening state liquidity and to supply the army with uniforms, the cavalry with fodder and the court society with luxury items. Abraham Uhlfelder represented their interests vis-à-vis the authorities with other respected Jews. In 1802 Uhlfelder and Wertheimer signed the certificate of employment for Rabbi Hessekiel Hessel from Sulzbürg . In 1805 Abraham Uhlfelder was elected head of the Jewish community in Munich. In 1806, out of the need to create a broader base and at the same time a form of organization for traditional religious life, the "Chewra Talmud Torah " was founded.

A "Regulativ über die local Jewry" published in 1805 relied on emancipation only under the reservation of "improvement", which meant that emancipation was placed in the hands of bureaucrats . Permanent residence was only guaranteed by inclusion in the newly created matriculation , whereby the assigned number could only be transferred to one child at a time. Jews were not allowed to enter the guild trades . At least they were now allowed to settle in the whole city area and to practice their religion . 70 Jewish families were given the right to stay; 37 families had to leave Munich. Outside the state Jewish legislation stood the small class of bankers and wholesalers who had proven their usefulness for the Bavarian state through business activities and financial loans; they moved quite naturally within the court and the higher officials.

A request from the Munich police department that the Jewish community should set up their own schools was rejected by Uhlfelder, as the community leader, on the grounds that he could not tell the members which school they would send their children to; Wealthy Jewish parents hired private tutors for their children. In 1804 Jews were allowed to enter higher and lower educational institutions of the Christian denominations . In 1811 Julius Jolson-Uhlfelder , Abraham Uhlfelder's eldest grandson, who grew up in his grandfather's house, entered the Wilhelmsgymnasium and should have been one of the first Jewish high school students in Bavaria. In March 1810, the local school commissioner Weichselbaumer complained that only 10 of 39 school-age children attended German city schools. In a petition dated April 10, 1810, Uhlfelder explained to him his point of view that there was no motivation for this because Jews were not allowed to “get to public offices and join the ranks of state servants”. On December 31, 1810, the highest directive was issued to send all Jewish children from 6 to 12 years of age who were capable and required to attend school to Christian elementary schools .

The board of directors of the Israelite religious community in Munich was the first in the Kingdom of Bavaria to accept the new era without reservation and to try to influence the negotiations and deliberations that were still pending in the ministries through one of Abraham Uhlfelder's head and four deputies who signed “for Immediate submission directed at the highest point ”of April 8, 1812. After the usual flattering introductory phrases they dared to implore the king“ for the emancipation of our fellow believers in the whole kingdom and to ask for the enjoyment of the civil rights of all devoutly , while at the same time we were the most loyal and The most sacred fulfillment of all civic duties without exception. ”Then follows the rhetorical question :“ Whether the Jews are capable and worthy of enjoying civil rights with regard to their religion ? ”It also states that this question is theoretically and practically“ affirmatively answered ” ch the successful emancipation of the Jews in Napoleon's empire and a number of German states. “And should we stand back in Bavaria? ... Not possible! The Constitution and several earlier and later laws and organic edicts speak out too definitely complete freedom of religion and conscience for us to have anything to fear from this side. "

In 1813, Minister Montgelas issued the so-called Bavarian Jewish edict , which, however, was a disappointment for those affected. The basic motive of Jewish policy remained the restriction and control of Jewish settlement by the police and authorities. From now on the Jews in Bavaria were obliged to adopt unchangeable family names . The edict of 1813 abolished the autonomy rights of the Jewish communities in Bavaria and made the office of rabbi subject to state approval and supervision. With the formation of the Kultusgemeinde in 1815, Munich's Jews received a form of organization regulated by public law and guaranteed by the state for the first time .

By the end of 1815, of the 100 or so Jewish heads of household in Munich, only 61 had received permanent residence permits; This concluded the procedure for determining the "Israelites resident on a matriculation number". In addition, 18 foreign Jews were granted a residence permit, which had to be applied for anew every year. When in 1817 the Jews enrolled in Munich again asked to be granted civil rights, they were dismissed and pointed out to their “gross error”.

Until his death in 1813, Abraham Uhlfelder “remained a pious Jew who was faithful to the faith of his fathers without leaving an iota. He brought up his grandson Julius in his house in strict religious faith, and the fact that the great systematist of the conservative world view of Prussian-Protestant character emerged from his house “is not a paradox of world history, but is connected“ with the strictly authoritative, anti-liberal principle that the Judaism loyal to the thorah ”wrote the Bavarian Israelite Community newspaper on November 11, 1933 .

progeny

Abraham Uhlfelder died in 1813. At the request of his 67-year-old widow, her patent was transferred to his son-in-law in 1815 and he was included in the registry and the wholesalers' association under the name Valentin Golson. Golson and his wife Barbara had eight children, the eldest of whom converted to Lutheran Protestantism on November 6, 1819 and took the name Friedrich Julius Stahl . At the baptism on March 6, 1824, the parents and the other seven siblings also adopted the surname Stahl as well as the first names of their godparents: From then on, Uhlfelder's daughter was called Barbara Helene Stahl, her husband Valentin Heinrich, the sons: Theodor Ludwig (1810-1834), the Otto von Wittelsbach to Greece accompanied and died there, Carl Friedrich , the doctor and then a psychiatrist, was Frederick William , later Professor of economics and member of the Frankfurt National Assembly ( 1848 /49) and Gothaer Nachparlaments (1849 ) and the silversmith and painter Albert Alexander Stahl (1815–1885). The daughter Johanna Charlotte Amalie (1808–1841) married the Erlangen bookseller Bläsing in 1838 and Josephine Friederieke (1813–1882) married the Nuremberg, then Nördlinger antiquarian Thoma. Caroline Eleonore Stahl (1817–1875) remained unmarried and ran the household for her eldest brother Julius.

Maier Uhlfelder, a nephew and adopted son of Abraham Uhlfelder, was baptized a Catholic in the suburb of Mittersendling in 1816 and took the name Martin Karl Kraft. In 1832, as a banker and Saxe-Weimar consul , he was raised to hereditary nobility by King Ludwig I in Munich .

Abraham Uhlfelder probably only had two daughters and no descendants with his family name who would have remained faithful to the Jewish religion. In 1841, a wholesaler named David Uhlfelder is named among the members of the sociable association “Gesellschaft Concordia” in Munich, which was founded in 1838, and in 1878 Heinrich Uhlfelder opened a shop for household and clothing goods in Rosental, which developed into a large department store ; his son Max had to sell it in 1938 and went into exile. However, the name Uhlfelder was even more common, especially in Middle Franconia, and 44 bearers of this name are named in the Yad Vashem directory as victims of the Shoah .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernest Hamburger: Jews in public life in Germany. Tübingen 1968. p. 8.
  2. ↑ Markt Uehlfeld - History of the Jewish Community
  3. ^ Report in the "Bayerische Israelitische Gemeindezeitung" from November 10, 1933.
  4. ^ Antonöffelmeier: Ways in the civil society (1799-1848) in: Richard Bauer and Michael Brenner (eds.): Jewish Munich - From the Middle Ages to the present. Munich 2006. p. 56
  5. ^ Antonöffelmeier: Ways in the civil society (1799-1848) in: Richard Bauer and Michael Brenner (eds.): Jewish Munich - From the Middle Ages to the present. Munich 2006, p. 68.
  6. ^ Antonöffelmeier: Ways in the civil society (1799-1848) in: Richard Bauer and Michael Brenner (eds.): Jewish Munich - From the Middle Ages to the present. Munich 2006, p. 65 f.
  7. ^ Jewish files in the Munich district archive, quoted from Gerhard Masur: Friedrich Julius Stahl. Story of his life. Rise and Development 1802-1840 , Berlin 1930, p. 22
  8. ^ Antonöffelmeier: Ways in the civil society (1799-1848) in: Richard Bauer and Michael Brenner (eds.): Jewish Munich - From the Middle Ages to the present. Munich 2006, p. 66.
  9. ↑ Files of the board of directors of the Israelite association in Fürth (Rep. Tit. II No. 155), concerning the circumstances of the Israelite co-religionists (quoted from Eckstein, p. 16 ff.)
  10. ↑ http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/images/Images%2091/Uehlfeld%20Bayr%20GZ%2010111933.jpg
  11. ↑ Deutsche Rundschau, Vol. 159.
  12. ↑ baptismal register excerpt .
  13. ↑ General Repertory of Literature. Published by the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, 1824, p. 125.
  14. ↑ Stahl gives information about the fate of his siblings on April 30, 1838 in a letter to his friend and "confessor" Pfeiffer, Landgrave Hessian Church Councilor and Homburg Lutheran City Pastor, reprinted. in Salzer, Ernst: “Neue Briefe FJ St.s”, in “Deutsche Rundschau”, 40th year, p. 117 ff. quoted. n. Christian Wiegand: About Friedrich Julius Stahl. (1801 - 1862) Law, State, Church (Legal and political science publications of the Görres Society. NF H.35) Schöningh, Paderborn 1981, p. 11, footnote 2.
  15. ^ Antonöffelmeier: Ways in the civil society (1799-1848) in: Richard Bauer and Michael Brenner (eds.): Jewish Munich - From the Middle Ages to the present. Munich 2006, p. 77.
  16. ^ Antonöffelmeier: Ways in the civil society (1799-1848) in: Richard Bauer and Michael Brenner (eds.): Jewish Munich - From the Middle Ages to the present. Munich 2006, p. 86.
personal data
SURNAME Uhlfelder, Abraham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bavarian court factor and head of the Jewish community in Munich
DATE OF BIRTH around 1748
PLACE OF BIRTH Uehlfeld
DATE OF DEATH 1813
Place of death Munich