Jewish community Koenigsberg

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The Jewish community in Königsberg was established at the beginning of the 18th century. After the founding of the German Empire it experienced a heyday and was the third largest Jewish community in Prussia after the Berliners and Breslauers . In the era of National Socialism was destroyed in the Soviet Union suppressed.

History of the Jewish Community

Around 1540 two Jewish doctors ( Isaak May and Michel Abraham ) are recorded in the three cities of Königsberg ; but it was not until the second half of the 17th century that Jewish merchants from Lithuania and Poland began to attend the Königsberg masses. In 1680 they were allowed to open a prayer room during masses. A proper Jewish community did not emerge until around 1700, and King Friedrich I allowed the Königsberg Jews in 1703 to found a Chewra Kadischa (burial brotherhood) (which later also had its own hospital) and to create the Jewish cemetery , which was inaugurated in 1704. But the king also had the Jewish community strictly observed: From 1703 to 1778 it was prescribed that the service in the synagogue had to be attended by a professor of oriental languages ​​as an overseer. The last of these synagogue inspectors was the professor of philosophy and theology Georg David Kypke , in whose house Immanuel Kant also gave temporary lectures.

The Friedländer family , who had lived in Königsberg since 1718, played a leading role among the Königsberg Jews ; a prominent member of this family was David Friedländer . In 1756 the first synagogue was inaugurated in the suburbs, with 300 parishioners living in Königsberg at that time. In the decades that followed, their numbers grew due to numerous immigrants from Russia. Since the 18th century there were Jewish students at the Albertus University , including Marcus Herz , who studied medicine and philosophy with Immanuel Kant . In 1800 there were 900 Jewish community members in Königsberg; in 1817 there were 1027. The first suburban synagogue burned down in 1811; then a new synagogue was built in Synagogenstrasse in 1815.

In the pre-March published Johann Jacoby a call for emancipation of the Jews . In 1871 there were 4,000 Jews in Königsberg, which made up 3.5% of the citizens of Königsberg. In 1880 there were already 5,000 citizens of Königsberg who were Jewish .

Important Jews from Königsberg were the bankers Marcus Warschauer (1777–1835), who married into the Oppenheim banking family in Königsberg, and Samuel Simon and Moritz Simon, who founded the Simon banking house in 1839.

From 1879 until his death in 1920 Eduard Birnbaum officiated as Chasan (cantor) of the Jewish community. At the beginning of the 20th century, important Jewish doctors worked at Königsberg University, including Ludwig Lichtheim , Kurt Goldstein , Julius Schreiber , Max Jaffé and Alfred Ellinger . Before 1914, 13,000 Jews lived in East Prussia and in Königsberg.

There was a fundamental split among the Jews into the German national members of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith and the followers of Zionism . In 1917, 820 Königsberg Jews served in the Prussian army , 80 of them as war volunteers. 102 of them received the Iron Cross 2nd Class, fifteen the Iron Cross 1st Class. The proportion of so-called Eastern Jews ( Nathan Birnbaum ) was about 25%.

From 1924 (the year of the Königsberg Kant celebration ), the community published the Königsberger Jüdische Gemeindeblatt as a monthly . During the time of National Socialism , the Jews were disenfranchised, dispossessed and harassed. As a result, many Jews emigrated. The Jewish population sank from 3200 in 1933 to 2100 in 1938. After November 9, 1938 , 500 parishioners were able to leave the city of Königsberg. In October 1941, Hugo Falkenheim was the last Königsberg Jew to escape. The rest of the Königsberg Jews were murdered. On June 24, 1942, a train to Minsk with deported Königsberg Jews who were murdered in the pits near Maly Trostinez drove from the freight yard of the Königsberg Nordbahnhof . 763 Königsberg Jews were deported to Theresienstadt , 59 of whom were still alive when the camp was liberated. At the beginning of 1944 there were still 60 Jewish families living in the city. The few Jews who remained in Königsberg after the Second World War were expelled by the Soviets together with the Germans in 1948. One of the last significant descendants of the Jewish community in Königsberg was Immanuel Jakobovits (1921–1999), who served as Chief Rabbi of Great Britain from 1967 to 1991 .

In addition to the preserved former Jewish orphanage on the Honigbrücke bridge , the devastated and looted Jewish cemetery in the east of the city still reminds of the former Jewish community of Königsberg.

Population share

year Jewish population
absolutely relative
1700 approx. 50 0.1%
1712 150 -
1725 75 -
1735 120 -
1756 307 0.6%
1798 855 1.6%
1802 891 1.6%
1810 653 1.2%
1820 1108 1.8%
1831 1267 2.0%
1840 1522 2.3%
1852 2044 2.7%
1861 2572 3.0%
1864 3024 3.2%
1890 4008 2.5%
1925 4049 1.4%
1933 3170 1.0%
1939 1566 0.4%

Important Königsberg Jews

rabbi

  • Solomon Prince (from 1707 to 1722)
  • Aryeh (Löb) Epstein ben Mordechai (from 1745 to 1775)
  • Samuel Wigdor (from 1777 to 1784)
  • Samson ben Mordechai (from 1784 to 1794)
  • Joshua Bär Herzfeld (from 1800 to 1814)
  • Wolff Laseron (from 1824 to 1828)
  • Jacob Hirsch Mecklenburg (from 1831 to 1865)
  • Isaac Bamberger (1834-1896)
  • Hermann Vogelstein (from 1897)
  • Reinhold Lewin (* 1888, died 1943 deported, served from 1921 to 1938); In 1910, Lewin won the University of Breslau's competition for Luther's position on the Jews.
  • Felix Perles

Others (partly converted)

Kaliningrad Jewish Community

After the collapse of the Soviet Union , the new Jewish community Kaliningrad was founded , which sees itself in the liberal tradition of its East Prussian predecessor. In today's Kaliningrad the Jews do not have an easy life. Many want to emigrate to Israel , Germany or the USA .

In 2011 the foundation stone for a new synagogue was laid on the site of the main synagogue in Königsberg, which was built in 1896 and destroyed in 1938. It also corresponds to the previous building in its external shape. Its construction was made possible not least by the foundation for the construction of the synagogue in the city of Königsberg and the contributions of the Berlin Association Jews in East Prussia . On November 8, 2018, the synagogue was inaugurated by Russia's Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar.

literature

  • Andrea Ajzensztejn: The Jewish community in Königsberg. From the branch to legal equality . Hamburg 2004.
  • Heimann Jolowicz: History of the Jews in Königsberg i. Pr . Poznan 1867.
  • Hans-Jürgen Krüger: The Jews of Königsberg in Prussia 1700-1812 . Marburg / Lahn 1966.
  • Ruth Leiserowitz: Sabbath candlesticks and warriors' association. Jews in the East Prussian-Lithuanian border region 1812–1942 . Osnabrück 2010.
  • Reuven Michael:  Koenigsberg . In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 10, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865938-1 , pp. 1128-1130 (English).
  • Stefanie Schüler-Springorum : The Jewish minority in Königsberg / Prussia 1871–1945 . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-525-36049-5 . The entire text can be read online .
  • Jürgen Manthey : Königsberg Jewish minority , in this: Königsberg. History of a world citizenship republic . Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-423-34318-3 , pp. 630-643.
  • Евреи в Кёнигсберге на рубеже столетий / The Jews of Königsberg at the turn of the 20th Century . Berlin: Association of Jews in East Prussia. Berlin 2017. ISBN 978-3-00-057974-5 . English-Russian exhibition catalog for the exhibition of the same name in Kaliningrad from November 10th to December 10th, available on the association's website [1]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Benjamin Pinkus: The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948-1967. A documented study . Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Beer-Sheva); Cambridge University Press 1984, ISBN 0-521-24713-6
  2. ↑ a b c Robert Albinus: Königsberg Lexicon . Wurzburg 2002
  3. ↑ Sources: 1700 to 1864: Dr. Heimann Jolowicz: History of the Jews in Königsberg i. Pr. A contribution to the moral history of the Prussian state. Joseph Jolowicz, Posen 1867, p. 189 , urn : nbn: de: hebis: 30-180011631009 . "Statistical table on the increase of the Jews.": "Comment: The figures up to 1756, although taken from the files, are only to be regarded as approximately correct, since the census was carried out very negligently up to then."; 1890, 1925, 1933, 1939: Michael Rademacher: City and District of Königsberg . Note: The absolute numbers of the residents of Königsberg were not taken from this source, see: Kaliningrad - Demography . Likewise, the relative number of Jewish residents was not taken over for those years for which there were no absolute population figures in the sources. The relative number has been rounded to one place after the decimal point.
  4. ↑ Stefanie Schüler-Springorum : The Jewish minority in Königsberg / Prussia, 1871–1945. Göttingen 1996 (= series of publications by the Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Volume 56), p. 383.
  5. ^ Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg:  Samter, Adolf . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 30, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1890, p. 324 f.
  6. ↑ Ruth Leiserowitz: Jews in East Prussia. From Königsberg and Memel to Kaliningrad and Klaipeda. ( Memento from March 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Jewish newspaper , December 2007
  7. ^ Jewish General March 11, 2010
  8. ^ Tino Künzel: After 80 years: A synagogue is coming home . In: Moskauer Deutsche Zeitung (MDZ) of November 8, 2018, accessed on November 9, 2018.