Jewish community of Memmingen

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Memmingen Synagogue on Schweizer Berg (around 1925)

The Jewish community of Memmingen in the Upper Swabian town of Memmingen in Bavaria can be documented for the first time in 1348. The community died out in the course of the persecution of the Jews during the National Socialist era .

middle Ages

In 1286 was Memmingen by Rudolf I of Habsburg to the imperial city collected and thus directly ruler of the Holy Roman Empire assumed. The period up to 1349 was marked by conflicts between Jews and Christians . In addition to accusations such as host sacrilege and ritual murder legends , the Jews were in a tense relationship with the Christian population as money lenders according to the then prevailing Christian doctrine . Pope Alexander III in 1179 expressly allowed them to carry out interest payments . The Christians were already through the Second Lateran Council of 1139, the Decretum Gratiani , with an express prohibition of interest by Pope Innocent III. which was confirmed again in 1215 and by the Council of Vienne of 1311. This meant that Jews were the only ones in medieval Europe who were allowed to lend money commercially. As a result of this and because of the prohibitions imposed on them by the Christian authorities from the late Middle Ages onwards to exercise trades and the like ( compulsory guilds ), many European Jews were active as moneylenders.

The main actors who spread displeasure against the Jews were the growing guilds and citizens ; the clergy held back against it. The regional royal houses, imperial abbeys and the small nobility, which were supposed to protect the Jews, reacted cautiously. Pope Clement VI attempted to prevent spontaneous outbreaks of violence by prohibiting the execution of Jews without trial. He argued that the Jews were also affected by the plague and that places where no Jews lived were also affected by it. His intervention only had an impact in Avignon . After the plague pogroms in Geneva , Freiburg im Breisgau and Ulm , there were also riots against the Jewish population in Memmingen.

In 1348 the city was hit by the great plague epidemic. The population decreased noticeably. As in many other imperial cities, this was blamed on the Jews. These were murdered and burned in November of the same year, and their property was confiscated. On June 20, 1349, Emperor Charles IV forgave the city. There were still larger Jewish settlements in Ravensburg , Augsburg and Ulm . In 1373 Emperor Charles IV gave permission to shield Jews in the city of Memmingen for six years. In 1401 and 1414 a Jewish tax is mentioned, which was to be paid to the king. A formal naturalization of a Jew is guaranteed for 1427. The council took in a Jew named Vryn from Günzburg for five years in return for 2  florins tax and 8 florins contribution to city construction. At the same time, he had to undertake to charge only 3 Heller per Rhenish guilder per week for money transactions. He could ask for 4 hellers from ausleuten. In 1428 there was a similar contract with a Laemblin, a Jew from Zurich . In 1431 the Jewish women Kungund and Fröd were admitted tax and building money free. All they had to do was pay guard money. In 1524 no Jews can be found in the city. At the same time, the city issued a restrictive order against them and ordered the citizens not to deal with the Jews at all, and not to let any Jews in, then they would be publicly indecent. Presumably this was directed against the settlement of Jews in nearby Amendingen. Citizens should not have any financial or trade relations with Jews. On March 17, 1531, however, the city council decided that Jews, accompanied by a city ​​servant, were allowed to come into the city during the day against payment and marked with a yellow ring . Emperor Karl V even obtained a privilege that forbade Jews from lending money to Memmingen citizens without the knowledge of the council. In the event of non-compliance, the Jews were imprisoned and the citizens of Memmingen were threatened with expulsion from the city. On June 20, 1349, the Roman-German King Charles IV forgave the imperial city for the murder of the Jews and the robbery of their property.

In 1373 some Jews lived in the city again. In 1429 two Jews from Memmingen gave a guarantee for six Jews imprisoned in Ravensburg . After that, their trace is lost in the annals of the city, nothing is known about an eviction.

Re-establishment in 1875

It was not until 1862 that Jews moved in from the Upper Swabian region, where there were larger Jewish communities . In 1875 the government of Swabia and Neuburg planned to merge into a separate religious community for the small Jewish groups from Memmingen and Kempten three years earlier . Jews set up production facilities for the manufacture of aluminum, knitwear and cheese. The Jewish textile, shoe and cheese shops were located in the inner city. The horse and cattle trade was entirely in the hands of Jews.

On April 2, 1891, the previous substitute, Albrecht Gerstle, was the first Jew in the history of Memmingen to join the council of authorized representatives . Gerstle's commitment to the Freikorps Memmingen (later Swabia), which was formed in 1919 to suppress the Soviet republic and whose first headquarters was in Gerstle's living quarters at Maximilianstrasse 4, is also worth mentioning .

In 1895, the highest number of Jewish residents was reached in Memmingen with 231 people. There was the Israelite Women's Association (1875), the Chewra Kadischa in 1911, the relief fund for the traveling Jewish poor and the Israelite Charity Foundation. In 1925 175 Jews were counted out of a total population of 13,500, which corresponded to a percentage of 1.3. There was a synagogue , a Jewish school, a ritual bath and a cemetery . The community, which was subordinate to the Augsburg district rabbinate , employed a teacher for the religious tasks . In the 1932 school year he taught 27 children.

First World War

War memorial on the Jewish cemetery : "The honorable memory of our heroes 1914–1918"

During the First World War , an unknown number of Jewish Memmingers fought in the Bavarian Army for the German Empire . In honor of the fallen, a war memorial was erected in the Jewish cemetery , but it bears no names. Instead, plaques were attached to the synagogue with the names, troop units and places of death, which, however , were deliberately destroyed during the November pogrom in 1938 . The dates are still preserved in the memorial book published by the Reichsbundischer Frontsoldaten (RjF) :

  • Hugo Freudenthal (born November 26, 1885 in Theilheim , † August 22, 1917 in Flanders ), 119 Reserve Infantry Regiment , 5th Company
  • Jakob Guggenheimer (born August 1, 1884 in Memmingen, † September 27, 1918 on the Maas ), Reserve Infantry Regiment 12, 7th Company, Lieutenant
  • Jakob Gutmann (born June 19, 1885 in Groß-Rohrheim , † October 28, 1917 in Menen ), Bavarian Infantry Regiment 16 , 3rd MG Company
  • Jakob Sommer (born February 6, 1883 in Memmingen; † November 22, 1916), Jägerregiment 2, MG company

Memminger cheese pogrom 1921

In 1921 the Memminger cheese pogrom occurred against the Jewish Memmingen citizen and cheese merchant Wilhelm Rosenbaum (* 1875 in Memmingen). Rosenbaum was raised by a crowd under the leadership of a Dr. Sizius accused of charging excessive prices for his products. The angry crowd attacked Jewish businesses, whereupon the accused was arrested for the protection of himself. On September 16, 1921, there was a trial at the Memmingen Regional Court against the German-national doctor Dr. Sizius and eleven other defendants for breach of the peace . Sizius and another defendant named Hail were sentenced to one month in prison. All other defendants were acquitted. Rosenbaum was imprisoned in 1933 and fled to the Netherlands and Belgium, from where he was able to emigrate to Palestine in 1938 .

Memmingen synagogue

The foundation stone of the Memmingen synagogue was laid on November 2nd, 1908 . It was located on the Schweizerberg at the corner of Kaisergraben, across from today's Bismarck School. The designs came from the Frankfurt architect Max Seckbach , the Unglehrt construction business was responsible for the execution. The design requirement was to adapt to the down-to-earth construction of the environment. The synagogue was inaugurated on September 8, 1909. It had a capacity of 200 seats and an organ. It was shaped like a baroque church without a tower.

Memorial stone for the synagogue

In 1933, 161 Jews were still living in the city. On April 1, 1933, a boycott of Jews was imposed by the state. In 1936 the Jews were no longer allowed to enter the Memmingen slaughterhouse . The Jewish population became impoverished and began selling houses and businesses. 37 people moved to other cities and 67 emigrated.

During the November pogrom on November 10, 1938, at 1:20 a.m., the Memmingen police received a flash telex from Munich signed by the Chief of the Security Police and the SD and Police General Reinhard Heydrich . Then the heads of the state police should get in touch with the respective district leaders of the NSDAP and hold discussions with the heads of the regulatory police about the demonstrations to be carried out. The police should not intervene against the demonstrators. The deputy head of the Memmingen police station, Glogger, informed the then mayor Berndl and district manager Schwarz about the telex at around 3 p.m. The local head of the SD branch , SS-Obersturmbannführer Hanusch, had received an identical telegram . Hanusch ordered the Jewish apartments to be smashed and the synagogue set on fire. The synagogue was looted and, on the instructions of Kreisleiter Schwarz, not set on fire, but demolished. The demolition work was carried out under the supervision of the German Labor Front (DAF). Executing construction businesses were Hebel, Unglehrt and Kutter. The joineries Mayer and Welte were called in, whereby the Welte company refused to accept the order. The demolition work on the first day lasted from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. A few days later the remaining synagogue ruins were blown up after all valuable sacred objects had been stolen. The Jewish community had to pay for the cost of 12,000 Reichsmarks . Many school children and their teachers also took part in the demolition work, which lasted a week. In another centrally controlled Heydrich campaign, the house of the Jewish religion teacher, another 23 residential buildings and three shops in Kramer-, Herren- and Moltkestrasse were destroyed.

In 1940, 60 parishioners were forced to live in cramped five houses . In 1941, 40 Jewish community members lived in two houses in the city. From January 30 to March 13, 1942, 25 Jews were deported from Memmingen to Fellheim , from where they were deported to extermination camps and later murdered. In 1945 the site on which the synagogue had stood until 1938 was built with an outbuilding by the Lechwerke Augsburg and a memorial was created.

DP community

After the end of the Second World War, some Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) - in particular liberated forced laborers - remained in the American zone of occupation for the time being . Initially, the military government housed them in general DP camps , separated by nationality . Only in response to the grievances described in the Harrison Report were special Jewish institutions created from the end of August 1945, in which the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and non-governmental organizations such as the Joint Distribution Committee could look after the survivors. These include self-managed DP camps, in Bavarian Swabia initially at Leipheim airfield , later also in the Ludendorff barracks in Neu-Ulm and on the Lechfeld air base . Jewish hospitals were also set up, for example in St. Ottilien and Bad Wörishofen . In addition, Jewish DPs were housed in decentralized apartments in various communities, including in Memmingen.

In December 1945 64 people of Jewish denomination were again registered in Memmingen. After the Kielce pogrom of July 4, 1946, the Bricha smuggled a large number of Eastern European Jews into the US occupation zone, so that this number rose to 127 people in August 1947. The Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Bavaria ran an office for them. This was initially in the Villa Laupheimer (Moltkestrasse 1), then in Kramerstrasse 37 and finally in Lindauer Strasse 22. In addition, there was a vocational school run by the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training (ORT), through which the survivors of the Shoah should be given a new start through professional qualifications - especially with a view to the upcoming settlement of Palestine . An already planned renovation of the synagogue in Fellheim was not carried out.

With the establishment of the State of Israel and the subsequent Palestine War , a wave of emigration to Israel began, so that the resulting DP community quickly became smaller. When classic immigration countries such as the USA , Canada and Australia relaxed their immigration regulations in 1949, more families emigrated there. The office of the Jewish Committee was closed by 1951 at the latest.

Hakoah Memmingen

In the years 1947-48, as in most DP communities, there was the Jewish soccer club Hakoah Memmingen in Memmingen . In addition to training, such sports clubs also served the conspiratorial recruitment of Hagana fighters who were supposed to defend Israel, which had become independent after emigration. Hakoah Memmingen took part in the Jewish Regionalliga Süd of the Munich I district and in 1948 took part in the "Becher Szpiln". This championship, held in the knockout system with 52 participating teams, was canceled in June 1948 after the state of Israel had been declared on May 14, 1948.

Trial of ritual murder legend

During the time of the DP community there was a court case in Memmingen in which allegations were made against a Polish-Jewish DP in the sense of the ritual murder legend . This caused a sensation in the contemporary international Jewish community and serves to this day as an example of the fact that anti-Semitic attitudes in German civil society persisted after the fall of the German Reich and with knowledge of the Holocaust .

Specifically, in March 1947 three Jewish DPs were allocated accommodation in a house on Seyfriedstrasse. In December 1948, the lawyer Heinrich A., a former member of the SA , on behalf of the landlord Berta G., a former propaganda director of the Nazi women's group , filed an eviction claim with the Memmingen District Court . Among other things, the accusation was raised that at Easter 1947 the plaintiff's four-year-old son had been made drunk with wine by one of the DPs, Idel G. In the evening, according to A., the mother also discovered a puncture on the child's arm, and he continues: "As far as the plaintiff is aware, there is a custom in the defendant's circles after which Easter biscuits should be added a drop of Christian blood". This supposed puncture was later identified by experts as a scabies symptom .

While the Memmingen judiciary initially apparently wanted to ignore this openly anti-Semitic admission along with the entire application, after pressure from the military government and the Joint Distribution Committee, criminal proceedings against Berta G. and her lawyer A. were opened at the Memmingen district court for violating Bavarian law No. 14 against racial madness and hatred of the people ( sedition ) and because of defamation . The public prosecutor demanded 18 months imprisonment for lawyer A. and eight months imprisonment for Berta G. However, the defendants were acquitted of the charge of incitement to hatred, since the criteria were not met in a complaint because of the limited group of people . Ultimately, A. and G. were sentenced to three and two months' imprisonment, respectively, for defamation. In the appeal at the Munich Higher Regional Court , the proceedings were finally discontinued under application of the Law on Exemption from Punishment of December 31, 1949.

Personalities

literature

  • Paul Hoser : The history of the city of Memmingen. Volume 2: From a new beginning in the Kingdom of Bavaria to 1945. Konrad Theiss, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8062-1316-X .
  • Angela Hager, Hans-Christof Haas: Memmingen. In: Wolfgang Kraus, Berndt Hamm, Meier Schwarz (eds.): More than stones ... Synagogue memorial volume Bavaria. Volume 1. Kunstverlag Josef Fink, Lindenberg im Allgäu 2007, ISBN 978-3-89870-411-3 , pp. 504-510.
  • Peter Fassl, Markwart Herzog , Jim G. Tobias (Ed.): After the Shoah. Jewish Displaced Persons in Bavarian Swabia 1945–1951 (= Irseer Schriften. Volume 7). UKV, Konstanz 2012, ISBN 978-3-86764-341-2 .
  • Benigna Schönhagen (Ed.): "Ma Tovu ...". "How beautiful are your tents, Jakob ..." Synagogues in Swabia. Franz Schiermeier, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-943866-24-7 , pp. 123–128 (accompanying volume to the traveling exhibition of the same name by the Jewish Culture Museum Augsburg-Swabia and the network of historical synagogue sites in Bavarian Swabia).
  • Julius Miedel : The Jews in Memmingen. Th. Otto, Memmingen 1909, urn : nbn: de: hebis: 30-180011699007 .
  • City archive Memmingen (ed.): "I give them eternal names ...". Memorial booklet for the Jewish women, men and children from Memmingen who were persecuted, kidnapped and murdered during the National Socialist era (= materials on the history of Memmingen, series B: Research. Volume 13). Memmingen 2013 (PDF; 4.3 MB) .

Web links

Commons : Synagoge (Memmingen)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The history of the Memmingen Jews
  2. ↑ 1StaatsAAug MüB RU Mem 67; 1373 Oct 14.
  3. ↑ StadtAMM A RPr 1524 Nov. 14
  4. ↑ Julius Miedel: The Jews in Memmingen. On the occasion of the inauguration of the Memmingen synagogue. Otto, Memmingen 1909.
  5. ^ StA Augsburg, RU Memmingen 666
  6. ^ Franz-Rasso Böck , Ralf Lienert , Joachim Weigel: JahrhundertBlicke auf Kempten 1900–2000 . Verlag Tobias Dannheimer - Allgäuer Zeitungsverlag, Kempten (Allgäu) 1999, ISBN 3-88881-035-3 , p. 251 .
  7. ↑ City Archives Memmingen: Albrecht Gerstle - Lifelines of a Jew 1842–1921 1997
  8. ↑ a b c d Hoser: History of the city of Memmingen . S. 228 f ., Fig. 40 .
  9. ^ Edith Raim: Justice between dictatorship and democracy . Oldenbourg Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-70411-2 , p. 818 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed May 7, 2017]).
  10. ↑ a b c d e Reich Association of Jewish Front Soldiers (ed.): The Jewish Fallen of the German Army, the German Navy and the German Protection Troops 1914–1918. A memorial book. 3. Edition. 1933, p. 286 ( lib.ru [accessed May 10, 2017]). List of soldiers of the Jewish faith who fell in World War I from places beginning with the letter "M". Retrieved on May 10, 2017 ( Taken from the memorial book , but in some cases incorrectly assigned to the municipality of Memmelsdorf.).
  11. ^ German loss lists . October 4, 1917, Württembergische loss list 612, p. 21003 ( genealogy.net [accessed May 10, 2017]).
  12. ^ German loss lists . January 17, 1919, Bavarian Loss List 413, p. 28773 ( genealogy.net [accessed May 10, 2017]).
  13. ^ German loss lists . December 22, 1917, Bavarian loss list 371, p. 22185 ( genealogy.net [accessed May 10, 2017]).
  14. ^ German loss lists . January 12, 1917, Prussian loss list 732, p. 17126 ( genealogy.net [accessed May 10, 2017]).
  15. ↑ Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 313.
  16. ↑ Jim G. Tobias: Jewish Displaced Persons in the Bavarian Swabia district . In: Fassl, Herzog, Tobias (Ed.): After the Shoah . S. 11 ff .
  17. ↑ a b c d e Memmingen - DP community. In: Jewish DP camps and communities in the US zone. Retrieved May 1, 2017 .
  18. ↑ Cornelia Berger-Dittscheid: Fellheim . In: Kraus, Hamm, Schwarz (ed.): More than stones ... p. 437 .
  19. ↑ Schönhagen (Ed.): "Ma Tovu ..." p. 152-153 .
  20. ↑ Jim G. Tobias: Jewish Displaced Persons in the Bavarian Swabia district . In: Fassl, Herzog, Tobias (Ed.): After the Shoah . S. 19 .
  21. ↑ Jim G. Tobias: Jewish Displaced Persons in the Bavarian Swabia district . In: Fassl, Herzog, Tobias (Ed.): After the Shoah . S. 37 ff .
  22. ↑ Ludwig Joseph: Ritualmord 1948 . In: Jüdisches Gemeindeblatt . January 14, 1949, p. 5 .
  23. ↑ a b c d e f ritual murder swindles in Memmingen . In: Structure . tape 15 , no. 3 . New York April 1, 1949, p. 3 ( archive.org [accessed May 1, 2017]). The ritual murder fraud in Memmingen . In: Structure . tape
     15 , no. 38 . New York September 23, 1949, p. 9 ( archive.org [accessed May 1, 2017]).
  24. ↑ a b c Jim G. Tobias: Jewish Displaced Persons in the Bavarian Swabia district . In: Fassl, Herzog, Tobias (Ed.): After the Shoah . S. 20th ff .
  25. ↑ a b c Jim G. Tobias: Jewish life in Memmingen after 1945 . In: haGalil . September 12, 2010 ( hagalil.com [accessed May 1, 2017]).
  26. ↑ Michael Brenner : After the Holocaust: Jews in Germany 1945–1950 . CH Beck, 1995, ISBN 978-3-406-39239-9 , pp. 81 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed May 4, 2017]). Michael Brenner: After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany . Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-691-00679-6 , pp.
     53 f . (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed May 4, 2017]).
  27. ↑ a b c d e Edith Raim: Justice between dictatorship and democracy . Oldenbourg Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-70411-2 , p. 273 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed May 4, 2017]).
  28. ↑ AG Memmingen, Docket C 312/48 (according to Joseph: Ritual Murder 1948 . )
  29. ↑ LG Memmingen, Docket KMs 4/49 (according Raim: Justice between dictatorship and democracy . )
  30. ↑ Law No. 14 against racial madness and hatred of peoples of March 13, 1946 . In: Bavarian Law and Ordinance Gazette . No. 8 , 1946, pp. 137 ( digital-sammlungen.de [accessed on May 1, 2017]).
  31. ↑ OLG Munich, file number 2 Ss 97/49 (according to Raim: Justice between dictatorship and democracy . )