Old Jewish Cemetery (Dresden)

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The old Jewish cemetery in Dresden
Old Jewish cemetery in the city map of Dresden from 1828

The Old Jewish Cemetery in Dresden is the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Saxony . It is located north of Bautzner Strasse on Pulsnitzer Strasse (originally Juden-Gasse) in Neustadt , near the Martin Luther Church and, at 3500 square meters, is one of the smallest cemeteries in Dresden . It is protected as a cultural monument.

history

After the persecution of the Jews up to the end of the Middle Ages, Jewish families did not settle in Dresden again until the beginning of the 18th century. As early as 1715, the Jewish diplomat Issachar Berend Lehmann , who had financially supported August the Strong in his struggle for the Polish crown and had settled in Dresden as a court Jew in 1696, asked August the Strong for a burial place for the Jews of Dresden and Saxony . It was suggested that the dead be buried “in Lehmann's garden or in another place that is not infamous”. After protests by the city council, August the Strong declined the request.

The controversial Count Heinrich von Brühl, who campaigned for a Jewish cemetery and had the Jewish community pay dearly for this

The Jews of Dresden had to continue to bring their dead across the Ore Mountains to Teplitz , as it was forbidden to bury their dead in all of Saxony. Despite increasing discrimination in the following decades, such as the Rescript for the eradication of the overwhelming Jewish people in 1734 or the Jewish Code of 1746 that forbade the construction of a synagogue, the Jewish community in Dresden grew . In 1750 she founded, among other things, the " Burial Brotherhood ", which took care of the burial modalities of the community's dead and also kept a burial book.

In 1750, the influential Jew Michael Samuel wrote a supplik to August's son and heir to the throne Friedrich August II , about “Most High Ew. Majt. to implore a grave site by foot ”. He sent the writing to both the Elector and the Minister Count Heinrich von Brühl , in whose favor Samuel was. Brühl established the place of burial for the Jews of Dresden with Friedrich August II, but had the Jewish community pay a high amount of 1000 thalers for his agency  . A synagogue, which Brühl had also promised, was not built by Gottfried Semper until 1838 .

An area near the Old Catholic Cemetery in Friedrichstadt was planned as the original location of the cemetery . On April 24, 1750, however, the community was assigned a land at the Prießnitzbach in the Neustadt, which was outside the city of Dresden and in the possession of the elector. Numerous restrictions did not allow the Jews to build their own (God's) house in the country or to bury their dead in broad daylight, as this would have caused too much attention. In addition to paying the land in the amount of a further 1000 thalers, additional fees had to be paid for each funeral, which were based on the age of the deceased. The cemetery was handed over on March 19, 1751, and the first burial took place on April 25. At the beginning only small, flat tombstones were allowed, from 1771 standing tombstones were erected. For every tombstone erected, the Jewish community had to pay fees to the Dresden craftsmen.

In 1852 the small cemetery contained "1067 occupied graves and 198 still unoccupied, but partly already allocated tombstones", so that the city council decided to close the cemetery for 1869. Since the cemetery was handed over to the Jewish community “forever”, it could not be closed like many Christian cemeteries in Dresden. The New Jewish Cemetery in Johannstadt was opened as early as 1869 as the subsequent burial place for the Jewish community in Dresden.

The old Jewish cemetery in the present

During the GDR period, no attention was paid to the cemetery. It increasingly fell into disrepair and was not rediscovered as a historically significant place until the end of the 20th century, as the cemetery was largely spared from destruction during the Nazi era . Today the cultural monument is volunteered by HATiKVA e. V., which is based right next to the cemetery at Pulsnitzer Strasse 10. If you are interested in viewing, you can ask for the key for the otherwise locked resting place. Documents can also be viewed there that contain detailed information on each gravestone. Headgear is mandatory for men when visiting the cemetery.

Graves

Rear view of the cemetery - some of the tombstones have inscriptions in German

There are a total of 1263 graves in the cemetery, of which around 800 have a tombstone. The grave stones, which are mostly made of sandstone between linden and maple trees, have been damaged by the weather and have ensured that many inscriptions are no longer legible and some gravestones have even fallen over. The front of the stones face east to Jerusalem and are decorated with Hebrew lettering. On the back of some tombstones there are inscriptions in German. Often only the year of the Jewish calendar is available as the year for the day of death . The conversion works by replacing the first number with a 1 and adding the remaining numbers with 240. For example, 5628 becomes 1868.

The motifs of the individual tombstones range from a broken column for premature death to typical Jewish symbols, such as the Star of David or the crown for the imminent Kingdom of the Messiah (משיח). The jug on a bowl as a symbol of the Levite priestly caste can also be recognized.

Graves of famous people

literature

  • Emil Lehmann: From old files. Pictures from the history of the development of the Israelite religious community in Dresden . Tittmann, Dresden 1886.
  • Edgar Hahnewald : The old Dresden Jewish cemetery . In: Yearbook Saxony . 1926, pp. 161-175.
  • HATiKVA e. V. (Ed.): The old Jewish cemetery in Dresden. "... that we should subdue to plead for a grave site as soon as possible" . Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz 2002, ISBN 3-933471-29-X .
  • Fritz Költzsch: Electoral Saxony and the Jews in the time of Brühl . Diss. Leipzig. Vogel, Engelsdorf-Leipzig 1928.
  • Marion Stein: Cemeteries in Dresden. ... that we subdue to plead for a grave site as soon as possible . Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 2000, ISBN 90-5705-130-3 .
  • Daniela Wittig: Rediscovered: The cemetery directory of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Dresden from 1852 . In: Medaon - magazine for Jewish life in research and education. 4, Vol., No. 6, 2010, pp. 1–4 ( online as PDF ; 65 kB). Download of the directory: The directory of those resting in the Israelite cemetery in Dresden from 1852: evaluation and results (accessed on February 1, 2018)

Web links

Commons : Old Jewish Cemetery  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Smaller cemeteries in the city are designed as churchyards with a few exceptions. See Stein, p. 174.
  2. ^ Themed city map Dresden: Cultural monuments , accessed on January 21, 2010
  3. ↑ According to a census from 1705, 15 Jewish people lived in Dresden. See Stein, p. 69
  4. ↑ Hahnewald, p. 162.
  5. ↑ August the Strong, with which he responded to the letter of appeal from the estates in Dresden.
  6. ↑ a b Stein, p. 70.
  7. ↑ Költzsch, p. 350.
  8. ↑ Hahnewald, p. 171; See also Daniela Wittig: The directory of those resting in the Israelite cemetery in Dresden from 1852: Evaluation and results (PDF; 736 kB).
  9. ↑ Lehmann, p. 3.

Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 52.3 "  N , 13 ° 45 ′ 31.4"  E