History of the Jews in Hameln
The history of the Jews in Hameln begins with their first documentary mention in 1277 after the city of Hameln was founded around the year 1200. In the following centuries, Jews with a population of up to six percent and a maximum of 200 people lived in the city. In 1879 the Jewish community built the Old Synagogue , which was destroyed in the November pogrom in 1938 . During the period of National Socialism 101 Jewish inhabitants were deported and murdered. Today stumbling blocks remind of them. Since the 1990s, Jewish life has been re-established in Hameln with the establishment of two Jewish communities and the construction of the New Synagogue . In the city there is the Hameln Jewish cemetery, which was also destroyed in the November pogrom in 1938 . The burial site was restored in 1945 and has been used again since the 1990s.
history
middle Ages
In the city of Hameln, which was founded around 1200, Jews are first mentioned in documents in 1277. In other cities of today's Lower Saxony they can also be traced back to the 13th century, such as in Helmstedt (1240), Hanover (1292) and Braunschweig (1296). The first mention of the Hamelin Jews can be found in the great privilege of city rights of 1277, with which Duke Albrecht I confirmed extensive freedoms and rights to the city of Hameln. In this privilege , the duke left the Jewish shelf to the city and thus an important source of finance. Every Jew living in Hameln was thus exempted from all services to the duke, but was obliged to "serve a citizen" to the city, such as guard duty and fortification work. In this way the Jews enjoyed the protection of the city, but for which they had to pay.
In 1344 there were 20 adult male Jews among the approximately 2,000 town residents. Taking account of their household members, such as women and children, this suggests 120 Jews, which makes up 6 percent of the population. A closed Jewish quarter like in other cities did not exist in Hameln.
Modern times
The city council was interested in Jewish citizens because, as merchants, they stimulated the economy. No restrictive provisions against them were issued. The city of Hameln defied the sovereign expulsions of Jews at the end of the 16th century. Nevertheless, Jews left the city; in 1596 only one protective Jew was still living in the city with his family of seven.
Towards the end of the 17th century the number of Jewish citizens rose again. In 1689, four Jewish families with 37 people lived in the city, which makes up 1.4 percent of the population of 2632 city residents. In the 18th century the Jewish population continued to grow; In 1792 there were 14 families. The instructions of the Hanover authorities increasingly restricted Jewish traders, so that the majority of Jews lived in social isolation and poverty. In 1797, the 13 protected Jews living in Hameln petitioned the government in Hanover in vain for civil rights.
19th and 20th centuries
In the French period at the beginning of the 19th century, Jews were legally equated with the rest of the population in Hameln. After the victory over Napoleon, the Kingdom of Hanover abolished the equality of Jews again in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna . In 1828, the rule that Jews had to use permanent family names was adopted from French times.
It was not until 1842 that the legal position of the Jews improved through the Hanoverian Law on the Legal Relationships of the Jews , which was based on the liberal Jewish legislation in Prussia with the Prussian Jewish edict of 1812 . The Jews only received their full legal equality after the revolution of 1848 through an amendment to the state constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover. During this time, 86 Jews lived among the 6400 inhabitants of Hameln. Due to the influx from the surrounding villages, their number increased and reached 129 people in 1864.
After the annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover, Hameln also belonged to Prussia from 1866 ; as a result, Jews quickly achieved professional and social advancement in the city, which was developing favorably. There were Jewish entrepreneurs in the carpet industry, as well as Jewish doctors and lawyers.
Most of the Jews were patriotic and prayed for the emperor and empire in the synagogue. Nevertheless, at the end of the 19th century they were exposed to increasing anti-Semitism .
At the beginning of the First World War , numerous Jews from Hamelin volunteered for military service. After the war they founded a local group of the Reichsbund of Jewish Front Soldiers in Hameln , which had 30 members.
In the conservative Jewish community of Hameln around 1920, there was a small local Zionist group to which the lawyer Ernst Katzenstein and the dentist Hermann Gradnauer belonged. In 1926 Gradnauer initiated the Kibbutz Cheruth in the Hamelin area, which was based on Zionist and socialist ideals and served to prepare ( Hachshara ) young people for their immigration ( Aliyah ) to Palestine .
time of the nationalsocialism
During the National Socialist era , 101 people of Jewish origin who lived or were born in Hameln were murdered after their deportation. At the time of the seizure of power in 1933, 160 of the 20,000 inhabitants of Hameln belonged to the Jewish community, making up 0.8 percent of the population. The number of parishioners fell to 44 in 1939. At that time only two members of the parish had income from gainful employment as merchants, while the rest lived on savings, pensions or rental income.
The first attack occurred on March 6, 1933 when an attempt was made to set fire to the Old Synagogue with burning petrol cans. On March 13, 1933, SA men stood for the first time with signs in front of Jewish shops calling for a boycott. On April 1, 1933, as in the whole of Germany, boycotts against Jewish businesses took place in Hameln . The local Deister and Weser newspaper published the boycott call as an advertisement in which 29 Jewish shops, doctors and lawyers were named.
During the November pogrom in 1938 , men of the Hamelin SA and SS set fire to the old synagogue with the help of fire fighters, while the neighboring houses were protected by the fire brigade. The Jewish cemetery was desecrated by overturning and smashing tombstones. On the same day, Jewish-owned shops in Hamelin were also looted. 10 Jewish men were taken into protective custody in the city and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp .
According to the law on tenancy agreements with Jews passed in April 1939 , the Hamelin city administration began moving Jewish tenants to apartments in October 1939. About half a year later, the implementation in two Jewish houses was completed. Seventeen Jewish people came to the house at Neue Marktstrasse 13 and five Jewish women to house 8 .
The Jewish residents were deported in two transports : First, 14 people came to the Warsaw ghetto at the end of March 1942 . 13 other people, all over 65 years of age, were brought to the Theresienstadt ghetto in July 1942 .
After 1945
After the liberation from National Socialism in 1945, some Jewish people still lived in Hameln. They survived or were not deported because they were married to a so-called “ German-blooded ” partner or came from a so-called “ mixed marriage ” as children . These people did not identify themselves as Jews after 1945. None of the Jews expelled from Hameln returned. Jewish life in Hameln was extinguished for a long time.
Only in the late 1990s were two Jewish communities founded, one of which uses the synagogue built in 2011. They are the Liberal Jewish Community of Hameln, founded in 1997, and the Jewish Religious Community in the Hameln-Pyrmont district, founded in 1998 .
In 2018, a number of people of Jewish faith lived in Hamelin, most of whom immigrated from the countries of the former Soviet Union from 1991 .
Former synagogues
The first synagogue in Hameln existed as early as 1341, the location of which can no longer be localized. It was a stone house rented by the city with a courtyard and two stalls. From the 17th century a rented room with served mikvah in a now-demolished house in the Old Market Street as a synagogue. In the 19th century this was no longer sufficient for the space and representation needs of the larger and more affluent Jewish community.
In 1875 the city of Hameln offered the Jewish community the vacant garrison church for the establishment of a synagogue for sale. As a result, Protestant pastors created an anti-Jewish climate. Eventually the city sold a piece of land on Bürenstrasse to the Jewish community. Then in 1878/1879, according to plans by the architect Edwin Oppler, the Old Synagogue Hameln was built as a monumental building in the neo-Romanesque style, which offered space for 300 worshipers.
During the November pogrom in 1938 , the synagogue was set on fire by members of the SA and SS. A short time later, the city ordered the fire ruins to be removed. In 1938 the city bought the property from the synagogue community. She lowered the purchase price in the first offer from 9,800 to 6,000 Reichsmarks , even though the unit value was 32,500 Reichsmarks. The property, on which a building remained, was initially used as a vegetable garden after 1938. After the Second World War, efforts were made as early as 1945 to decorate the square with a memorial plaque, which was unsuccessful. In 1951, the Jewish Trust Corporation raised claims for restitution or compensation for the synagogue property, which the city of Hameln paid around 14,000 DM .
memorial
After 1945, the city had a children's playground set up on the former synagogue property, on the edge of which a small memorial with a memorial stone was inaugurated in 1963, surrounded by a beech hedge . It bears the inscription “People fall silent - stones always talk. In memory of the downfall of the Hameln Jewish community in the years 1933–45 ”. In 1978 or 1980 the site was enclosed by a wall clad with sandstone. In 1980 Bürenstrasse was named “Synagogenplatz” at the level of the former synagogue site and the memorial. From 1995 citizens called for a redesign of the memorial. The sculptor Hans-Jürgen Breuste created a two-part memorial for the redesign carried out in 1996 by donations and financial resources from the city . On the one hand, it consists of five name boards on which 99 people from Hameln are named with their age and their deportation fate. On the other hand, a longitudinal, broken steel column symbolizes the events of the time.
Memorial stone from 1963, which was included in the memorial that was redesigned in 1996
Five name boards with the deportation fates of 99 people from Hameln
Memorial plaque to the old synagogue
Broken steel column of the memorial
New synagogue building
In 2001 the Liberal Jewish Community of Hameln acquired the former synagogue property and had a new synagogue built there, which was inaugurated in 2011. It is a red brick building with an oval floor plan and two floors. A Star of David appears in a round window on the upper floor . The building was named Beitenu (German: Our House ) by the community members . It is the first new building of a liberal synagogue in Germany since 1945. The costs amounted to one million euros and were borne by the state of Lower Saxony, the city of Hameln and the district of Hameln-Pyrmont and the Jewish community. The new synagogue forms a unit with the memorial, which was redesigned in 1996.
graveyard
Originally there was a Jewish cemetery outside the city, which had to give way to the expansion of Hameln in the 17th century to become the state fortress of the Electorate of Hanover . In 1743 the Jewish community purchased a plot of land for a cemetery in front of the Ostertor. It was in the midst of gardens in the fortress area outside the city, at what is now Scharnhorststrasse. As the Jewish community in Hameln grew, the cemetery was expanded in 1879 with the purchase of a neighboring piece of garden.
During the November pogrom of 1938 , tombstones were overturned and smashed and the cemetery was desecrated . After the Second World War, the city of Hameln had the cemetery restored in 1946.
Today there are 173 tombstones for the Jewish deceased from Hameln and the surrounding area at the Jewish cemetery in Hameln . The oldest gravestone dates from 1741, the youngest from 1937. The former burial site is a protected cultural monument .
Stumbling blocks
Stolpersteine have been laid in Hameln since 2013 as part of the artist Gunter Demnig's campaign , 68 to 2018. The 10 × 10 × 10 cm large concrete blocks with brass plaques are set in the sidewalk in front of the houses in which the victims of the Nazi tyranny lived at the time . A large number of Jewish citizens are among them.
literature
- Bernhard Gelderblom : You were a citizen of the city. The story of the Jewish inhabitants of Hameln in the Third Reich. A memorial book. Hameln 1996.
- Bernhard Gelderblom: The Jews of Hameln from their beginnings in the 13th century to their extermination by the Nazi regime. Mitzkat, Holzminden 2011, ISBN 978-3-940751-39-3 ( reading sample , pdf).
Web links
- The city of Hameln and its Jews , comprehensive presentation by the Hamelin historian Bernhard Gelderblom
- The Hamelin Jews in the period from 1933-1945 at Hamelner-Geschichte.de
- Website of the liberal Jewish community in Hameln
- Website of the Hameln Jewish Community
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Bernhard Gelderblom: Jews in medieval Hameln in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: Jews in Hameln in the Renaissance period in The City of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: The 17th Century in The City of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The 18th Century in The City of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: Emancipation and Assimilation: The 19th Century to 1870 in The City of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: Controversial Integration: The years from 1871 to 1933 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: The Kibbutz Cheruth
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: After the extermination in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The Jewish community of the city of Hameln before 1933 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: Between fear and hope. The years 1935-1938 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: The March pogroms and the boycott of Jewish shops on April 1, 1933 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The destruction of the synagogue on November 9, 1938 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: "... some Jews had to be taken into protective custody". November 9, 1938 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: "Rentals" and "Forced Entries" - Living in the Jewish Houses in the City of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: Deportation and extermination. The year 1942 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: Organization and implementation of the deportation of the Jewish population from localities in the Weser Uplands using the example of the transport to Warsaw in March 1942 (pdf)
- ↑ a b Bernhard Gelderblom: Post-War Period and the Federal Republic of Germany in The City of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: Jewish life in Hameln today in The City of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The prehistory of the Hamelin synagogue building in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The synagogue and its master builder in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The Hamelin community and its synagogue in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: The demolition of the synagogue building and the sale of the property in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ The Jewish memorial at Hamelner-Geschichte.de
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The years up to 1960 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The erection of the memorial stone in 1963 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The redesign in Hameln in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: The texts on the memorial in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: The address on the occasion of the inauguration in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: Plans for a new synagogue in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Heinz-Peter Katlewski: A home. 14 years after it was founded, the community opens its center in Jüdische Allgemeine on February 24, 2011
- ^ Thorsten Fuchs: New Synagogue in Hameln opened in Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung on February 20, 2011
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The construction of the cemetery in 1743 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The expansion of the cemetery in 1879 in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: The cemetery in the Nazi era in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: The restoration of the cemetery after the Second World War in the city of Hameln and its Jews
- ^ Bernhard Gelderblom: Timeline, statistics and documentation in The City of Hameln and its Jews
- ↑ Bernhard Gelderblom: "Rentals" and "Forced Entries" - Life in the Jewish Houses: Martha Cohn in The City of Hameln and its Jews