History of the Jews in Frankfurt (Oder)

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Memorial stone for the destroyed synagogue, in front of it four stumbling blocks

The history of the Jews in Frankfurt (Oder) probably began with the founding of the city in 1253. After the almost complete expulsion and murder of the Jewish residents of Frankfurt during the Nazi era between 1933 and 1945, it came in 1998 with the influx of Jews from the former areas of the Soviet Union to found a new Jewish community.

First mention

According to a document dated April 30, 1294, the council settled a dispute between the butcher's trade and the ten Jews Mosko, his brother-in-law Jakob, Jakob ben Johannes von Hohenwalde, Samson, Glomeke, David, Jakob ben Hugo, Joseph, Samuel and Habram. The bone-cutting trade wanted to ensure that the ten Jewish butchers among the 52 meat patters in the city were only allowed to slaughter 50 head of cattle per week. A battle order was established. This process indicates a stable Jewish community. It is therefore assumed that 1253 Jews lived in Frankfurt even before the city was founded.

The Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt (Oder) in the Jewish mountains east of the Oder was first mentioned in 1399. On January 20, 1399, the city of Frankfurt (Oder) was approved by the Margrave Jobst to purchase the village of Cunrathsdorff (now Kunowice ) . On this occasion, in July 1399, the Frankfurt Council confirmed the Jews' rights and duties at their cemetery. The certificate was lost, but was documented by the pastor and local researcher Christian Wilhelm Spieker in the newspaper Frankfurter Patriotisches Wochenblatt of June 13, 1835, which he published. According to this, there was already a Jewish cemetery before 1399 at a location with the usual name "Judenberg" behind the watchtower "Kuhburg" on a property that was sold by the Hokemann family to the city of Frankfurt (Oder). Since there are already 1294 Jews in Frankfurt, it is assumed that the Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt (Oder) existed at least 100 years before it was first mentioned. This makes it one of the oldest known burial sites in Central Europe.

All Jews were killed in a pogrom in 1491/1492, but Jews soon moved into the city again. On the orders of Elector Johann Cicero , the city of Frankfurt had to rebuild some Jewish houses.

In 1498/1499 the college building of the future Brandenburg University of Frankfurt was built on the former site of a synagogue .

16th Century

In 1510, 38 Jews from various cities in the Brandenburg region were burned at the stake for alleged desecration of the host and infanticide . All Jewish residents fled Brandenburg or were expelled. It was not until 1535 that Jewish traders were allowed to visit the Neumark and Frankfurt markets again. In 1539 the innocence of the Jews was recognized and Elector Joachim II reopened the mark for Jewish traders passing through.

Resettlement of Jews in Frankfurt, with one exception of the Brandenburg court Jew Michael von Derenburg , did not take place again until the 1550s. The city council openly opposed the settlement of Jews. From 1552 at the latest, there were repeated harassment of Jewish residents and traders in Frankfurt. From 1557 several acts of violence against Jews in the city are documented.

In 1561 a new synagogue was built.

Jewish Frankfurter
year number Population share approx. In%
1567 11 Jewish families 0.5
around 1600 no
around 1675 few
1688 43 Jewish families 3
around 1700 74 1
around 1785 623 Jews 6th
1801 592 5
around 1807 about 300 3
1828 490 2
1840 591 2
1864 about 800 2
1871 767 2
1895 777 1
1910 625 1
1925 669 1
1933 about 600 0.7
1944 62 0.07
1945 no
1998 17th 0.02
2015 approx. 240 0.4

In 1571 all Jews were again expelled from Brandenburg. 25 Jewish men, including eight strangers, and 78 women and children were arrested in Frankfurt. Jews were not allowed to settle in Brandenburg for the next 100 years. However, Jewish traders continued to play an important role.

From the 1590s onwards, books were printed in Hebrew letters at the Frankfurt University, as the Hebrew language was also taught at the university. The Andreas Eichorn printing company met this need and borrowed the printing types they needed from other cities. In 1594 the Eichorn family received the printing monopoly . When a Hebrew Bible was to be published at the university, Eichhorn probably made an offer that was too expensive. Therefore, Hans Hartmann and his son Friedrich received permission to print. They recruited skilled workers from Wittenberg and were thus able to publish the Biblia Hebraica Hartmannorum in 1596 , which found a market particularly in nearby Poland.

17th century

In 1671, Elector Friedrich Wilhelm allowed the settlement of 50 wealthy Jewish families, mainly from Vienna, in Brandenburg. Ten of the families settled in Frankfurt. On June 1, 1678, two young men were the first Jewish students in Germany to be admitted to the medical faculty of Frankfurt University against the opposition of many professors. Hebrew studies and oriental studies gained importance at Frankfurt University.

In 1673 the Frankfurt professor Johann Christian Bekmann acquired a printing company. Against the protest of the city of Frankfurt, he received permission to employ two Jewish book printers who were under the direct protection of the university. Bekmann recruited renowned Jewish experts, including from Prague. The demand for Hebrew scripts was enormous and the printing company prospered. Bekmann was allowed to employ other Jewish printers and set about his main work, the new edition of the Babylonian Talmud , which was last published in 1645 . There was a great demand for Talmud editions, especially in nearby Poland, since as a result of the Cossack uprisings there was hardly any Hebrew literature even in larger communities. The Brandenburg Elector Friedrich Wilhelm hoped for impulses for the important trade fair location Frankfurt and finally granted Beckmann's printing house the privilege to reprint the Talmud in 1693 against some ecclesiastical resistance. Beckmann joined forces with the Frankfurt bookseller Michael Gottschalck . When he was unable to find a financier for the ambitious project, Bekmann sold the printing company to Gottschalck and devoted himself entirely to science. In 1697 Gottschalck succeeded in winning Issachar Berend Lehmann , the court banker of the Elector of Saxony , as financier. In the same year he was able to deliver the first editions of the Talmud, the twelve volumes of which with an edition of 2,000 copies found good sales all over Europe. This commission made Gottschalck a wealthy man. His printing company prospered and in 1722 printed a second edition of the Talmud. The work reached eleven editions of mostly several thousand pieces.

18th century

In 1704 the Jewish cemetery was expanded and a synagogue was built in 1720. Rabbi from 1714 to 1721 was Aaron Benjamin Wolf, the son-in-law and nephew of Jost Liebmann . The Beer Hertz were an important family.

The first Jew in Germany received his doctorate from Frankfurt University in 1721: Moses Salomon Gumpertz became a doctor of medicine. By 1794, 28 further doctorates by Jewish students in Frankfurt followed. Between 1739 and 1810 over 130 Jews studied in Frankfurt.

In 1764 the Jewish cemetery was expanded.

In 1770 Frankfurt had the second largest Jewish community in Brandenburg after Berlin, with an estimated population of 10% of the approximately 10,000 inhabitants . From 1768 to 1780 Saul Berlin was a rabbi in Frankfurt, who caused scandals with several works against rabbinic Judaism . He was followed from 1781 to 1782 by Josef Theomim , one of the most progressive rabbis of his time, who had a deep knowledge of rabbinic literature and was well versed in theological sciences.

19th century

Interior of the organ synagogue on Tuchmacherstraße. View to the northeast.

A Jewish elementary school existed from around 1820/1830.

On September 4, 1823, a new synagogue was inaugurated at 60 Tuchmacherstrasse.

In 1836 the community broke up. The followers of Orthodox Judaism left the liberal synagogue and henceforth meet in different places.

Rabbi Samuel Holdheim opened a small Jewish hospital on May 13, 1838 at Rosenstrasse 36.

The synagogue community in Frankfurt (Oder) was constituted on October 19, 1853 as an association under public law and adopted its statute. Among other things, it stipulates the right of every congregation member to a grave site in the Jewish cemetery - regardless of the financial means of the bereaved. As early as 1805, the Jewish community of Frankfurt (Oder) had acquired farmland next to the existing cemetery from farmer Martin Hanschke from Cunersdorff (Kunersdorf, today Kunowice ) for the considerable sum of 300 Reichstalers. In 1865 the new section was leveled for 230 thalers and 5 silver groschen. In 1867 the first section of the cemetery was closed and the new section opened. After 1868 the Jewish cemetery received a neo-Romanesque mourning hall with a hexagonal floor plan, a copper-covered dome and a gold-plated Star of David on top.

The liberal community had the Sauer company built in an organ in 1892 . Since then, people have also spoken of the "organ synagogue".

In 1920 the community acquired garden land next to the Jewish cemetery in order to be able to expand it later.

time of the nationalsocialism

In 1933 568 Jews lived in Frankfurt; this corresponded to a population share of 0.75% with a total of 75,733 inhabitants. These included seven doctors, two dentists, five pharmacists, eight lawyers, nine craftsmen, 77 merchants, four factory owners and four bankers. The large Reformed congregation sat in the so-called organ synagogue on Tuchmacherstrasse. The prayer room of the smaller Orthodox community was on Spornmachergasse . The majority of Frankfurt's Jews immigrated from Poznan and West Prussia after the First World War , because they felt they were Germans and did not want to live in Poland.

In 1934 the division into a liberal and an Orthodox community was ended.

The position of the Jews in the city was the seizure of power more difficult by the Nazis on 30 January 1933rd Before that, most of them lived from retail trade; few were active in academic professions such as doctors. Many looked for a way out by emigrating, including to Palestine . A first wave of Frankfurt Jews emigrated after the boycott measures of 1933. Under the impression of the beginning economic exclusion, young Jewish people from Frankfurt joined the workers who, under the leadership of Frankfurt Hermann Menachem Gerson, were preparing for future agricultural activities in Palestine. Numerous young people worked half a day in Hachschara camps on agricultural goods, for example on the manor of the Berlin Jewish publisher Salman Schocken in Winkel (Spreenhagen) or Schniebinchen , familiarized themselves with the Hebrew language in training courses and learned about Jewish history and religion. In addition to this agriculturally oriented vocational preparation, there was also the Hechaluz facility of a Beth Chaluz (House of Pioneers) in Frankfurt . Here boys were mostly trained in trades, the girls in housekeeping and caring professions in order to be prepared for their emigration to Palestine. In the years that followed, a number of Jewish children were sent to Great Britain by their parents.

However, there were friendly relations with Jews even after 1933. One day before the November pogroms , the synagogue servant Glass was invited by an SA leader to his 50th birthday.

In 1936 the Reichsbund Jüdischer Frontsoldaten donated a memorial for the 17 Jewish soldiers from Frankfurt (Oder) who died in the First World War , which was erected on the third section of the cemetery. The Frankfurt company Grabmalkunst und Marmorwerk Paul Radack built the foundation and the border. The actual monument was created by the Gersohn company from Berlin-Weißensee. The inauguration was to take place in the spring of 1937. However, the National Socialist authorities had banned Jewish rallies in the open air. That is why the inauguration took place in the summer of 1937. All Jews from Frankfurt (Oder) and the surrounding area gathered under the observation of the Gestapo. The keynote speech was given by Alfred Kann from Landsberg an der Warthe , chairman of the Landsberg branch of the Reich Association of Jewish Front Soldiers and bearer of the Iron Cross 1st class . The memorial could be seen clearly from the Crossener Chaussee, as the third section of the cemetery was fenced off with a chain link fence on a low concrete foundation.

During the night of the pogrom in 1938 , Jewish shops were looted and destroyed, Jewish fathers were arrested and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . The synagogue was set on fire. Interior and windows were lost, but the building was still standing. The synagogue building was later used as a paper store. In 1939 there were still 168 Jews living in Frankfurt; 1944 still 62. At least 100 Jewish Frankfurters fell victim to the Holocaust . Jewish victims from nearby forced labor camps were buried in the Frankfurt Jewish cemetery from 1941 to 1944.

After the second cemetery section was fully occupied, the northern part of the third section bordering the second section was used from 1940. Gravestones could not be placed during this time due to the oppression of the Jews by the National Socialists.

In 1942 the National Socialist authorities instructed that all Jewish cemeteries in Germany had to be handed over to the administration of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany , based in Berlin. An offer to buy was submitted to the city on December 29, 1942. Negotiations dragged on because the city actually had no use for the property and viewed it as inferior. On December 2, 1944, the forced sale was completed. The first steps to demolish the cemetery were to move the water tanks to the New Cemetery (today: Frankfurt Main Cemetery). The copper covering was removed from the morgue. Further work was no longer carried out because the front of the Second World War was shifting to the Oder. There was also no rewriting in the land register before the end of the war.

On February 15, 1944, the only British air raid on Frankfurt (Oder) took place. Two bombs fell on the Jewish cemetery and one right next to it. The last person from Frankfurt was the Jewish doctor Hermann Marcus, who died on December 11, 1944, to be buried in the Jewish cemetery.

From 1945

The synagogue building at Tuchmacherstraße 60 was demolished between 1949 and 1953 for the construction of living space.

The old Jewish cemetery had been in Polish territory since 1945. In 1975 the demolition of the cemetery began. In 1978 a hotel restaurant was opened on the cemetery grounds. Extensive earthworks were carried out for the construction. The upper part of the slope was cleared with graves and bones and on the lower part of the slope, partly outside the cemetery, heaped up and leveled.

The city of Frankfurt (Oder) inaugurated a memorial stone for the synagogue in Tuchmacherstrasse on November 9, 1988 in the presence of the last Frankfurt rabbi Curtis Cassel on Karl-Marx-Strasse.

A large part of the devastated cemetery was fenced in in 1988 on behalf of the Nissenbaum Foundation, except for a driveway to the hotel.

In 1994 the memorial stone for the synagogue on Tuchmacherstraße was moved to the other side of Karl-Marx-Straße because of the demolition of the Hotel Stadt Frankfurt and the construction of the Lennépassagen shopping center.

In the spring of 1999 a group of rabbis from the USA and Israel visited Frankfurt (Oder) to look for the grave of Josef Teomim . They located the Jewish cemetery and determined its desolate condition. The rabbis put up a plaque with the Hebrew inscription "Hidden here is the holy rabbi author of Pri megadim his purity shall protect us, Amen". The board was removed by strangers a short time later. As a result, the American "Committee for the Restoration of the Jewish Cemetery in Słubice" was founded under the presidency of Rabbi Berel Polatsek. In the summer of 1999, the cities of Słubice and Frankfurt (Oder) erected a three-meter-high memorial stone next to the former morgue on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the first mention of the Jewish cemetery. The stone was inaugurated on July 2, 1999. Around 2000 part of the area of ​​the Jewish cemetery owned by the town of Słubice and the hotel located on it were privatized. Around 2002 the hotel served as a night club. That led to an international scandal. At the beginning of 2004 the town of Słubice bought back the part of the Jewish cemetery that was not in their possession on behalf of the Polish state. In 2007, the Słubice Jewish Cemetery became the property of the Foundation for the Protection of Jewish Heritage .

Since 1998 there has been a Jewish community in Frankfurt again. It was founded by 17 immigrants from the former territories of the Soviet Union. In the Halbe Stadt district she set up a community center with a prayer room, library and museum room on the history of the Jews in Frankfurt. On March 16, 2008, the Jewish community was the first in Brandenburg to have its own Torah role again after the Second World War . It was a gift from the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic Education Center . On October 22, 2014, the Jewish community received another Torah scroll. The holy scriptures, which originally came from Fürth , were buried two days after the Reichspogromnacht, along with 18 others, by a member of the Jewish community in order to protect them from destruction by the National Socialists. 75 years later, an American couple had six of the scrolls reconstructed and re-labeled. They made these Jewish communities in Germany available to commemorate their family members who died in the Holocaust . The two hundred year old scriptures were restored by a specially trained Torah scribe, re-inscribed and ceremoniously handed over to the Jewish community. The new Jewish cemetery was inaugurated on June 27, 2011 in the Südring district of Frankfurt.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ First main part or collection of documents on the history of the spiritual foundations, the noble families, as well as the towns and castles of the Mark Brandenburg . In: Adolph Friedrich Riedel (Ed.): Codex diplomaticus Brandenburgensis . tape 23 . Reimer, Berlin 1862, p. 6 ( google.de [accessed on January 8, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Siegfried Griesa : Frankfurt (Oder) in the first centuries after the city was founded . In: Museum Viadrina (ed.): Alt-Frankfurt (Oder) and "The Seven Ravens" . Frankfurt (Oder) 1995, p. 7 .
  3. ^ Christian Wilhelm Spieker : The Jewish cemetery . In: Frankfurter Patriotic Wochenblätter . XXV. Vintage. Frankfurt (Oder) June 13, 1835, p. 68 .
  4. ↑ a b January Musekamp: Hebrew printing - A virtual walk for Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice. In: juedischesvirtuellesfrankfurt.de. January 2018, accessed January 30, 2018 .
  5. ^ Ralf-Rüdiger Targiel : Printed with the types from Amsterdam. Hebrew printing in Frankfurt an der Oder . In: Jewish Brandenburg - past and present . Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86650-093-8 , pp. 450-481 .
  6. ↑ a b c Eckard Reiss : Makom tov - the good place - dobre miesjce . Ed .: Magdalena Abraham-Dieffenbach. Past Publishing, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86408-067-8 .
  7. ↑ Friedrich Lotter: uprooting and self-assertion. Fate of Frankfurt Jews under Nazi rule in their new homeland. In: Mitteilungen Historischer Verein zu Frankfurt (Oder) eV 2 (1996), p. 3.
  8. ↑ Friedrich Lotter: uprooting and self-assertion. Fate of Frankfurt Jews under Nazi rule in their new homeland . In: Messages from the Historical Association of Frankfurt (Oder) e. V. Band 2 . Frankfurt (Oder) 1996, p. 3 .
  9. ↑ Racially Persecuted (149). In: stolpersteine-ffo.de. Retrieved April 14, 2019 .
  10. ^ Stolpersteine ​​Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice - Racially persecuted - II. In: stolpersteine-ffo.de. Retrieved April 14, 2019 .
  11. ^ Märkische Oderzeitung / Frankfurter Stadtbote, synagogue demolished after 1945 , Nov. 12, 2009 ( online ).
  12. ↑ Thomas Gutke: The long journey of the Holy Scriptures. In: moz.de. October 23, 2014, accessed September 20, 2015 .
  13. ^ Henning Kraudzun: Jewish cemetery opened in Frankfurt (Oder). In: moz.de. June 27, 2010, accessed September 20, 2015 .