Hanau Jewish community

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The Jewish community in Hanau was founded three times and destroyed twice by pogroms - once in the late Middle Ages and the other time during the Nazi era .

Medieval community

The origins of the first Jewish community in Hanau are in the dark. The oldest documents that prove its existence are based on an already existing community and date from the beginning of the 14th century (the oldest surviving dates from 1313). This small community had a synagogue and a cemetery , which has nothing to do with the one that still exists today, but is to be assumed about one kilometer southeast of the preserved one, where the field name "Alter Judenkirchhof" existed.

Members of the city's first Jewish community were persecuted and killed in the plague pogroms of 1349. It is not known whether the pogrom was initiated or promoted by the Hanau rulers , but Ulrich III benefited . von Hanau benefited significantly from this by appropriating Jewish property, including the synagogue. He further claimed that the fire in the Hanau town hall in 1351 was due to arson by Jews, and under this pretext he was granted new rights by Emperor Charles IV in 1351, including in a document that granted him a comprehensive collection of Jews in his rule and beyond . From now on there was no longer a Jewish community in the city of Hanau; only individual families can be proven up to modern times.

Church of the modern age

Count Philipp Ludwig II of Hanau-Munzenberg
Hanau Ghetto Wall
South-east corner of the old town fortifications with the remainder of the witch or thief tower , in which the temporary synagogue was located from 1605 to 1608
Memorial stone for the synagogue which was destroyed in 1938 and which stood on the opposite side of the street (Nordstrasse 40)

In December 1603, Count Philipp Ludwig II issued a privilege to settle a Jewish community in Hanau as part of his economic development policy for the County of Hanau-Munzenberg . The Judengasse (today: Nordstraße ) was built between the old and new towns in the area of ​​the Zwinger of the old town fortifications . The community was directly subordinate to the count's administration, not one of the two city administrations of the old or new town of Hanau.

In 1605 the community received a room in the “witch tower” or “thief tower” of the fortifications of the old town of Hanau, adjoining Judengasse , until the new synagogue was opened in 1608 on the opposite side of (today's) Nordstraße . The community of 159 people at the time also built the Jewish cemetery in Hanau , which is still preserved today . Hanau developed into a center for Jewish book printing in the 17th and 18th centuries. After the opening of the Hanau Ghetto at the beginning of the 19th century as part of the emancipation of the Jews , the community grew to 540 people in 1822 (4% of the total population); The provincial rabbinate was established here in 1823. The synagogue stayed in its original location, but a community hall was later acquired at Nürnberger Straße 3. The Jewish community school has also been located here since 1890. The community reached its largest number in 1902 with 654 members (2% of the city population). During the Weimar Republic , many Jews from Hanau held positions in industry and commerce, for example in the diamond trade, department stores, banking and the textile industry.

After the Nazis on 9 November 1938 at the November pogrom had destroyed the synagogue Hanauer, the remaining congregation held its services in the parish hall. The building was destroyed in the bombing of World War II. According to the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life , 82 of the 477 Jews from Hanau remained in 1933 . The last 164 Hanau Jews were deported to concentration and extermination camps during the Holocaust in May and September 1942 . 230 Jews from Hanau were murdered in the Holocaust.

Re-establishment after the Holocaust

In 2005 a Jewish community was founded in Hanau for the third time - with the help of the State Association of Jewish Congregations in Hesse . When it was founded, it consisted of 63 people, most of whom come from the former Soviet Union . On April 17, 2005 , the new community center was set up at Wilhelmstrasse 11a in Hanau, in the building of the former Schwahn gear factory . In 2006 a memorial plaque for the community members deported in 1942 was inaugurated in Hanau's main train station, in 2010 a plaque for the Jews persecuted under National Socialism was set up on the Hanau ghetto wall with 230 bronze plaques, one for those murdered in the Holocaust (instead of stumbling blocks ). In 2010 the congregation had 170 members and in 2018 196 members. The New Jewish Cemetery in Hanau-Steinheim on Odenwaldstrasse is used as the cemetery .

List of Hanau rabbis

The list is incomplete and is based on various sources.

  • until 1609 Jakob Kohen
  • 1609–1615 Eliyahu Loanz (1565–1635)
  • 1642-1646 Gershon Ashkenazi
  • around 1650 Jair Chaim Bacharach
  • 1668–1677 Jacob Simon Bosnis
  • around 1690 Haggai Enoch Fränkel
  • around 1704 Meier Alsace
  • 1704–1718 Moshe Broda
  • around 1760 Uri Schraga Phoebus Helmann
  • 1760–1791 Jakob Benjamin Kronstadt
  • 1795–1830 Moses Tobias (Tubia) Sontheimer (1755–1830)
  • 1833–1836 Moses Schwarzschild (1804–1875)
  • 1835–1882 Samson Felsenstein (1807–1882)
  • 1884–1900 Markus Koref (1833–1900)
  • 1901–1920 Salomon Menachem Halevi Bamberger (1869–1920)
  • 1921–1938 Hirsch Gradenwitz (1876–1943)
  • 2006–2010 Menachem Mendel Gurewitz (* 1974)
  • 2012–2015 Shimon Großberg
  • 2017–2019 Michael Yedwabny
  • 2019 – current Shimon Großberg

literature

  • Leopold Löwenstein: The rabbinate in Hanau along with contributions on the history of the Jews there. Droller, Frankfurt am Main 1921 ( digitized version from the University of Frankfurt am Main, PDF).
  • New magazine for Hanau history. Hanau 2010, therein:
    • Eckhard Meise : Brief overview of the history of the Hanau Jews and their synagogues , pp. 45-102.
    • Eckhard Meise: Sources and literature on the history of the Hanau Jews , pp. 103-107.
  • Shmuel Spector, Geoffrey Wigoder (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust. Vol. A-J, New York 2001, p. 494: Hanau .
  • Naftali B. Bamberger (ed.): The Jewish cemetery in Hanau. Commission for the history of the Jews in Hesse , Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 978-3-921434-25-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leopold Löwenstein: The rabbinate in Hanau along with contributions to the history of the Jews there. Droller, Frankfurt am Main 1921, p. 1 ( digitized version from the University of Frankfurt am Main, PDF).
  2. ↑ On the history of the Hanau Jewish community on the Alemannia judaica website .
  3. ↑ a b c d article Hanau. In: Shmuel Spector, Geoffrey Wigoder (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust. Vol. A-J, New York 2001, p. 494.
  4. ↑ Article Hanau , in: Fred Skolnik, Michael Berenbaum (Ed.): Encyclopedia Judaica. Vol. 8, 2nd edition, 2007, p. 317.
  5. ↑ Angelika Cipa and a .: Hanau city guide. Thirty sites of democratic history and anti-fascist resistance. Frankfurt 1983, p. 38.
  6. ↑ a b Hanau recalls the deportation of its Jews. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 31, 2006.
  7. ↑ a b c d Ute Vetter: Hanau: Ghetto Wall Memorial. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , May 31, 2010.
  8. ↑ The Jewish community is newly founded in Hanau . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed December 19, 2018]).
  9. ↑ The Jewish community is newly founded in Hanau . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed April 14, 2020]).
  10. ↑ a b Jewish community Hanau. In: Zentralratderjuden.de , accessed on February 22, 2020.
  11. ↑ Information according to the article Hanau. In: Shmuel Spector, Geoffrey Wigoder (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life before and during the Holocaust. Vol. A – J, New York 2001, p. 494 , and according to the website Alemannia judaica : On the history of the Jewish community in Hanau and on the history of the rabbinate in the 19th and 20th centuries. Century in Hanau .
  12. ↑ See about him the article Felsenstein, Samson . In: Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbis, ed. by Michael Brocke and Julius Carlebach , vol. 1: The rabbis of the emancipation period in the German, Bohemian and Greater Poland countries 1781–1871, edited by Carsten Wilke, part 1: A – J, Munich 2004, p. 302 f.
  13. ↑ See about him the article Koref, Markus Mordechai. In: Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbis, ed. by Michael Brocke and Julius Carlebach, Vol. 2: The Rabbis in the German Empire 1871–1945, edited by Katrin Nele Jansen, Part 1: Aaron to Kusznitzki, Munich 2009, p. 348.
  14. ↑ See about him the article Bamberger, Salomon Menachem Halevi. In: Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbis, ed. by Michael Brocke and Julius Carlebach, Vol. 2: The Rabbis in the German Empire 1871–1945, edited by Katrin Nele Jansen, Part 1: Aaron to Kusznitzki, Munich 2009, p. 54 f.
  15. ↑ http://www.ordonline.de/rabbiner/gurewitz_menachem/
  16. ↑ Rabbinate of the Hanau Jewish Community. Accessed June 3, 2019 (German).
  17. ↑ Rabbis | Orthodox rabbinical conference. Retrieved December 19, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Rabbinate: Community: Hanau Jewish Community. Retrieved June 3, 2019 .