History of the Jews in Coburg
The history of the Jews in Coburg began in the course of the 13th century with the first immigration to Coburg . At the end of the 14th century, a larger Jewish community had emerged, which was dissolved again around 50 years later due to an expulsion policy of the Saxon rulers. At the beginning of the 19th century, the first Jews settled in Coburg again. By 1926 the number of Jews had risen to a maximum of 316. Six women still lived in the city after the Holocaust , and at least 62 residents were murdered.
13th to 18th centuries
There is no direct evidence that Jews settled in Coburg during the 13th century. But it is probably based on a letter from this time in which Isaac von Coburg is mentioned. The first documentary evidence of a Jewish community in Coburg dates from 1301. The Jewish Gate was first mentioned in 1321. The name suggests a larger group of Jewish families. At the time, Jews are also attested in the neighboring towns of the Coburg care center . The name Judengasse appears for the first time in 1393 and the Judenberg in 1429. Two so-called Jewish pits, burial places of Jewish fellow citizens, that were occupied at the end of the 14th century, are a further indication of the existence of a larger Jewish community.
The Coburg Jews were also affected by the persecution of Jews at the time of the Black Death in Thuringia and Bamberg in 1349 . From 1362 a free and protection letter from Margrave Friedrich III. from Meissen the resettlement of Jews. A larger Jewish community developed under the protection of the rulers of Coburg, who renewed the letters of protection over several years . By 1400 the city had about 2000 inhabitants, of which about 3% were Jews. The Jewish school, which also served as a synagogue , located in Judengasse, was first mentioned in 1393. The so-called Coburg Pentateuch , a richly illuminated Hebrew manuscript with a volume of 504 pages, consisting of a five-part codex that has been kept in the British Museum in London since 1854, dates from 1395 . A larger colored drawing could represent the Coburg Fortress. It was discovered by chance in 1978 in an exhibition case by Helene Gutmann, who lives in the USA. In 1413 a cemetery was allowed to be created outside the city walls. Remnants such as a tombstone from 1457 were found during the construction of the house at 50 Judengasse in 1896. The Jewish families lived predominantly from financial transactions that were forbidden to Christians under church law. Numerous noble families and monasteries, but also bishops, owed them money. In 1422, the Würzburg bishop Johann II von Brunn forbade the contact and trade with Jews and recommended that they be marked with a red or another colored sign. Elector Friedrich II began a policy of expulsion in the mid-1430s. Under Duke Wilhelm III. the Jewish school was finally closed in 1447 and the Jewish community dissolved. The last member of the Jewish community was buried in the Jewish cemetery in 1466. In 1516, the Jewish resident Solomon was listed in the inheritance book of a house among the residents.
In the centuries that followed, the Saxon rulers did not allow Jews to settle in Coburg. Nevertheless, a few Jews settled here. In 1598 Georg Neblthau was employed by the mint and in 1680 the mint was leased to two Jews. In 1754 the confectioner Christoph Israel Rosenthal was mentioned as a taxpayer.
19th to 20th century
A request from Salomon Callmann to set up a business was rejected in 1804 because the city's representatives did not want any competition in the commercial sector. On August 19, 1806, however, the state government, against the objections of the Coburg magistrate, allowed the two sons of the trading Jew Levi Simon from Hildburghausen , Joseph and Salomon Simon, to settle in the city after paying 1000 guilders into the ducal treasury. In 1860 the Simon family was allowed to set up their own cemetery in an open field in front of the city. Other merchants such as Moritz Friedmann in 1827, Hirsch Mannheimer in 1837 and Bernhardt Seligsberger in 1838 were also allowed to settle in Coburg. In 1850, the Coburg state parliament passed a law that gave Jews the same rights and duties as Christians. In the following decades, the Jews from the surrounding rural communities migrated to Coburg. In 1869 there were 68 Jews in 12 families living in the city.
In 1870, eight of the local Jewish families submitted an application to the city for the first time to establish a community. Since the other four families were against a foundation, the approval was delayed. On April 28, 1873, the magistrate finally approved the statutes on the basis of voluntary membership of the Jewish community. On September 20, 1873, on the Sabbath before the Jewish New Year , the St. Nicholas Chapel was inaugurated as a synagogue. The city of Coburg had left the church to the community free of charge with the condition that the maintenance costs were covered. Simon Oppenheim was employed as a teacher. He was also active as a prayer leader and slaughterer until 1909/14. In July 1873, the Jewish community also purchased from the city for 1,600 guilders at the eastern end of the cemetery on Glockenberg 1,450 square meters of the former cemetery extension for their own burial ground. (See Jewish cemetery (Coburg) ) The first burial was on July 12, 1874. Successor In 1914 Simon Oppenheim became the teacher and preacher Hermann Hirsch, who founded a boarding school in 1917, which he formally converted into a Jewish elementary school in 1935, but in fact into a Jewish country school home .
In 1917 the community had 77 members, 62 men and 15 women. As a rule, only part of the family was an official member. The religious school attended 21 boys and 17 girls. After the unification of the Free State of Coburg with the Free State of Bavaria in 1920, the Jewish community was recognized as a public corporation in 1922 . As a result, she was allowed to become a member of the Association of Bavarian Israelite Congregations. In addition, she had to join a rabbinate loosely . This happened through connection to the person of the rabbi in Bamberg, not to the rabbinate district. The rabbi was responsible for the fulfillment of his religious law obligations. The preacher Hirsch continued to take care of the congregation.
The first anti-Semitic leaflets were stuck to numerous house walls in Coburg in October 1919. The local group of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith reacted immediately and offered a reward of 200 marks for reports about the perpetrators. He also had Ludwig Holländer give a lecture on October 30, 1919 on the subject of the anti-Semitic danger. In particular, the DNVP with its closely related Coburger Zeitung reacted with anti-Jewish lectures and articles, for example on February 20, 1920 with Artur Dinter's lecture : “The Semitic Danger”. From 1920 to 1922, the Coburg local group of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund made a name for itself with anti-Jewish leaflets, posters, articles in the Coburg newspaper and lectures. On November 26, 1920, Jews in Germany were for the first time denied access to a public lecture event in front of an audience of 2,000 on the subject of “The crime against the people”. During the German Day on October 15, 1922, there were various anti-Semitic rallies by SA men. Among other things, the director of the Großmann meat factory, Abraham Friedmann , was threatened with manslaughter because Hitler spread a rumor that Friedmann had paid 100,000 Reichsmarks to left-wing extremists so that the events would be disrupted.
From April 1923, the Young German Order , with Pastor Helmuth Johnsen as Coburg leader, published the Coburger Warte newspaper. Under the later editorship of Hans Dietrich , inflammatory articles against Jews from Coburg were published. There was damage to Jewish property in Coburg. Complaints from the Central Association to the Upper Franconian government led to half-hearted preliminary censorship by the head of the Coburg district office, Fritsch. The Coburger Warte, which was closed for economic reasons in January 1925, was followed in 1926 by the NSDAP party newspaper Der Weckruf as an anti-Jewish propaganda paper, which was designed like Der Stürmer in style and style . On January 25, 1929, the CV newspaper of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith appeared in Berlin with the headline Koburg . In a full-page article, the author described Coburg as a stronghold and hotbed of anti-Semitic excesses. Assaults against Jewish residents and their property were the order of the day, the investigations by the city police were usually unsuccessful. Abraham Friedmann in particular was attacked. Friedmann defended himself against the attacks on his person by threatening Schwede's employer, the Städtische Werken, to stop the coke and electricity purchases. Since Swede had refused a declaration of discontinuance, he was dismissed at the request of the Coburg Municipal Works after a city council resolution with 14 to 10 votes in early 1929. As a result, the NSDAP was able to successfully carry out a referendum to dissolve the city council on May 5, 1929, win an absolute majority in the subsequent city council elections on June 23, 1929 and resolve the reinstatement of Sweden at the municipal works in the new city council. Since 1929, attacks on Jewish residents, their homes and businesses have increased sharply. Physical injuries and property damage occurred. On March 28, 1930, the city council issued a ban on slaughtering the Coburg slaughterhouse.
A Coburg clothing store saw anti-Semitism as a means of eliminating Jewish competition and urged readers in the Coburg National-Zeitung to avoid Jewish shops. As part of an advertising campaign in the Coburger National-Zeitung, a competition was held on February 14, 1931 under the key word Der Geschäftsjude and called for a boycott of Jewish companies for the first time in a city in Germany . The businessmen concerned turned on the courts , and they were ultimately successful in the appeal instance before the Bamberg Higher Regional Court . The newspaper had to pay a small fine and undertake to refrain from further calls for boycotts in the future.
Franz Schwede was elected first mayor on October 16, 1931 . At the request of Swede, the Coburg city council decided on September 23, 1932 to terminate the contract for the use of the Nikolaikirche as a synagogue by the Jewish community at the end of the year . The Israelite religious community initially resisted the dismissal in court, but broke off the proceedings in March 1933. The synagogue was closed on March 16, 1933, until 1936 the community had to pay 6000 Reichsmarks to the city for restoration. After the Autenhausen synagogue in 1928, it was the second synagogue in Germany that had to be closed due to National Socialist influence. On March 15, 1933, the Coburg city council advised the Jewish business owners to close their shops immediately. Otherwise they were seen as provocateurs. You should then not receive any police protection. At the beginning of March 1933 the open terror against critics of the NSDAP and Jewish residents began. A total of 39 Jews were arrested by the city's emergency police and, as a rule, tortured. Jakob Friedmann, who had already been verbally attacked by the National Socialists in 1920 and 1928, abducted strangers on March 15 and severely abused him. There were also demonstrations against Jewish businesses, which culminated on April 1st with the Germany-wide boycott day.
The seven Jewish doctors in Coburg were only allowed to treat Jewish patients privately. The 17 Jewish lawyers and notaries in Coburg were forbidden to enter court buildings. The department stores had to pay a special tax since 1929. Six Jewish department stores passed into Aryan ownership by 1936, including the fashion house M. Conitzer & Sons in 1935 at Spitalgasse 19 , which was part of the Hermann Tietz department store chain . As early as 1933/34, the Jewish residents had been excluded from all public institutions. In August 1935, on their own initiative, Coburg cinemas, shops and locales began to forbid entry to Jews; they were not wanted in the Coburg State Theater .
On the night of November 10, 1938 , Jewish shops were vandalized and shop windows smashed. In the house at Hohe Strasse 30 , where Hirsch's school was located, the prayer room of the Jewish community was set up after the synagogue was closed. The school and prayer hall were devastated, the former synagogue was not damaged. Many of the 133 members of the Jewish community were arrested, and 35 men were held in the Angerturnhalle , in front of which anti-Jewish demonstrations took place. The SA transferred 16 people to Hof . A little later, the Coburg Jews were forced to vacate their apartments and move into two Jewish houses.
In autumn 1941 the deportations to the death camps began, affecting 37 people from Coburg. The Nazi regime deported 26 Jews from Coburg on November 27, 1941 in a collective transport from Franconia to Riga , five came to Izbica on April 24, 1942 and six to Theresienstadt concentration camp on September 9, 1942 . Four Jewish women escaped the deportations because they were married to “ German-blooded ” men. Another 24 Jewish residents of Coburg who had moved away were deported and most of them murdered .
In 1945 Sali Altmann returned from Theresienstadt and lived in Coburg until her death in 1954. In the same year Lotti Bernstein , who had been deported to Riga and released in the Stutthof concentration camp , returned. In 1946 she went to live with relatives in Chile.
In the city's Jewish cemetery there is a memorial stone with the names of 48 Coburg Jews who fell victim to National Socialism. The memorial book of the Federal Archives for the victims of the National Socialist persecution of Jews in Germany lists 64 Jewish residents of Coburg, who were deported and mostly murdered . Since the relocations in 2009/2013, a total of over 100 stumbling blocks in the city have reminded of many former Jewish residents.
Development of the Jewish population
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Personalities
- Hans Morgenthau (1904–1980), lawyer and political scientist
literature
- Hubert Fromm: The Coburg Jews. Tolerated - Outlawed - Destroyed. Evangelisches Bildungswerk Coburg eV and Initiative Stadtmuseum Coburg eV (Ed.), 3rd revised and expanded edition, Coburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-938536-01-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Rainer Axmann: On the history of the Jewish community in Coburg in the Middle Ages. In: Hubert Fromm: The Coburg Jews. Tolerated - Outlawed - Destroyed. Evangelisches Bildungswerk Coburg eV and Initiative Stadtmuseum Coburg eV (Ed.), 3rd revised and expanded edition, Coburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-938536-01-8 .
- ↑ a b Christian Boseckert: A street tells the story of Coburg - from the past of the Judengasse and its residents . Volume 22 of the series of publications by the historical society Coburg eV, Coburg 2008, ISBN 3-9810350-4-6 , pp. 6-11.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Hubert Fromm: The Coburg Jews. Tolerated - Outlawed - Destroyed. Evangelisches Bildungswerk Coburg eV and Initiative Stadtmuseum Coburg eV (Ed.), 3rd revised and expanded edition, Coburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-938536-01-8 .
- ↑ Jürgen Erdmann: Coburg, Bavaria and the Reich 1918–1923 . Druckhaus and Vesteverlag A. Rossteutscher, Coburg 1969. p. 106.
- ^ A b Joachim Albrecht: The Avant-garde of the Third Reich - The Coburg NSDAP during the Weimar Republic 1922–1933 . Peter Lang GmbH European Publishing House for Science, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-631-53751-4 .
- ↑ Memorial Book. Search in the name directory. Search for: Coburg - residence. In: bundesarchiv.de, accessed on March 2, 2020.