Israelite Community of Baden

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The synagogue of the IKG Baden at Parkstrasse 17

The Jewish Community of Baden (IKGB) is a Jewish community with orthodox - Ashkenazic rite in the form of a unified community in Baden in Switzerland with over 100 members (October 2010). It has a synagogue with a community center in a prominent location on Parkstrasse opposite the Kurhaus Baden and a cemetery .

The congregation offers a minyan on Friday evenings, on Shabbat morning and on all major holidays , shiurim , lectures and events of all kinds. It is not only a religious but also a “social focal point of the Jewish people living in Baden and the region”. The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Baden is a member of the Swiss Association of Israelites (SIG) .

history

In the 18th century, Jews were only allowed to settle in the county of Baden in Switzerland , and since 1776 only in the two Surbtal farming villages of Endingen and Lengnau . They were regarded as strangers without civil rights, were not allowed to acquire real estate, not join guilds and as a result were largely limited to trading and peddling professions. The canton of Aargau , created in 1803, retained these legal disadvantages in its «Jewish law» of May 5, 1809 and in an amendment law of 1846 with only minor mitigations; the federal constitution of 1848 also denied them civil and religious equality. Only a Federal Council resolution of 1856 granted them civil equality, which was only implemented in Aargau in 1863. However, the freedom of establishment was subject to the approval of the municipal councils until 1862 and remained subject to further restrictions for foreign Jews until 1874.

As a result of special permits, Jews settled in Christian communities outside the two "Jewish villages" since the 1840s, and by 1850 more than 200 Jews, representing 4.8% of the total population, are said to have lived in Baden and Ennetbaden . Seven of these new citizens founded the Cultusverein Baden on June 9, 1859 , which set itself the task of "cultivating the cult, in particular setting up a joint worship service and religious instruction for the youth". A women's association, a charity association and a bowling club soon followed. In the first decades the services were still held in rented rooms. a. in the Bernerhaus and later in the “Kaufhaus Schlossberg” (now Manor ), which initially belonged to the Bernhard Guggenheims family, and in the “Krone” restaurant.

On December 7, 1877, the municipality submitted a request to the government council of the canton of Aargau to approve the construction of its own cemetery, which had already been approved by the local authorities. The interior management approved the request because, on the one hand, for sanitary reasons, the corpses of deceased parishioners were not wanted to the existing Jewish cemetery in Endingen-Lengnau and, on the other hand, it was respected that “Jews cannot understand each other for religious reasons, to entrust their dead to Christian cemeteries ». Approval was given on February 22, 1878 and in 1879 the core property of the cemetery in the Liebenfels district was acquired.

In the years 1887–1889, the Baden community played a prominent role in the attempt to get the Federal Council to repeal the ban on slaughter, which had existed in Aargau since 1854 and which had only provided an exception for the communities of Lengnau and Endingen since 1855. The conviction of three Baden butchers in 1887 for violating this prohibition, but also similar incidents in 1884 in the canton of Bern as well as initiatives by Swiss animal welfare associations for a general ban on slaughter provided the occasion for the Baden initiative, which other communities joined, and which was also supported by a petition from 1047 Jewish citizens from 36 Swiss villages were supported. The Baden community was represented by Herz Naftali Ehrmann (1849–1918), who later also became known as a literary author under his pseudonym «Judäus» , who wrote a pamphlet on animal protection and people during his activity as a rabbi in a Trier community in 1885 -Trutz had identified as an expert, was appointed as district rabbi to Baden in the same year and in 1887 took over the drafting of the petition for the religious community. After extensive statements from doctors and other experts as well as reports from Swiss embassies abroad had been obtained on the regulations there, the Federal Council made the decision in 1889 that slaughtering should not be assessed as cruelty to animals if the appropriate "precautionary and protective measures" were observed It is forbidden to reject it, but the conditions and measures to which the slaughter's permission should be bound are left to local laws and police regulations. With this resolution, the people of Baden saw themselves entitled to apply the exception regulation of 1855 to their community, and were initially successful until, due to a new counter-initiative with Article 25 bis, an unconditional ban on slaughter was included in the federal constitution and the exception regulation from 1855 on 16 March 1894 was abolished by the Aargau Great Council .

The immediate reason for building our own synagogue was a drastic rent increase for the previously used rooms in the "Kaufhaus Schlossberg" in 1910 - on the basis of increased Jewish immigration from Endingen, Lengnau and Eastern Europe. On September 2, 1913, the synagogue - built by the architects Otto Dorer (1851–1920) and Adolf Füchslin (1850–1925) - inaugurated. During the celebration, Mayor Josef Jäger quoted the " Ring Parable " from " Nathan the Wise ". At that time, the religious community had over 300 members, which was also its climax. Soon afterwards the number of members began to decrease, which was mainly due to the fact that numerous Jews moved to Zurich .

In the 1930s, Baden's Jews were also increasingly affected by anti-Semitism . In 1938, the community called for donations to help Jewish refugees who were in financial need. During the Second World War , the women's association of the Kultusgemeinde got involved with Jewish refugees and helped to hide some in private homes. Such a process is described, for example, in the novel Die Wirtin by the author Rosemarie Keller from Baden . At the beginning of the 1950s, the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde was only about a tenth the size of four decades before. The number of members then increased again continuously; in 2013 it was around 140 people. After a 100-year hiatus, the community again had a permanent rabbi from 2004 to 2018 .

literature

  • Josef Bollag: The Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Baden today. In: Badener Neujahrsblätter , 73 (1998), pp. 90–93.
  • Gabrielle Rosenstein (ed.): Jüdische Lebenswelt Schweiz: 100 Years of the Swiss Association of Israelites. Chronos-Verlag, Zurich 2004, p. 144f.
  • Fabian Furter, Bruno Meier , Andrea Schaer, Ruth Wiederkehr: City history of Baden . here + now , Baden 2015, ISBN 978-3-03919-341-7 , p. 206-215 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gabrielle Rosenstein (ed.): Jüdische Lebenswelt Schweiz: 100 Years of the Swiss Association of Israelites. Chronos-Verlag, Zurich 2004, p. 144.
  2. ↑ Member communities. Swiss Association of Israelites (SIG) , accessed on July 13, 2017 .
  3. ^ Ernst Haller: The legal position of the Jews in the canton of Aargau. Dissertation from the University of Lausanne, HR Sauerländer & Co., Aarau 1900, p. 6ff., P. 25ff., P. 58ff., P. 235ff.
  4. ↑ a b Ron Epstein-Mill: The Synagogues of Switzerland: Buildings between Emancipation, Assimilation and Acculturation. Chronos, Zurich 2008, p. 183.
  5. ^ Quoted by Fritz Wyler: The constitutional position of the Israelite religious cooperatives in Switzerland. Tschudy, Glarus 1929. (= Glarner contributions to history, law and economics, issue 10), p. 134.
  6. ^ IV. Federal Council decision of March 17, 1889, in: Carl Hilty (Ed.): Political Yearbook of the Swiss Confederation , 5th year, Bern 1890, pp. 1097–1123; on this Ernst Haller: The legal position of the Jews in the canton of Aargau. Dissertation from the University of Lausanne, HR Sauerländer & Co., Aarau 1900, p. 305ff .; Augusta Steinberg: History of the Jews in Switzerland from the 16th century to after emancipation. Schweizerischer Israelitischer Gemeindeverbund, Goldach 1970, p. 247 ff .; Aram Mattioli : Anti-Semitism in Switzerland, 1848–1960. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1998, p. 227 ff .; Pascal Krauthammer: The slaughter ban in Switzerland 1854-2000: The slaughter question between animal protection, politics and xenophobia. Schulthess, Zurich 2000 (= Zurich studies on legal history, volume 42), p. 38 ff.
  7. ^ Ernst Haller: The legal position of the Jews in the canton of Aargau. Dissertation from the University of Lausanne, HR Sauerländer & Co., Aarau 1900, p. 308f.
  8. ^ Return: City History of Baden. P. 212.