Jewish community Ulm
A Jewish community in Ulm already existed in the high Middle Ages, was of great economic importance in the 14th century and expired in 1499 with the Ulm city ban for Jews. After the mediatization of the imperial city in 1803 and the transition of Ulm to the Kingdom of Württemberg in 1810, Jews were able to settle again, who from 1856 formed an independent religious community. In the second half of the 19th century, the congregation grew to almost 700 people due to the influx of families from rural Jewish communities. The Jews of Ulm took an active part in the city's public life and produced a number of important personalities. The most important Jew born in Ulm was Albert Einstein . The Jewish community found its decline in the course of anti-Semitism and the deportation of German Jews during the Nazi era . After 1990, more and more Jews moved to Ulm with the repatriates from Eastern Europe, who have been looked after by a rabbi since 1999 . In 2002, the Jewish community was re-established as a subsidiary of Stuttgart and on May 5th of the same year a new Jewish community center with a prayer room was inaugurated. Today the Jewish community consists of around 450 citizens of Ulm.
history
Medieval community
The earliest references from Jews in Ulm can be found in the imperial tax list of 1241, in which the Ulm Jews are listed with a small tax contribution of six marks (Esslingen Jews with 30 marks, Worms Jews with 150 marks). At that time there seems to have been only a small community in Ulm. The oldest Jewish gravestone from Ulm dates back to 1243, the Jewish cemetery was first mentioned in 1281. The size of the community grew in the second half of the 13th century and in the 14th century Ulm was the religious center of the Jews in the area. The Jews were initially subject to taxation directly to the emperor until on January 9, 1348 Emperor Karl IV. Ulm and other imperial cities exempted Ulm from paying Jewish tax to the royal chamber. On December 3, 1348, a settlement stipulated that Ulm should use the Jewish tax to build the city fortifications and at the same time place the Jews under the city's Jewish shelves . After the outbreak of the plague , a plague pogrom against the Jews took place on January 30, 1349 , in which one saw the culprits of the plague epidemic. The Jewish quarter was burned down, and preserved buildings such as the synagogue were used for other purposes. In 1354 the Jewish community got their synagogue back, and in 1356 the Jewish cemetery.
In the late 14th century, the Jews of Ulm were of great economic importance to the city. A Jud Jäcklin was the city's largest lender and financed and promoted the acquisitions of the area and probably also the start of construction on the Ulm Minster in 1377. Together with the Nuremberg Jew Rapp, the Erfurt Jew Meier and a few others, Jäcklin seems to have dominated the entire southern German money market.
However, the economic influence of the Jews gradually declined after King Wenceslas took office in 1378, as repeated royal special taxes burdened the Jewish communities in the period that followed. In Ulm, the Ulm Goldsmiths Ordinance of 1394 brought about the restriction of the Jews' trade in gold and silver goods. Numerous other restrictions followed, such as a ban on the employment of Christian servants, restrictions on the slaughterhouse and meat trade, a ban on the grocery trade in 1421, and a ban on lending money on wool and cotton in 1425. In 1457 the council of the city of Ulm tried to expel those Jews who did not have civil rights from the city, but this was caused by the emperor Friedrich III, who was concerned about the Jewish taxes . was denied. In 1478 the annual tax demanded by Jews was tripled from two to six guilders. At that time of prohibitions and multiple taxation, the size of the community decreased noticeably due to emigration. In the 1480s, the community was without a rabbi several times. In 1490 there were no longer any Jews with civil rights in Ulm. In 1499, after complaints about Jewish usury and fraud, the city of Ulm finally received permission from the Roman-German King Maximilian I to expel the last Jewish families living in Ulm.
See also: Jewish gravestones in Ulm
Time of the city ban
The city ban of 1499 was renewed several times (e.g. 1541, 1561 and 1571) and essentially remained in place until the 19th century, although Ulm citizens continued to have trade relations with Jews from the area and Jews stayed in the city again and again, which they were only allowed to do when accompanied by an official. In 1712, Jews were allowed to visit the Ulm cattle markets again in exchange for protection money; later, individual privileged Jews or army suppliers to the Swabian District lived temporarily in Ulm. Towards the end of the 18th century, the city theater even had a Jewish director, the Jew Gumberg. But until the end of the imperial city period in 1803, no new Jewish community was formed due to the continued city ban.
Modern church
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Even after the mediatization of the imperial city of Ulm in 1803 and the transition to the Kingdom of Württemberg in 1810, despite basic permission, only 13 Jews settled in Ulm by 1824. The city administration and the Ulm merchants viewed Jewish merchants as undesirable competition and created a climate that was not very friendly to Jews. Even according to the Württemberg law on the public relations of the Israelite co-religionists of April 25, 1828, it took several years until a noteworthy community was formed in Ulm again.
The Ulm Jews initially formed a branch community of the Laupheim Jewish Community , but were then raised to an independent Jewish religious community in 1856 with a community size of over 50 people. As the community continued to grow, a synagogue was opened in 1873 and Ulm finally became the seat of a rabbinate in 1908 .
With the onset of industrialization , the Jewish community in Ulm experienced a large influx of younger Jewish families from rural communities. From 1854 to 1886 the size of the community increased from 57 to 667 people. The founding period produced numerous successful Jewish entrepreneurs. In 1860, eight factories, four wholesalers, ten retail companies and three craft businesses in Ulm were owned by Jews. In 1861, the factory owner Leopold Marx became the first Jew to be elected to the Ulm Citizens' Committee, and from 1869 six more Jews followed to join the civil bodies, including the local councilors Albert Mayer , Salomon Moos and Siegfried Mann. Albert Mayer was a member of the Württemberg state parliament from 1906 to 1909. The Jewish community in Ulm has been fully integrated into the civil life of the city of Ulm since the Equal Opportunities Act of 1864. Jews were represented in all of the city's larger associations, as well as in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as well as in the civic bodies. Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, but moved to Munich with his parents as a child.
In the late 19th century, Ulm was a center of modern anti-Semitism on a völkisch basis, to which in particular the anti- Jewish incitement of the Ulm express mail from the 1880s contributed. The Schnellpost made unfounded accusations such as ritual murder or false interpretations of the Talmud. However, through the intervention of Mayor Heinrich von Wagner , the baiting of Jews could initially be stopped, but flared up again in the 1920s, before the era of National Socialism.
The community size decreased slightly in the early 20th century. In 1900 there were 609 people, in 1908 there were 588. In the First World War , numerous Jews from Ulm took to the field; the number of victims of 18 deaths is higher than that of the Christian population. During the Weimar Republic , several Jews from Ulm became important in the field of culture: Julius Baum was director of the city museums, Ludwig Moos and Leo Kahn were well-known painters, Paul Moos was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Erlangen. By 1933 the size of the Jewish community had decreased to 530 people.
Immediately after the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, the Ulm storm agitated against Jewish citizens. Museum director Baum was relieved of his post and honorary doctor Moos lost his honorary doctorate. Albert Einstein was also the target of the agitation: Albert-Einstein-Strasse was renamed Fichte-Strasse . In addition to the discrimination against Jews, the pressure exerted by the National Socialists on the rest of the population also increased to become the target of public denunciation if they continued to come into contact with Jews. In 1936 the Jewish community had to build its own school at its own expense, and in the same year the Jewish cemetery was desecrated by strangers. During the Night of the Reichspogrom in November 1938, the synagogue was burned down and Jewish residents were mistreated and imprisoned, including Rabbi Dr. Julius Cohn . The last Jewish companies then fell victim to Aryanization . From 1939 the Jewish residents who had not yet emigrated were moved to so-called Jewish houses (partly also in Oberstotzingen ) and the rabbinate and the Jewish religious community were dissolved. In 1941 and 1942, most of the Jews who remained in Ulm and Oberstotzingen were deported to concentration and extermination camps as part of the deportation of German Jews , with 112 Jews from Ulm being murdered. In 1945 only a few Jewish citizens who were married to non-Jewish spouses lived in Ulm.
After the end of the war, thousands of Jews were among the " Displaced Persons " in several refugee camps in and around Ulm, before the camps were dissolved in 1948. Almost all Jews emigrated to the newly founded State of Israel.
Since the fall of the Iron Curtain
In 1989 the wall fell; In 1990 the cold war ended . From 1990 onwards , more and more Jews moved to Ulm with the immigrants from Eastern Europe (see also Spätaussiedler ). Since 2000, Ulm and Rabbi Shneur Trebnik have been the seat of the rabbinate again. In 2002 the Jewish community was founded as an IRGW branch in Ulm , a branch community of Stuttgart, and a Jewish community center with a prayer room was inaugurated on May 5th of the same year . The Jewish community today (as of 2012) comprises around 450 people.
The influx of Jewish migrants to Ulm continued to increase. So it says in the community newspaper of the IRGW to Rosh-ha-Shana under the heading From Board and Representation - Meeting of the Representation on May 27, 2008 :
"During a conversation [...] the board of directors informed [...] about the increased allocation of Jewish new immigrants to [...] Ulm [...]"
The Ulm community members thereupon criticized in an open letter to the IRGW in the summer of 2008 the spatial condition and tightness of the IRGW branch in Ulm. The board of directors of the IRGW then visited the Ulm branch and committed to building a new synagogue in the Ulm city area.
On May 5, 2009, the main committee of the Ulm City Council unanimously approved the construction of a new community center for the IRGW branch in Ulm on the Weinhof, in the immediate vicinity of the original location of the synagogue from 1873. An archaeological excavation carried out on the site to secure it took place until the end of 2010. The groundbreaking for the new building was on March 17, 2011, the construction work for the new building was completed in 2012; it was inaugurated on December 2, 2012. Federal President Gauck and Prime Minister Kretschmann came to the opening.
literature
- Paul Sauer : The Jewish communities in Württemberg and Hohenzollern. Monuments, history, fates . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1966 ( Publications of the Baden-Württemberg State Archives Administration . Volume 18)
- Christian Scholl: The Jewish community of the imperial city of Ulm in the late Middle Ages: intra-Jewish conditions and Christian-Jewish relations in southern Germany . Hanover: Hahn, 2012 ISBN 978-3-7752-5673-5
- Eugen Nübling: The Jewish communities of the Middle Ages, especially the Jewish community in the imperial city of Ulm. A contribution to German urban and economic history. Ulm 1896. ( http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/freimann/content/pageview/618901 )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ismar Elbogen : History of the Jews in Germany , page 83 f.
- ↑ http://www.juden.de/gemeinden/juedische_gemeinde_ulm.html
- ↑ Community newspaper August / September 2008 edition (ed. Israelitische Religionsgemeinschaft Württemberg), Tamus / Aw / Elul / Tischri 5768/5769, No. 08/09, August / September 2008, p. 17
- ↑ http://www.suedwest-aktiv.de/region/swp_laichingen/ulm_und_neu_ulm/4320943/artikel.php?SWAID=2661962407e001069e48dc57d5cb290f
- ↑ http://www.dradio.de/nachrichten/201212022000/5