Old Jewish cemetery on Weißenburgstrasse
The old Jewish cemetery on Weißenburgstrasse in the Elberfeld district of Wuppertal was used as a denominational burial place for the Jews of the then city of Elberfeld until 1896 . The cemetery, which is just 0.1 hectare in size, near the Engelnberg staircase , is only accessible to the public today as part of a guided tour.
history
The cemetery was created around 1810, when the growing Jewish community of Elberfeld needed a new burial place in their vicinity; Before that, the local Jews were only allowed to bury their dead in Neviges, far outside Elberfeld. In 1810 the wealthy merchant Jakob David Leudesdorf bought a piece of land on Engelnberg for 140 thalers and left it to his community as a burial place. The original site was 1137 m² and was later built over; Today only part of the area that was added to the area that was bought in 1867 is preserved. Members of the Jewish community were charged proportionally according to their tax capacity for the renovation of the site.
Since the cemetery area had a stony ground, digging the graves was a very difficult matter. According to tradition, the excavated grave had to be checked by the police before each burial to ensure compliance with the minimum depth.
After the cemetery was expanded between 1867 and 1869, it would take almost three decades before the expanded area was fully occupied. Since graves in Jewish cemeteries are neither re-occupied nor leveled, and the area around the cemetery was meanwhile completely built up, the community finally had to purchase a new plot of land on the vineyard in Uellendahl-Katernberg for the cemetery in 1896 . At the same time, the old cemetery on Weißenburgstrasse was closed to burials.
Preserved structures
The cemetery is divided into two halves by an avenue leading from the entrance gate. Today a total of around 270 gravestones have been preserved here, with the inscriptions on around a third of them no longer being decipherable. On the cemetery wall there are 31 tombstones that were brought here from the former Jewish burial site in Velbert . The best-known preserved graves in the cemetery include those of the parents and the older brother of the writer Else Lasker-Schüler .
literature
- Meeting place Old Synagoge Wuppertal eV (Ed.): The old Jewish cemetery in Elberfeld . Wuppertal 1998.
- Bettina Tewes: Wuppertal cemeteries. Wartberg Verlag, Gudensberg 2006, ISBN 3-8313-1619-8 , pp. 26-28.
Web links
- Cemetery list of the cemetery on Weissenburgstrasse (PDF; 56 kB)
Coordinates: 51 ° 15 ′ 57.8 " N , 7 ° 9 ′ 15.2" E