Jewish community Fritzlar

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The history of the Jewish community in the north Hessian town of Fritzlar ( Schwalm-Eder district ) goes back far into the Middle Ages, is punctuated by the eviction or destruction of the community at least three times and ended during the Nazi era .

Community history until 1933

A Jewish community existed in Fritzlar as early as the Middle Ages. Today it is assumed that the first settlement of Jews in Fritzlar probably took place in 1096. The "Judengasse" laid out during the tenure of the Archbishop of Mainz Adalbert I of Saarbrücken (1111–1137) in the course of the rebuilding of the city indicates that a large number of people were already living in the city at this time and probably also in a special alley had to live. Around 1200 it is documented that the city lord, the Archbishop of Mainz, levied taxes on the city's Jews, the so-called Judenregal . Such a taxation of Fritzlar Jews is also attested in the year 1336: Archbishop Balduin von Trier , administrator of the Archdiocese of Mainz, paid his interest on this tax to the Burgmann Konrad III. von Falkenberg as security for sums owed. The Jewish families lived in particular or even exclusively in what was then "Judengasse" (today's Martinsgasse), which is called 1344, 1367 and 1387. It was located in the part of the old town that was expanded in the first half of the 13th century after it was destroyed by Konrad von Thuringia in 1232, between today's Kasseler Strasse and Jordansgasse. This community was expelled or destroyed during the so-called plague pogroms in 1348/49.

Only 30 years later, in 1379, Jews are mentioned again in the city. A document from 1393 states that the Jews are and should continue to be considered citizens as they have been for ages. In 1426 a "Judenborn" is mentioned, which indicates that Jews were not allowed to get their water from the same well as the Christian inhabitants. In 1463 Fritzlarer Neustadt, which was founded in 1280 and was legally independent until the 16th century, received the right to accept Jews. But as early as 1467 there was a renewed conflict between the city and the Jewish population, and after 1469 most of them left the city, although Archbishop Adolf II of Mainz did not officially expel all Jews from the territory of his archbishopric until the next year . In 1470, however, a Sofer (Torah writer ) named Isaak is mentioned, who referred to the Fritzlar Jews as a community (" Kehillah "). In the following centuries only a few Jewish families lived in Fritzlar: in 1648 six families, in 1676/79 three families, in 1744 one family.

It was not until the 19th century that a new Jewish community was founded, which then grew very quickly. In 1804 there were only eleven Jewish residents in four families. In 1827 there were already 110, i.e. H. 3.8% of a total of 2,882 inhabitants. The further development was as follows:

year Residents,
total 		Jewish
residents 		Share
in percent
1827 2,882 110 3.8%
1861 2,869 108 3.8%
1871 2,925 131 4.5%
1885 3,239 163 5.0%
1890 3,232 146 4.5%
1905 3,448 148 4.3%
1925 3,888 about 150 approx. 3.9%
1932 4,200 140 3.3%
1933 4,239 128 3.0%
1939 6,468 30th 0.5%
1942 ... 0 0.0%

The majority of the parishioners were in trade and small businesses, but there were also a number of academically trained professionals such as doctors and dentists. It is interesting that in 1821 a Jew from Fritzlar, Joseph Rubino , received his doctorate in Marburg and was admitted to the Philipps University there as a private lecturer , but could not become a professor without being baptized .

The congregation was not of one mind on all questions, and parts of it tended to have a less orthodox interpretation of their beliefs. For the district rabbi of the Fritzlar and Melsungen districts , Mordechai Wetzlar (1801–1878), appointed in 1830 , the Jewish community in Fritzlar was too liberal , and he therefore preferred to reside in the town of Gudensberg , 9 km away . In the middle of the 19th century there was even a temporary split in the community. Radical reformers from around 20 wealthy families wanted to found their own community in 1849 with its own cult and rejecting Kabbalah and Talmud . They called themselves "New Religious Society" and appointed their own teacher. However, this was not recognized by the state rabbinate and the Hessian government. In 1851 the head of the community, the merchant David Stern, succeeded in re-integrating the New Religious Society into the community.

Neighboring places

The Jewish Cemetery in Unthought (2015)

The Jewish community of Fritzlar also included the few Jewish residents living in the neighboring villages of Cappel and Wabern . In Cappel there were two people in 1835, nine in 1861 and eight in 1905; In Wabern there were two Jewish residents in 1861 and eleven in 1911. Since the middle of the 19th century, the Jews living in Obermöllrich were also part of the Fritzlar community; there were 26 in 1835 and 33 in 1861.

The Jewish community in the immediate Unthanken was quite large in the 19th century (74 Jews were recorded in 1861) and independent; she had her own synagogue, school and cemetery since 1864. Towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, however, this community shrank considerably due to emigration and relocation, especially to Fritzlar and Kassel, so that by 1915 only two Jewish families could be found in the village.

Facilities

Nothing is known of a synagogue in Fritzlar in the Middle Ages or the early modern period, and in the 18th century the services were held in a prayer room in a private house. However , a mikveh , a ritual bath, existed and proves the existence of a community with its own facilities.

The Jewish cemetery on Schladenweg in Fritzlar (2015)

However, since at least 1827 the community had its own synagogue and, since 1868, its own Jewish religious and elementary school . The building was on Untere Nikolausstrasse and housed the school on the ground floor and the prayer room on the upper floor. A Jewish cemetery has existed on today's Schladenweg since 1733. It is noteworthy that the Fritzlar mayor, after cemeteries for all denominations could or should be created jointly for all denominations due to the Hessian religious law of October 29, 1848, submitted an application to the higher administrative authority of the Fritzlar district that the Jewish community not because of their special ritual needs only to leave their own cemetery, but also to agree to an expansion. This was allowed. The cemetery was heavily devastated in 1943, but repaired by the city administration after 1945. The area of ​​the cemetery is 48 ares . A total of 153 tombstones ( Mazewa ) are available there today , dating from the occupation period from 1733 to 1937 and 1947/48. (The people buried there in 1947/48 died in the Fritzlar DP camp set up in the Watter barracks after the end of the war .)

The teacher employed by the community was both prayer leader and schochet (butcher). Around 1925 the elementary school was attended by 16 children, in 1932 by 11 children in four classes. In terms of associations, there was the Israelite Women's Association founded in 1843, the Old Men’s Association and the Young Men’s Association (in 1932 only the Israelite Men’s Association), and the association “Humanity”, founded in 1896, whose task was to support needy and sick community members.

New synagogue

The old synagogue on Nikolausstrasse was in such bad shape around 1890 that the community planned to build a new synagogue and a new schoolhouse. David Meyerhoff, the elder of the Jewish community in Fritzlar and head of the Fritzlar district for 40 years, therefore requested permission to build a new synagogue in a petition to the regional council in Kassel on September 3, 1893. The district administrator in Fritzlar was commissioned by the regional council in November 1893 to initiate construction. At the same time, the community was given six weeks to put the school building in an acceptable condition. Since the community was wealthy and debt free, it was supposed to pay for it itself. Nevertheless, it took a long time before the municipality, also under pressure from the regional council and the district administrator, on a suitable building plot on the site of the former "Small Curia in der Holzgasse" ("curia parva in der Holzgassen") Northeast corner of Holzgasse (today Neustädter Straße) and Judengasse and could acquire this.

construction

The foundation stone was laid on July 10, 1896 . The new schoolhouse on Nikolausstrasse, on the corner of Judengasse, whose property was adjacent to that of the new synagogue, was already under construction. On June 30, 1897, the synagogue was inaugurated by the district rabbi Isaak Prager from Kassel. The city authorities, churches and the population took an active part in the celebration, and the city had put on garlands and flags. The Torah scrolls were carried in solemn procession from the old to the new synagogue.

The new building was a massive two-story sandstone building in the neo-Romanesque style with a gable roof and a rectangular floor plan. It was undoubtedly based on the style of the synagogue built by Albrecht Rosengarten in Kassel. The portal on the western gable side to Holzgasse and all windows had large round arches. The synagogue had a single nave with a women's gallery . The south facade to Judengasse was divided by two smaller gables. Behind the synagogue was the school, which had meanwhile been completed, with the entrance from Nikolausstrasse; the school yard was between the two buildings.

destruction

Memorial plaque on the monastery district wall across from the former synagogue

In the late evening of November 8, 1938, during the November 1938 pogroms organized by the NSDAP , there were violent riots against Jewish residents of the city and a serious attack on the synagogue. Most of the people carted in from neighboring villages stood out, as well as a number of SA and SS members from Arolsen in civilian clothes , supported by local NSDAP and SA men (and the next morning by the Hitler Youth ; Fritzlar SA men also became used outside of town in Homberg , Zwesten and Ungedanken to harass the Jewish population there). Initially, they looted and ransacked the businesses and homes of Jewish citizens and mistreated those who could not get to safety from compassionate residents in time. Then they broke into the synagogue and school, demolished the interior, looted, and smeared the walls. The Torah scrolls were dragged out and rolled down the sloping road; the next morning Hitler Youth drove their bicycles back and forth over them. A fire was set in the synagogue, but it did not burn down, although the fire service did not intervene.

Although the building was by no means irreparably damaged, the government ordered the demolition, which was completed in late February 1939. Today a memorial plaque on the opposite wall reminds of the disappeared synagogue.

Between 10 and 15 Jewish residents were taken into so-called protective custody on the same night or the following morning , locked in the station building and then taken to concentration camps , mostly to Buchenwald , but later released (after paying travel expenses).

Downfall of the community

As early as 1933, part of the Jewish community moved or emigrated due to increasing disenfranchisement and reprisals by the new government and local authorities. By the end of 1935, 30 Jews had already left the city. In 1936 and 1937 another 36 left, mostly to the United States. The events of 8./9. November 1938 then led to increased emigration and emigration, as far as that was still possible. In 1939 there were only 30 Jewish residents in Fritzlar. The last of them were deported to Riga , Majdanek and Theresienstadt in the three large deportation campaigns of the remaining Jews from the old districts of Ziegenhain , Melsungen and Fritzlar-Homberg in 1941/42 and murdered in the extermination camps; among them were the last prayer leader and teacher of the community, Gustav Kron , and his wife. Of the Jewish people born in Fritzlar and / or who lived there for a long time, at least 43 died during the Nazi era; the oldest was born in 1869, the youngest in 1932.

Today only the large Jewish cemetery on Schladenweg, some street names (e.g., "Judengasse", "Jordan") in the old town and a memorial plaque at the site of the destroyed synagogue and the recently designed so-called stumbling blocks (paving stones with a brass plate on which the names of the murdered Jews were engraved) to these former citizens.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg Landau, The Hessian Knight Castles and their Owners, Kassel, 1836 (p. 51)
  2. ↑ Demandt, 1974, p. 29.
  3. ↑ Monika Richarz: The entry of the Jews into the academic professions; Jewish students and academics in Germany 1678-1848, series of scientific papers by the Leo Baeck Institute No. 28, JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen, 1974, ISBN 978-3-16-835162-7 , p. 126
  4. ^ Unthoughts, Schwalm-Eder district. Historical local dictionary for Hesse (as of March 27, 2014). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on January 24, 2016 .
  5. ↑ This is the street that is still called Judengasse today, not the former street of the same name that is now called Martinsgasse.
  6. ↑ Information based on the lists from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem

literature

  • Dagmar and Clemens Lohmann: The fate of the Jewish community in Fritzlar 1933-1945. The Pogrom Night 1938. (Contributions to the history of the city, No. 5), Geschichtsverein Fritzlar, Fritzlar 1988
  • Paulgerhard Lohmann and Jechiel Ogdan: Jewish culture in Fritzlar. (Contributions to the history of the city, No. 13), Geschichtsverein Fritzlar, Fritzlar 1999
  • Paulgerhard Lohmann: The anti-Jewish NS-Rassenwahn and the Fritzlar Jews 1933-1949, 2nd edition, Books on Demand, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8334-7504-7
  • Paulgerhard Lohmann: Here we were at home, Books on Demand, 2003, ISBN 978-3-8311-4579-9
  • Paulgerhard Lohmann: Jewish fellow citizens in Fritzlar 1933-1949, Books on Demand, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8334-4417-3
  • Karl E. Demandt: Fritzlar in its heyday. Marburg Row 5; Trautvetter & Fischer Nachf., Marburg and Witzenhausen 1974, ISBN 3-87822-051-0
  • Anke Schwarz: Jewish communities between civil emancipation and the authoritarian state. Studies on the demands and reality of Jewish life in small towns in Hesse in the 19th century. (Writings of the Commission for the History of the Jews in Hesse , Vol. 19), Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 978-3-921434-23-9

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 7 ′ 51.96 "  N , 9 ° 16 ′ 31.3"  E