Former Jewish school in Leer

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The former Jewish school in Leer

The former Jewish school is a cultural and memorial site in the district town of Leer in East Frisia . The establishment of the district defines itself as a “place of remembrance and commemoration, for exhibitions and cultural events on Jewish life then and now”. It is based in the school used from 1909 to 1939 by the former Jewish community in Leer, which was destroyed during the Nazi era .

Conception

With exhibitions and cultural events, the district of Leer wants to create access to the history of the house and Jewish culture. A total of six rooms are available in the building, including the classroom on the ground floor. The upper floor, which is accessible by elevator, has exhibition rooms and a seminar room. The permanent exhibition focuses on the history of the house and the people who lived, learned and taught there. Among other things, three film interviews with former students can be seen. They tell from the time of the school's operation and closure and their personal suffering during the Shoah. The exhibition concept was developed by Gössel und Partner.

The classroom is recognizable as such again. On the upper floor of the building, a stencil painting with a synagogue motif was exposed in the course of the renovation work in the living room of the teacher's apartment and thus in the room in which the services took place after the November pogroms. It proves the close connection between school and synagogue. Special exhibitions, readings, theater performances and Hebrew courses complete the offer.

organization

The district of Leer is the owner and sponsor of the former Jewish school in Leer. The scientific director has been Susanne Koppatz since June 1, 2014. It prevailed against 107 competitors in a nationwide tender.

History of the Jewish School

In 1793 the Jewish community of Leer built their first synagogue . In 1803, on the recommendation of the War and Domain Chamber in Aurich , she opened a Jewish elementary school in Leer. The wealthy Katz family supported their community in the construction of both buildings with a large donation.

In the opening year, 17 children attended school. A teacher from Poznan taught them. But he left school after only a year. In the period that followed, the teaching staff changed frequently. Nevertheless, attendance at the school was compulsory for the children of the parishioners. Before the middle of the 19th century, the school moved into a building on Kirchstrasse, but subsequently had great financial difficulties so that it was difficult to raise the teacher’s salary. This even led to the temporary closure of the educational institution in 1859. After that, the educational institution's economic situation gradually improved and the number of students rose to 38 students by 1883.

In October 1909, the community finally acquired a piece of land on Deichstrasse (today Ubbo-Emmius-Strasse. 14) and built a new school building with a teacher's apartment there. The municipality entrusted the construction of the local company Thien. In 1910 this was able to complete the school. At that time around 250 Jewish men, women and children lived in Leer and the surrounding area. About 25 children attended the school. During the First World War, the Jewish teacher Lasser Abt took over teaching at the state primary school in Leer due to a lack of teachers. The Jewish school in Leer remained closed during these years. During the Weimar Republic , the number of students continued to decline. In 1924 there were 18 children, in 1926 there were 16 children who attended elementary school. In addition, the Jewish students at secondary municipal schools received religious instruction in the building.

During the time of National Socialism , the Jewish pupils in the city schools increasingly suffered from the discrimination of their classmates. In order to ensure the continued existence of their elementary school, the parents of the pupils paid a fixed weekly fee from September 1933. The number of pupils increased sharply after 1933, as the Jewish pupils in the municipal schools had to gradually leave them. In 1935, the community celebrated the 50th anniversary of the synagogue's inauguration and the 25th anniversary of the school's opening with a three-day festival. The teacher was given large amounts of money to expand the school library. In 1937 37 children were still attending the Jewish school. After the pogrom of November 9, 1938, it was actively used until 1939. After the synagogue was destroyed, the congregation moved their services to the classrooms. After the educational institution was forced to close by the National Socialists, the community had to forcibly sell the building to the city of Leer in the summer of 1939. The remaining students were taught in the house of the innkeeper David Hirschberg on Kampstrasse until the spring of 1940, before the National Socialists officially closed the school on February 23, 1940.

At the end of January 1940, an initiative by East Frisian district administrators and the municipal authorities of the city of Emden led to an instruction from the Gestapo control center in Wilhelmshaven that Jews were to leave East Frisia by April 1, 1940. The East Frisian Jews had to look for other apartments within the German Empire (with the exception of Hamburg and the areas on the left bank of the Rhine). The Hirschberg family was the last Jewish family to leave Leer. Her house on the corner of Groninger Strasse and Kampstrasse was used as a ghetto in 1940 for the remaining Jews from the district. From here, the Jewish population remaining in Leer was sent to the extermination camps. After that, Leer was officially considered free of Jews .

In the post-war period the building changed hands frequently. A veterinary practice was housed on the ground floor for more than 20 years until the 21st century, and an apartment in the converted attic. In 2011 the district bought the building "to restore it according to old plans".

The building was in such good condition that it was largely able to restore its original condition. Only the glazed post and transom construction of the stairwell extension, created after the war, was clad and "symbolically reshaped with a grid image with matt dots on shiny metal plate cladding". The stairwell has since been integrated into the building as an exhibition area and room. The old floorboards on the upper floor and the real wood doors were preserved, as were the stained glass windows on the west side. However, new windows were placed in front of these. The garden was also prepared. The building has been a listed building since then. On September 1, 2013, the former Jewish school in Leer opened as a cultural and memorial site. The first scientific director was Anna Flume. Susanne Koppatz took over from Flume in Leer.

Teacher at the Jewish school on Deichstrasse

  • Lasser Abt (1909 to 1922 (from 1905 teacher in Leer)), died in Leer
  • Ignatz Popper (1922 to 1935), missing in the Riga ghetto
  • Hermann Spier (1935 to 1938) murdered in Treblinka
  • Seligmann Hirschberg (1938 to 1939) murdered in Auschwitz

Web links

Commons : Former Jewish School Leer  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c epd-Landesdienst Niedersachsen-Bremen: The former Jewish school in Leer is well attended . Notification dated December 13, 2013. Accessed October 20, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b c d e District of Leer: Jewish School. . Retrieved October 20, 2015.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f district of Leer: Jewish school. History . Retrieved October 20, 2015.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Federal Agency for Civic Education: educational institution / extracurricular learning, memorial, museum. Former Jewish school in Leer . Retrieved October 20, 2015.
  5. ↑ a b c Inge Meyer: Meeting place for Jewish life opened . In: Wirtschaftsecho. Companies and facts between Ems and Jade . Issue 121, November 2013. p. 4. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
  6. ^ A b Ostfriesland.de: Former Jewish school . Retrieved October 20, 2015.
  7. ^ Gössel and Partner: Former Jewish School Leer . Retrieved October 20, 2015.
  8. ↑ District of Leer: Jewish School. Previous events . Retrieved October 20, 2015.
  9. ↑ District of Leer: Jewish School. Hebrew courses . Retrieved October 20, 2015.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g Daniel Fraenkel: Empty . In: Herbert Obenaus (Ed.): Historical manual of the Jewish communities in Lower Saxony and Bremen. Volume 2, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-753-5 , pp. 942-957.
  11. ↑ Article in the journal Der Israelit of November 4, 1909. Available online at alemannia-judaica.de
  12. ↑ a b c d e f g Ostfriesische Landschaft (Ed.): Journey to the Jewish East Frisia . Retrieved October 20, 2015
  13. ↑ Article in the journal Der Israelit of July 4, 1935. Available online at alemannia-judaica.de
  14. ↑ a b Gössel and Partner: Bringing Walls to Talk . Retrieved October 20, 2015.
  15. ↑ Newsletter 01 / July 2014 of the Jewish Culture Museum Augsburg-Swabia: New to the museum team . Retrieved October 20, 2015.

Coordinates: 53 ° 13 '55.21 "  N , 7 ° 26' 57.46"  O