Groeschler House

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The Gröschlerhaus in Jever

The GröschlerHaus - Center for Jewish History and Contemporary History of the Region is an extracurricular learning location in the district town of Jever . It stands on the foundation walls of the synagogue that was burned down by the local National Socialists , the associated mikveh and the Jewish school of Jever.

Surname

The name of the GröschlerHaus is reminiscent of Hermann and Julius Gröschler. The two brothers were the last heads of the Jever synagogue community and were murdered by the National Socialists in the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps .

organization

The sponsor of the GröschlerHaus is the Zweckverband Schlossmuseum Jever, to which the district of Friesland, the city of Jever and the antiquity and local history association merged in 1991. Antje Sander is the managing director. Members of the GröschlerHaus working group in the Jeverland Antiquities and Heritage Association look after the facility on a voluntary basis.

Conception

The GröschlerHaus sees itself as a “center for Jewish history and contemporary history in the Friesland / Wilhelmshaven region”. On 140 square meters on the ground floor, the working group is showing an exhibition "On the history of the Jews of Jevers" on 54 panels. The panels were created by the “Jews in Jever” working group in 1984 for a show. They were last seen in 2006 in the city church. They are only to be shown temporarily and will be revised soon. The remains of the mikveh and the teaching room of the Jewish school are also accessible as part of a guided tour. Further exhibitions, themed evenings on the history of the Jewish community and the Nazi regime in Jever as well as student projects complete the offer. Video and audio stations, PC workstations, an audiovisual presentation wall and a media library are available for this purpose.

Building history

The Jeversche Synagogue around 1889. Drawing in the shop window of the GröschlerHaus.

The Jeversian Jews tried to set up a prayer room since 1725. This was denied to them by the state rule until the end of the 18th century. In 1779 the Jews were finally able to inaugurate their first synagogue in a barn converted for this purpose.

Around 1800 the community was able to acquire the property on Große Wasserpfortstraße. In 1802 she built a new synagogue building there. For this, the community was dependent on the financial support of the state administration. This provided a loan of 1,000 Reichstalers. After 1825, the building was threatened with loss as the community was no longer able to pay its debts. This situation only changed in 1832/33 after the community received a gift from a Jewish merchant. In 1842 the synagogue was refurbished after a state loan was granted.

At the end of the 19th century the synagogue was too small for the Jever community. In 1880 she had the building demolished and a new building with a Moorish glass dome erected on the same site. The Grand Duke of Oldenburg granted a grant for this construction and the mayor of Jever laid the foundation stone. After its inauguration, to which the Oldenburg Minister of Culture also traveled, the synagogue was considered to be “the most stylish in the Oldenburg region”. A few hundred Christian residents took part in the opening celebrations on November 25, 1880.

During the time of National Socialism, strangers threw the windows in several times. The congregation was too poor to repair them, so that services could not be held at times. On the night of November 9th to November 10th, 1938, local National Socialists burned down the synagogue during the November pogroms from 4 a.m. The fire brigade, which was informed in advance, limited its activities to securing the neighboring buildings. A ruin remained of the synagogue. In 1939 a building contractor bought the property and had the ruins demolished.

Stairway to the mikveh
Memorial plaque from 1978

In 1953, the master plumber Kurt Knorr had a clinker brick office built on the foundation walls. He did not have the preserved cellar vaults with the remains of the mikveh filled in or torn down, but simply built over. Knorr then used some of the premises itself and rented other parts of the building to a book and stationery store. It was no longer possible to tell that the synagogue once stood there until a memorial plaque was attached to the house on Wasserpfortstrasse 19 in 1978. After the closure of the book and stationery shop, the Zweckverband Schlossmuseum finally rented the premises on the ground floor for one year in spring 2014 and opened the “GröschlerHaus” there on September 28, 2014 in collaboration with the “Jews in Jever” working group.

After around seven months of renovation and renovation, the information center was reopened on April 15, 2018 with the special exhibition "80 years after the Nazi pogrom - the Jever synagogue and its destruction in 1938". The comprehensive renovation cost a total of around 180,000 euros, which was raised with the help of the “Hanna and Elfriede Heeren Foundation” and the EU funding program “Leader North Sea Marshes”.

During the renovation of the building, further fragments of the old synagogue were made visible. For example, the floor plans of the synagogue were drawn on the ground floor and in the adjacent courtyard in order to make the size of the synagogue visible. The former mikvah in the cellar can be seen through glass panes embedded in the floor. A showcase shows artifacts found during the renovation, such as floor tiles, cornices and charred wood residues. The school extension that has been preserved is also part of the exhibition. In the special exhibition for the reopening, a scroll that has been kept in the Torah shrine of the Jever synagogue since the 18th century is presented. It survived the National Socialist era and came into the possession of the Jewish community in Oldenburg. She made this available to the GröschlerHaus working group for the time of the special exhibition.

Honors

In January 2017, the research duo Hartmut Peters and Volker Landig from the GröschlerHaus working group in the Jeverland Antiquities and Local History Association received the German Jewish History Award from the American Obermayer Foundation. The award ceremony took place in the Berlin House of Representatives, recognizing her services to research into the Jewish past of Jever and to the founding of the Gröschler House in Jever. The Obermayer Award , initiated by the German-born Jew Arthur S. Obermayer (1931–2016), is the highest distinction for Germans who have made outstanding contributions to preserving the memory of the Jewish past.

literature

  • Hartmut Peters: Risen from the ruins of oblivion . In: Ostfreesland - Calendar for Ostfriesland 2019 , Ostfriesland Verlag - SKN Druck und Verlag, Norden 2018, ISBN 978-3-944841-50-2 , p. 120 ff.

Web links

Commons : GröschlerHaus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e GröschlerHaus.eu working group: Welcome . Retrieved October 19, 2015
  2. ↑ a b c Jeversches Wochenblatt from June 18, 2014: Maybe soon Gröschler House . Retrieved October 19, 2015.
  3. ↑ a b Melanie Hanz: Reception with many descendants . In: Nordwest-Zeitung of September 23, 2014. Retrieved October 19, 2015.
  4. ↑ a b Jeversches Wochenblatt of June 19, 2014: Moorish dome over the roofs of the old town.Retrieved on October 19, 2015.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Werner Meiners, Hartmut Peters: Jever . 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. 908-928.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Allemannia Judaica: Jever (district of Friesland / Lower Saxony). Jewish history / prayer room / synagogue . Retrieved October 19, 2015.
  7. ↑ Jonas Gebauer: The old cellar holds secrets . In: Nordwest-Zeitung of July 30, 2014. Retrieved October 19, 2015.
  8. ^ Helmut "Theo" Bath: Trade in Transition . Ed .: Jeverländischer Altertums- und Heimatverein eV Brune-Mettcker Druck- und Verlags-GmbH, Jever 2018, ISBN 978-3-87542-096-8 , p. 93 .
  9. ↑ a b Jeversches Wochenblatt of April 16, 2018: History of a destroyed synagogue - reopening: Special exhibition with display boards, video station and artifacts in the Gröschler House , accessed on February 18, 2019
  10. ↑ Wilhelmshavener Zeitung of January 25, 2017: Research duo receives the highest award , accessed on February 18, 2019

Coordinates: 53 ° 34 '23.12 "  N , 7 ° 53' 51.05"  E