History of the Jews in the Czech Republic

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The Great Synagogue in Pilsen

The history of the Jews in the Czech Republic began around the 10th century. The most important congregation was in Prague from the start, but Jewish congregations formed in many towns and villages, as evidenced by numerous former synagogues , Jewish cemeteries and other architectural monuments in the Czech Republic . Over the centuries the Jewish minority in the Bohemian lands went through times of prosperity and persecution until they achieved full equality in the 19th century. A large part of the Jewish population was murdered during the German occupation . Today almost 4,000 Jews live in the Czech Republic.

middle Ages

First Jewish settlements

There are records of Jewish merchants in Bohemia around the middle of the 10th century. Most of them were slave traders . The Spanish Jew Ibrahim ibn Jaqub visited Bohemia several times after 960 and described the cities and trade in his travelogues. Newer specialist literature sees the slave trade as one of the most important sources of income for the Bohemian princes alongside the spoils of war . Until the middle of the 10th century, people from the bohemian expansion areas in Lesser Poland were delivered to Arab markets by Jewish merchants.

A Jewish settlement in Bohemia is mentioned for the first time in 1091 in Prague in the Chronica Boemorum . In this work Cosmas of Prague describes the Jews as very wealthy. They were located in the Prague outer bailey and in Vyšehrad Street ( in suburbio Pragensi et vico Wissegradensi ), so there are at least two Jewish settlements in the Prague Basin . In 1098 part of the Jewish population emigrated to Poland and Hungary. The prince, who regarded the Jews as his property, had them robbed by his people. Josef Žemlička describes this incident as the first state-organized pogrom in Bohemia. The Jewish merchants had a strong trading position in Bohemia until the 11th century, after which they were gradually displaced by German merchants. About 200 years after the Christianization of the Czech Republic, anti-Judaism developed . At the beginning of the 12th century, the Jews were persecuted and subjected to compulsory baptism .

Jewish gate of the fortress Olomouc

Prague was the Jewish center in Bohemia. Only in the 13th century did the development of the cities create the conditions for the further expansion of Jewish settlements in other parts of Bohemia. The cities of Teplice , Ústí nad Labem and Most are the most important settlements after Prague.

Between princely protection and persecution

Statuta judaeorum from the 13th century.

In the years 1174-78 the first verifiable privilege was issued by Soběslav II . The Privilegium Statuta judaeorum of Ottokar II Přemysl (1253–1278) recognized the Jews with further civil rights. In this privilege, Christians were forbidden to beat or even murder Jews. The destruction of graves and synagogues was also punished. Such protective provisions made a Jewish existence possible. The early Gothic Old New Synagogue was built in 1270 and has been the religious center of the Jewish community in Prague ever since .

Depiction of Israelites with a Jew hat in the Velislaus Bible (14th century)

From 1310 to 1346 a reign of terror began for the Jews under King John of Bohemia . In 1336 he had Jewish institutions looted and Jews locked up, but they were able to buy themselves out with a ransom. Only under Charles IV (1316–1378) did the Jews regain a certain degree of protection. However, the church forced Charles IV to issue an order which allowed Jews to wear the high Jewish hat in public.

In 1389 it was rumored that a priest was laughed at and stoned in the Prague ghetto. 3,000 Jews had to pay for this rumor with their lives. Jewish houses were also destroyed and burned down. It was not until four years later that Wenceslaus IV extended Ottokar's privileges. King Wenceslas IV also punished the evildoers with heavy fines, some of which went to the injured party. In 1410 he confirmed the Jewish cemetery in Prague's New Town by an ordinance of the Jewish community . However, the king kept the greater part of the fines and also almost all the stolen items himself.

The Hussite Wars brought renewed uncertainty. Although some restrictions on Jews were relaxed, they were also less protected from displacement and pogroms. In 1421 Jews displaced from Vienna and Lower Austria settled in South Moravia .

Early modern age

The Old Jewish Cemetery in Kolín, founded in 1418

During the reign of George von Podiebrad (1458–71) and the Jagiellonians (1471–1526) anti-Jewish laws came up again. After that, Bohemia fell to the Habsburgs and the Jews continued to have no rights. In 1543 there was a mass exodus of the Jews. After that Prague was the only Jewish community in Bohemia and there the Jews were marked with yellow fabric on the left side of the chest of the outerwear. Only when Rudolf II ascended the throne in 1576 did things calm down in the Prague ghetto. During this period Rabbi Löw also appeared in Prague.

There was a conflict between the Christian denominations . Rudolf II guaranteed the non-Catholic classes freedom of religion in 1609. In 1618 there was a lintel in Prague . This was the beginning of the uprising of Bohemian Protestants against the Catholic Habsburgs and is considered to have triggered the Thirty Years' War . In 1620 there was the battle on White Mountain , where the Bohemian estates emerged as losers. Shortly afterwards the Prague ghetto was looted. Karl von Liechtenstein became the new governor and in 1627 the Habsburgs issued a new constitution . As a result of the rebellion, the Czech people lost all rights and freedoms. The Jews were granted more rights under governor Karl von Liechtenstein. Between 1623 and 1627 they were allowed to buy houses outside the ghetto and he extended their freedom of trade. Ten years later, however, taxes rose and due to the high demands, a plague epidemic and various fights impoverished almost all Jewish communities.

Interior of the Šach synagogue in Holešov

From 1670 to 1708 the Jewish population increased again. The reason for this was the expulsion of the Jews from Vienna and Hungary .

Regardless of this, the Jewish community in Prague lost 3,500 Jews to another plague epidemic, and in 1689 there was a fire in the old town that spread to the ghetto. 318 houses and 11 synagogues were destroyed. Six synagogues could be rebuilt with the support of foreign Jews.

Prague grew into one of the most important Jewish communities of the time at the end of the 17th century. 1726 the Jews were again by the family laws of Charles VI. suppressed by regulating the Jewish population and their place of residence. As a result, many Jews fled to western Hungary and Poland again .

When the Second Silesian War broke out in 1744 , the Jews were accused of supporting the Prussian army in occupying Prague. After the occupation came to an end on November 16, 1744, the city's ghetto was raided shortly thereafter. On December 18, Maria Theresa (1717–1780) had all Jews from Prague (until January 1745) and Bohemia (until June) expelled. In 1745 it also expelled the Jews from the conquered part of Silesia. This expulsion was an economic setback, and therefore in 1748 the Empress granted the Jews a limited stay of ten years in Bohemia. In addition, the Jews returning to the destroyed Prague ghetto had to pay an annual tax. Because of these enormously high taxes and another major fire in Prague, the Jewish community got into debt.

enlightenment

Old New Synagogue and Jewish Town Hall in Prague, painting by Václav Jansa

With the “ tolerance patent ” issued by Emperor Joseph II (1741–1790) in 1782, Jews were also entitled to a certain freedom of religion. The Age of Enlightenment also brought about many changes in trade, forms of production and the old social and societal structures. The resulting benefits were also felt by the Jewish population. Due to the negative attitude of the Habsburgs towards the Jews, however, they were forced to adopt civil names. In addition, the special taxes initiated by Maria Theresa were by no means abolished by her son, Joseph II.

The center of intellectual Jewish life in Bohemia was in Prague. Numerous scholars and other personalities lived here, including Herz Homberg (1749–1841) and Peter Beer (1758–1839). They were also representatives of the Jewish Enlightenment, the so-called Haskala . In 1812 Homberg published the book “Bne Zion. Religious and moral textbook for the youth of the Israelite nation ” . This book formed the basis for the examination of all Jewish marriage candidates. Moses Israel Landau (1788-1852) owned a printing company and also worked as a lexicographer and publisher. Thanks to its printing works, Prague became the center of Jewish educational literature.

Jewish emancipation and industrialization

The Prague Chief Rabbi Solomon Juda Rapoport (1841)

The living situation for the Jews improved considerably at the beginning of the 19th century. But not all Jews were satisfied with the equality. When the walls of the Prague ghetto were torn down, wire barges were set up by poor Jews. Because the walls protected the Jews in the ghetto and gave them a feeling of togetherness when they were humiliated and cast out.

The year of the revolution of 1848 was an important event for Judaism, as the proclamation of the Austrian Basic Law also provided for equal rights for Jews. Nevertheless, there were disputes where some spoke out against equality. It was the Czech side that did not accept Jewish emancipation . Because among the Jews there were many wealthy, German-speaking merchants who professed their support for the Habsburg Empire. The doctor and writer Siegfried Kapper (1820–1879) spoke out in favor of the Bohemian Jews. He did not only strive for intellectual freedom, but also for full equality of rights for the Jews, which only came into effect after his death. In spite of this, the forced residency in the ghetto was lifted as early as 1849 and in 1850 the Jewish district was incorporated into Prague as the fifth district under the name Josefstadt (Josefov). From 1900, most of the former ghetto had disappeared and in 1913 there was no longer any difference to the rest of the city, as almost all of the buildings were rebuilt or renovated.

From 1871, Prague became the center for writers and artists in Bohemia. Besides Prague there were other Bohemian and Moravian cities in which a lively cultural life developed, in which many Jews were also involved. Brno , Olomouc , Leitmeritz , Lobositz , Budweis , Karlovy Vary , Marienbad , and other cities were known for their coffee houses, theaters and music stages. Teplitz-Schönau occupies a special position, as many actors played here at the city theater before they appeared on the big stages in Prague, Vienna or Berlin. Teplitz also developed as the social center of the Jews of Northern Bohemia. The newspaper Selbstwehr was founded in 1907. The second largest and most important for a long time, however, was the Kolín Jewish Community .

Synagogue in Žatec

For the years 1846 to 1880, censuses for Bohemia and Moravia showed a Jewish population of 1.6–1.8 percent in Bohemia and 1.9–2.2 percent in Moravia. During the same period, the proportion of Bohemian and Moravian Jews in the total number of the Jewish population of the monarchy fell from 24.5 to 13.7 percent. This is due to the strong Jewish population growth in the other crown lands of Galicia and Bukowina as well as the strong Jewish migration from all parts of the monarchy to Vienna and the surrounding area, where the proportion of total Jewry in the monarchy rose from 0.9 percent (1846) to 9, 4 percent (1880) rose.

The emancipation of Judaism was quickly overshadowed by anti-Semitism. The anti-Semite August Rohling worked in Prague . He was best known for his inflammatory pamphlet The Talmud Jew . He tried theologically against the "Jewish race" by interpreting Talmudic quotations out of context negatively. The effect of this writing was so enormous that even Julius Streicher even used Rohling's arguments in his weekly newspaper Der Stürmer . Rohling was also supported by the Austrian members of the Reichstag and anti-Semites Georg von Schönerer and Karl Lueger .

Mention should also be made of the anti-Semitic court proceedings against Leopold Hilsner, the " Hilsner case ".

20th century

Interwar period

President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (right) visiting Grand Rabbi Joseph Chaim Sonnenfeld in Jerusalem (1927)

In 1918 democratic Czechoslovakia was founded. In the time after the war, before the consolidation of the new state, there were also anti-Semitic riots. During the anti-German riots in Prague in 1920, the Jewish Town Hall was stormed and the inventory was badly damaged. Unlike in many neighboring countries, anti-Semitism was only a marginal phenomenon in Czechoslovakia until 1938. This was due to the authority of President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk , the status of a victorious power and the positive economic development.

The republic was defined as a Czechoslovak nation-state, but de facto inherited the character of a multi-ethnic state. In the 1921 census, in addition to religion, for the first time in Europe, membership of a Jewish nationality was also given. In the Bohemian lands only around 30 percent of the Jewish population made use of this right. The majority were assimilated and claimed to be Czechs or Germans, while in the eastern parts of the country, Slovakia and Carpathian Ukraine, mostly Orthodox Jews lived. Several decidedly Jewish and Zionist parties were formed. The Jewish Party ( Židovská strana ) won two seats each in the parliamentary elections in 1929 and 1935. In addition, many Czech and German Jews were active in other parties.

Milena Jesenská , journalist and resistance fighter

Prague received the first Jewish school in 1920, where Franz Kafka's sister Valli Pollak was one of the first teachers to teach. In 1922 the historian Samuel Steinherz was elected rector of the German University in Prague and held this office until 1928.

From the seizure of power by the National Socialists in Germany, many political opponents and Jews fled across the Czechoslovak border. The initially benevolent reception became increasingly restrictive, especially among Jewish refugees. Czechoslovakia was itself threatened by the German Reich, like other European countries it only wanted to be a transit country. After the border areas were forcibly ceded by the Munich Agreement , 17,000 German and Czech Jews fled into the interior alongside many Czechs. The November pogroms also hit former Czechoslovak cities such as Reichenberg , Karlsbad and Opava .

The external threat led the Czech politicians to turn away from democratic values ​​and they formed the authoritarian party of national unity . In the few months before the invasion of the Wehrmacht , anti-Semitic resentment rose again and, thanks to diplomatic pressure from the German side, anti-Jewish government measures took place.

holocaust

Deportation , drawing by Bedřich Fritta from the Theresienstadt ghetto

After the defeat and occupation of Czechoslovakia by the German Wehrmacht on March 15, 1939, Adolf Hitler announced the establishment of the " Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia " the next day . Once that was Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague created and almost the entire Jewish population of the Protectorate in Theresienstadt concentration camp internment and then usually further into the extermination camp Auschwitz deported.

Cemetery of the victims of National Socialism in Theresienstadt

Of around 82,000 Jews deported from the Protectorate, only around 11,200 survived. Individuals like Milena Jesenská tried to save their Jewish fellow citizens from persecution and murder. More than 100 Czechs were later awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Memorial .

Post War and Communism

In the post-war period , the returning Jews were sometimes even hostile. Bureaucratic obstacles were placed in the way of the Jews when they wanted to leave the country and when their property was returned so that they would not have to return their property. Between 1945 and 1950, 24,000 Jews emigrated to Israel and overseas.

In 1952, the Deputy Prime Minister Rudolf Slánský ( KSČ ) was arrested and charged with high treason. The reason for the arrest was probably Klement Gottwald , who saw Slansky as a potential rival. There were also anti-Semitic motives, as eleven Jews were among the 14 defendants in the Slansky trial . In this trial, Slansky was sentenced to death with ten co-defendants and hanged. In 1963 he was legally rehabilitated, and in 1968 by the party.

After a brief period of relaxation during the Prague Spring , state security again put pressure on the Jewish population to persuade them to leave. After the terrible experiences with National Socialism and Communism , many Jews have given up their religion - they have either converted or live atheists.

present

The Jewish communities in the Czech Republic and their sphere of activity

The change in the social order in the course of the Velvet Revolution made it possible to practice religion freely again and brought positive impulses for Jewish cultural life and for research into and coming to terms with the country's Jewish history.

Today about 3900 Jews live in the Czech Republic. There are currently ten independent Jewish communities in the country, namely in Prague, Liberec , Děčín , Ústí nad Labem , Teplice , Karlovy Vary, Pilsen , Brno, Olomouc and Ostrava . They form the Federation of Jewish Communities . She publishes the Roš Chodeš magazine. Your youth organization is the Czech Union of Jewish Youth .

The center for conveying Jewish history and culture is the Jewish Museum in Prague . Among other things, it looks after the numerous Jewish monuments in the Josefov district , which are now a tourist magnet. The Jewish quarter of Třebíč is a UNESCO World Heritage Site .

See also

Web links

literature

in order of appearance

  • Samuel Steinherz (Ed.): Yearbook of the Society for the History of Jews in the Czechoslovak Republic. Nine volumes, 1929–1938. Reprint in Textor Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 3-938402-02-4 .
  • Peter Wörster : The Jews in the Bohemian countries after 1945. Materials on their history (= Documentation East Central Europe , Volume 8, Issue 5/6). Johann Gottfried Herder Institute, Marburg 1982, pp. 235-344.
  • Rudolf M. Wlaschek: Jews in Bohemia. Contributions to the history of European Jewry in the 19th and 20th centuries . Oldenbourg, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55521-9 .
  • Ferdinand Seibt (Ed.): The Jews in the Bohemian countries. Lectures at the conference of the Collegium Carolinum in Bad Wiessee from November 27 to 29, 1981 . Oldenbourg, München 1983, table of contents ; therein: Peter Hilsch : The Jews in Bohemia and Moravia in the Middle Ages and the first privileges (up to the end of the 13th century) , pp. 13–26 ( digitized version ).
  • Michal Frankl: Prague is now anti-Semitic. Czech anti-Semitism at the end of the 19th century (= Studies on Anti-Semitism in Europe , Volume 1). Translated from the Czech by Michael Wögerbauer. Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86331-019-6 .
  • Tatjana Lichtenstein: Českožidovské Listy. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 1: A-Cl. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02501-2 , pp. 486-489.
  • Kateřina Čapková, Hillel J. Kieval (eds.): Between Prague and Nikolsburg. Jewish life in the Czech lands . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2020, ISBN 978-3-525-36427-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dušan Třeštík : Počátky Přemyslovců. Vstup Čechů do dějin (530-935). Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague 1997, ISBN 80-7106-138-7 , p. 350.
  2. ^ Josef Žemlička : Čechy v době knížecí (1034–1198). Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague 1997, ISBN 80-7106-196-4 , p. 212 f.
  3. ↑ Stefan Plaggenborg: Maria Theresa and the Bohemian Jews . In: Bohemia - magazine of history and culture of the Bohemian lands . tape 39 , no. 1 , July 31, 1998, ISSN  0523-8587 , p. 1–16 , doi : 10.18447 / BoZ-1998-589 ( bohemia-online.de [accessed on March 29, 2020]).
  4. ^ Anson Rabinbach : The Migration of Galician Jews to Vienna. Austrian History Yearbook, Volume XI, Berghahn Books / Rice University Press, Houston 1975, p. 45 (Table 1, based on: Overview tables on the statistics of the Austrian monarchy. Directorate of Administrative Statistics, Vienna 1850); Jacob Thon: The Jews in Austria. In: Publications of the Bureau for Statistics of the Jews. No. 4, Verlag L. Lamm, Berlin-Halensee 1908, pp. 6-8; Joseph Buzek: The problem of emigration in Austria. In: Zeitschrift fur Volkswirtschaft, Sozialpolitik und Verwaltung 10, 1901, p. 492.
  5. ↑ psp.cz .
  6. ^ A b The Jewish minority in Czechoslovakia Radio Praha on January 29, 2005
  7. ^ Jews in the first Czechoslovak Republic Kateřina Čapková, portal holcaust.cz on August 27, 2019
  8. ^ The changeable face of exile in Czechoslovakia Radio Praha on April 19, 2008
  9. ↑ a b Anti-Semitism in the second republic portal holcaust.cz on August 27, 2019
  10. ^ Jewish Population of the World (1882 - Present). jewishvirtuallibrary.org; accessed on September 4, 2018
  11. ^ Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic