Deer Alexander

Hirsch Alexander (* 1790 in Moisling ; † December 20, 1842 in Lübeck ) was a Lübeck police officer and the first Jew in the Lübeck civil service .

Life

Hirsch Alexander was born in the then Danish village of Moisling at the gates of Lübeck and belonged to the village's Orthodox Jewish community. As a young man he went to Sweden and was a soldier in the Swedish army.

After Lübeck was incorporated into the French Empire , Alexander returned to Lübeck in 1811 and joined the French army as a deputy for the conscripted citizen Gustav Joachim Hoyer (1792–1849). He returned to the city in December 1813 and was hired on January 1, 1814 as one of five police officers. On April 1, 1814, he took his oath of service and thus received the permanent position as a city official.

This process was unprecedented, since Jews in Lübeck - with the exception of the years 1811 to 1813, when the French Civil Code was in force in the city - were considered largely unlawful, tolerated aliens whose residence and life were subject to severe restrictions. The acceptance of a Jew into the civil service was a unique exception. Neither before nor after the appointment did Hirsch Alexander deny his belonging to the Jewish faith and never converted to the Lutheran Christianity that was prevalent in Lübeck .

From 1814 Alexander lived with Anna Catharina Reimers , the Evangelical Lutheran daughter of a citizen of Lübeck, with whom he had two sons and five daughters until 1829 (an eighth child did not survive childhood). This community was necessarily illegitimate, as so-called mixed marriages between Jews and Christians were not permitted under current Lübeck law. Alexander's request to the council to marry Anna Catharina Reimers with special permission was rejected on December 22, 1824. However, Alexander's cohabitation with Anna Catharina Reimers was expressly recognized as legal by the council , so that the children could be baptized in the cathedral . It was also thanks to his position as a municipal civil servant that Alexander was not forcibly resettled to Moisling in 1824 like most of the Jews living in Lübeck .

By illness, giving it considerable doctor - and medication costs caused fell Alexander 1837 in severe financial straits and into debt. He was forced to apply to the city for financial support. The council then determined that Hirsch Alexander was a deserving civil servant, eager police officer and dutiful family man, took over part of the debt and made an interest-free loan available for the rest . Nevertheless, his financial situation remained tense; he had to sell his house on Königstrasse and move with his family into a smaller apartment, in which he lived until his death on December 20, 1842.

literature

• Albrecht Schreiber: Between the Star of David and the Double Eagle - Illustrated Chronicle of the Jews in Moisling and Lübeck . Archive of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, 1992. ISBN 3-7950-3107-9
• Peter Guttkuhn: The history of the Jews in Moisling and Lübeck . From the beginnings in 1656 to emancipation in 1852. Archive of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, 2nd edition 2007. ISBN 978-3-7950-0468-2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Church district archive of the Schleswig-Flensburg church district, Treia Book of the Dead 1763–1854, Fiche No. 1.4 / 9+, page 888