Old Jewish Cemetery (Wroclaw)

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The Old Jewish Cemetery (Breslau) is the older of the two surviving Jewish cemeteries (Polish: cmentarz żydowski) in Breslau (Wrocław). It is located at ul. Ślężna (Lohestrasse) 37/39, southeast of the Schweidnitz suburb, and is now part of the Wroclaw City Museum as the Museum of Cemetery Art .

Portal of the Old Jewish Cemetery, on the left the tombstone from 1345
Gravestone of Rabbi Simon from 1345
Antique helmet on the grave of the artillery officer Georg Sternberg, killed in the First World War
Tomb of the Julius Schottländer family
Grave of Ferdinand Lassalle

History of the Jewish cemeteries in Wroclaw

In the early Middle Ages, Jewish communities arose along the major trade routes in Central and Eastern Europe. The earliest evidence of Jewish life in the commercial center of Wroclaw is a Mazewa from the year 1203. It comes from the city's first Jewish cemetery, which was then outside the city, in front of the Oława Gate on the city moat (ul. Podwale), and is the oldest today Jewish tomb on Polish soil is exhibited in the Wroclaw City Museum. In 1345 this cemetery was expropriated by King John of Bohemia and the numerous Mazewen released for the construction of the city wall.

After the loss of this first cemetery, the Jewish community of Wroclaw had to bury its dead in cemeteries in neighboring cities until a second cemetery was built in the Schweidnitzer Vorstadt near today's main train station in 1760, which was also closed in 1856.

As a replacement, the Old Jewish Cemetery on Lohestrasse was opened on November 17, 1856. In addition, in 1902 the New Jewish Cemetery was laid out in the residential area of ​​Cosel (Kozanow) on Frankfurter Chaussee (later Flughafenstrasse), today ul. Lotnicza 51, which is still used by the small Jewish community in Wroclaw. There are around 20,000 graves on seven hectares.

While the New Jewish Cemetery served the common people, the Old Jewish Cemetery was the preferred burial place of the successful, assimilated Jews of Wroclaw until the end of the 1920s. This is also shown by the elaborate and unorthodox grave structures and grave monuments. The cemetery was closed in 1942 and still suffered visible damage during the battle for the Wroclaw Fortress . In the post-war years, the cemetery with its unique structures fell into disrepair, but was then added to the list of monuments of the city of Wroclaw in 1975. Restoration work on the approximately 5 hectare site with approximately 12,000 graves began in 1978–1980. As a museum of cemetery architecture, it has been open to visitors since 1988.

Some medieval tombstones from the Oława cemetery, which were uncovered after centuries in various places in Wroclaw's foundations and streets, are now either in the Wroclaw City Museum itself (armory), or they were found on the site of the Old Jewish Cemetery at the beginning of the 20th century embedded in the cemetery wall.

The old Jewish cemetery in the present

The rectangular-shaped grave area, which is enclosed by a high wall, is lush with trees and bushes and is parceled out by a regular network of avenues. In front of it to the north there are smaller outbuildings with the porter's lodge on a site expansion. On both sides of the wrought-iron cemetery gate, medieval tombstones are exhibited on the outside of the wall. On the left, a Mazewa from 1345, the year the oldest Wroclaw Jewish cemetery in front of the Ohlauer Tor was closed, is impressive due to its size alone . The inner front of the enclosing wall is often included in the grave structures, especially in the north and west. These can generally be divided into rather simple grave monuments (grave slabs, steles, pillars, obelisks, stone tree trunks, sarcophagi, etc.) and more complex and magnificent grave structures (tombs, porticos, canopies, portals, etc.). They both come in a remarkable variety of contemporary and historical styles.

The move away from the modest, tightly packed mazebos and the frequent use of German in the funerary inscriptions manifest assimilation and zeitgeist. In this respect, the numerous graves of those who died in the First World War and of people whose Prussian official titles are proudly named are also striking . In addition, the names of numerous wealthy Wroclaw bank owners and entrepreneurs stand out. The internationality of the trade at that time is documented in the final resting places of people from Warsaw, Hamburg, Tangier, Boston etc. who died in Breslau and could not be brought back to their homeland, since according to Talmudic rule , the dead are buried one day after their death at the latest have to.

Graves of famous people

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Old Jewish Cemetery (Breslau)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Klöppel: Breslau - Lower Silesia and its millennial capital , Trescher Verlag, 6th edition, 2018, ISBN 978-3-89794-417-6 , p. 125

Coordinates: 51 ° 5 ′ 13 ″  N , 17 ° 1 ′ 30 ″  E