Jewish community Hamm (Sieg)

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Relic of the former synagogue, now let into Synagogenplatz

The Jewish community of Hamm in the Altenkirchen (Westerwald) district in Rhineland-Palatinate was probably established in the 17th century when the local authorities settled protective Jews . However, it experienced a gradual decline due to emigration and emigration in the second half of the 19th century. The Jewish community went out in the wake of German Jews deported in the Nazi era . The local community of Hamm keeps the memory of them alive with Synagogenplatz and KulturHausHamm / Sieg .

history

A Jewish community existed in Hamm until 1938/40. Its origin goes back to the 17th / 18th centuries. Century back. For the first time in 1663 a Jewish resident is mentioned on site, a Jud Lazarus from Gladenbach . After 1675, other Jewish families settled there. In 1789 four Jewish families were counted who had received letters of protection ( Judenregal ) from the Counts of Sayn .

In the 19th century the number of Jewish inhabitants developed as follows: In 1800 there were seven Jewish families with 46 people in Hamm, in 1846 48 Jewish inhabitants, in 1857 51 (in eleven households), 1858 58, 1880 98 and 1895 99. The Until the first half of the 19th century, Jewish residents lived mainly from trade and slaughter, sometimes in very poor conditions.

After the construction of the first Hammer Synagogue in 1813, all members only gathered in Hamm on public holidays. However, the Jewish cemetery in Hamm was considered a good place for all Jewish citizens between Dattesfeld and Kirchen (Sieg) . The weekly church services were also held in Rosbach (Windeck) and in Betzdorf in smaller prayer rooms. The second Hammer Synagogue was built in 1894 after the synagogue had been approved as a representative building project in the German Empire, in the style of orientalizing historicism .

Initially, the Jewish people living in Hamm formed a community together with those in Altenkirchen. After the middle of the 19th century there were efforts to form a community with the seat in Hamm together with the Jewish people living in Wissen, Betzdorf and Kirchen.

Relic of the former synagogue Hamm / Sieg on today's Synagogenplatz

On the basis of the Prussian Jewish edict of 1812 , the district government of the Rhine Province in Koblenz tried to combine the small synagogue communities into larger units. It was intended a merger in the form of the Altenkirchen office, against which the community in Hamm and Wissen defended itself. So it came to the creation of the two synagogue communities Hamm and Altenkirchen (Westerwald) , which also included Schöneberg and Mehren.

After several applications, this was approved by the government in Koblenz in 1876. The Jewish community in Hamm was constituted in 1883 and had a total of 98 members at that time. In 1883 it consisted of ten parishioners in Wissen (1924 10, 1932 11 Jewish residents), 13 in Betzdorf (1924 35, 1932 43 Jewish residents) and five in Kirchen (1924 5 Jewish residents). Facilities included a synagogue, a Jewish school, a ritual bath and a cemetery. A teacher was employed to take care of religious tasks for the community, who was also active as a prayer leader and schochet . In 1903 JH Stamm was named, in 1932 Emanuel Springer.

Around 1924, when the community consisted of around 60 people, the Jewish associations included the Israelite Women's Association (founded in 1885) and the Israelite Men's Association (Chewra Kadischa), both to support those in need.

National Socialist Persecution

In 1933 there were still around 60 Jewish people living in Hamm. In the following years, part of the Jewish community members moved away or emigrated due to the consequences of the economic boycott , increasing disenfranchisement and reprisals. The long-time community leader Max Hirsch left the community in 1937. In 1935 the community (with Wissen, Betzdorf and churches) still had 70 members, in 1938 58 members. During the November pogrom of 1938 , the synagogue was destroyed by SA men and National Socialists ; The houses of the Jewish families were also attacked. The Jewish men were deported to the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps. The last Jewish shops had to close on November 12, 1938.

Of the Jewish people born in Hamm and / or who lived there for a long time, 31 died during the Nazi era. The information according to the lists of Yad Vashem , Jerusalem and the "Memorial Book - Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933-1945" are possibly inaccurate, as only partially clear between Hamm ( North Rhine-Westphalia ) and Hamm ( Victory) was distinguished.

Memorials

The former Jewish cemetery in the direction of the Thalhauser Mühle has been a listed building since 1985. World icon

With the KulturHausHamm on the redesigned Synagogenplatz, the local community of Hamm is commemorating its former Jewish fellow citizens. The renovated old building is the former residential building of the Jewish family David, located in the immediate vicinity of the destroyed synagogue, the floor plan of which is represented in a simplified manner by the offset paving. During excavations, the remains of a medieval Jewish bath were discovered and exposed.

The KulturhausHamm is supposed to document the changeful tradition of the community; an exhibition room on the first floor of the old building serves this purpose. New and old buildings as well as the glass area between the new building are provided with a three-part installation by the sculptor Erwin Wortelkamp , who was born in Hamm ,

  • the "head piece" (on the gable wall of the David House) as a "form of memory", taking up the "nameless heads on the western facades of Romanesque churches",
  • the sentence “Houses have an outside and an inside - they contain history and give space to the future” and
  • a "wall piece" , a white woodwork (430 × 30 cm) in the upper third of the open space between the new building

There is also a metal sculpture by Erwin Wortelkamp from 1978 on Synagogenplatz.

See also

KulturHausHamm - The David House
Hamm / Sieg, today's synagogue square with the paving that indicates the former synagogue location and a sculpture v. Erwin Wortelkamp

→ List of former synagogues in the Westerwald

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bautz.
  1. ^ Judaica-alemannia - history of the Jewish community Hamm / Sieg.
  2. ^ Judaica-alemannia - history of the Jewish community Hamm / Sieg.
  3. ^ Judaica-alemannia - history of the Jewish community Hamm / Sieg.
  4. ^ Judaica-alemannia - history of the Jewish community Hamm / Sieg.
  5. ^ Judaica-alemannia - history of the Jewish community Hamm / Sieg.
  • Erwin Wortelkamp: On the “Trilogy” at the KulturHausHamm / Sieg . (Brochure)
  1. ^ Wortelkamp, ​​brochure.