Higher Israelite School

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Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 41.3 "  N , 12 ° 21 ′ 59.7"  E

The building of the former Israelite High School built in 1913, 2008

The Higher Israelite School (also Ephraim-Carlebach School , also known as Carlebach School and Carlebach School ) was a private general education school in Leipzig . It was the first Jewish school in Saxony. The German Central Library for the Blind in Leipzig has been located in the school building since 1953 .

history

The school was founded in 1912 by the Lübeck- born teacher and rabbi Ephraim Carlebach (1879–1936), who had directed the religious school of the Talmud Torah Association in Leipzig since 1900.

In the Israelite religious community, which developed into the sixth largest in Germany, the desire for its own Jewish school had grown in the first decade of the 20th century. Jewish children attended public schools during this time. “A Jewish school in which children would be free from classes on Sabbath and feast days, in which there could be no gaps between Jewish and non-Jewish students and in which all Jewish subjects would be included in the general school schedule, was religious in the eyes of the school minded Jews of Leipzig the desirable and necessary solution to the problem of children, ”wrote Simson Jakob Kreutner, who attended school, in Mein Leipzig (1992).

In 1912 the school was founded as the sixth secondary school in the city and a secondary school for girls; Ephraim Carlebach became director. Initially, classes were held in two separate buildings. In 1913 the school moved into a newly built building on Gustav-Adolf-Straße. The school received financial support from an international donation fund. In 1914 the "Israelitische Schulverein" was founded, which took over the sponsorship of the school. Ephraim Carlebach chaired the club. The college consisted of Jewish and non-Jewish teachers. Among them were twelve teachers and five teachers in 1915. Initially, boys and girls were taught separately until they graduated from secondary school, later coeducation was introduced.

With the beginning of National Socialism and the enactment of the Racial Law in 1935, which forbade Jewish pupils from attending “Aryan” schools and prevented their admission to high schools, the number of pupils at the higher Israelite school grew. It was excruciatingly tight. The school was also hindered in its work by the school authorities. In 1933, Ephraim Carlebach had to share the management of the school with the new deputy Erich Meyer , the head of the cell of the Nazi teachers' union at the school. On November 26, 1934, Ephraim Carlebach was given a temporary leave of absence. He emigrated to Palestine in 1936 ; his nephew Felix F. Carlebach and his wife Babette continued to teach. In the same year the school was given the honorary name Ephraim Carlebach School .

The official business of Carlebach took over Siegfried Weikersheimer as a representative. Weikersheimer came on the recommendation of Professor Ismar Elbogen . The community council of the Leipzig religious community elected Weikersheimer on December 20, 1934 "without the votes of the Zionist community councilors as director of the school and community officials". During the pogrom night on November 9, 1938, the school was devastated. Director Weikersheimer was arrested and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. On December 9, 1938, Weikersheimer and his wife Regina received a temporary residence permit for England with the help of the organization “Chief Rabbis for Religious Emergency Fund for German and Austrian Jewry”. Weikersheimer died in Birmingham on October 10, 1947, at the age of 56, of “the consequences of a kidney disease that he acquired in a concentration camp”.

Weikersheimer's successor, Daniel Katzmann, was a victim of the Holocaust in Auschwitz in 1943 . During his tenure, from 1939 onwards, the school became partially and later entirely a Jewish house ; after all, 206 people lived here. In 1942, classes were given up after a secret decree on June 30, 1942 prescribed the closure of all Jewish schools.

The building was confiscated in 1943 and badly damaged by bombing in the same year. The ruin was reconstructed in 1953; In 1954, the German Central Library for the Blind in Leipzig moved into the building. The library was subordinated to the Ministry of Culture of the GDR in 1955 , taken over by the Free State of Saxony in 1990 and has been run as a state enterprise of the Free State of Saxony since 2003. An exhibition in the library recalls the history of the Israelite High School.

literature

  • Sabine Niemann (editor): The Carlebachs, a family of rabbis from Germany , Ephraim Carlebach Foundation (ed.). Dölling and Galitz. Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-926174-99-4
  • Barbara Kowalzik: The Jewish School Work in Leipzig - 1912–1933 . Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-412-03902-0
  • Barbara Kowalzik: Teacher's book: the teachers of the Leipzig Jewish school works, 1912-1942. Presented in biograms. Leipzig University Press 2006
  • Simson Jakob Kreutner: My Leipzig - Memory of the Jews in my city . Sachsenbuch Leipzig 1992, ISBN 3-910148-51-4
  • The future needs memories - the Carlebach School in Leipzig , available in the Leipzig School Museum
  • Marco Helbig: Ephraim Carlebach. Rabbis and school principals between orthodoxy, liberalism and patriotism. Verlag für Alternative Energierecht (VAE), Leipzig 2016, ISBN 978-3-941780-13-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sabine Niemann (editor): The Carlebachs, a rabbi family from Germany , Ephraim Carlebach Foundation (ed.). Dölling and Galitz. Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-926174-99-4 , p. 45.
  2. ↑ Marco Helbig: On the 80th anniversary of Dr. E. Carlebach. Citizens' Association Waldstraßenviertel, accessed on July 21, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Barbara Kowalzik: Teacher's book: the teachers of the Leipzig Jewish school works, 1912-1942. Presented in biograms. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2006, p. 238.
  4. ↑ Barbara Kowalzik: Teacher's book […]. 2006, p. 238.
  5. ↑ Barbara Kowalzik: Teacher's book […]. 2006, p. 238
  6. ↑ Barbara Kowalzik: Teacher's book […]. 2006, p. 238.
  7. ↑ Barbara Kowalzik: Teacher's book […]. 2006, p. 239
  8. ↑ Barbara Kowalzik: Teacher's book […]. 2006, p. 239.