Jewish community of Wollenberg

A Jewish community in Wollenberg , a district of the city of Bad Rappenau in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg , had existed since the first half of the 17th century at the latest. The highest number of members in the Jewish community in 1830 was around 150 out of a total of 410 inhabitants.

history

The earliest evidence of Jews in Wollenberg comes from a village regulation that was created shortly after 1652 , which also contains an oath of Jews , so that it is assumed that Jews lived in Wollenberg even before these village regulations were created or copied. The place had been almost depopulated in the Thirty Years War and only slowly grew again. When the local rule came to the lords of Gemmingen-Guttenberg in 1716/17 , there were eight Jews in Wollenberg. In the period that followed, the Jewish community grew and, with 150 people in 1830, was more than a third of the population of Wollenberg. The dead were buried first in the Jewish cemetery in Heinsheim and after a dispute over high burial costs in 1743 at the Jewish cemetery in Waibstadt .

A first synagogue existed early on in the lordly Langen Building , first mentioned in 1667 , in which most of the Jews also lived. In addition to a protection fee, the landowners had to pay the manor, rent, butcher and stab fees, rent for the synagogue, and payment for the use of the laundry room, oven, bathroom and stable. In 1789 a new Jewish house with 14 apartments and a synagogue was built by the manor in today's Deinhardstraße 54/55. The construction costs amounted to around 4000  fl , of which the landlords paid about 3500 fl. The annual income from the building amounted to around 420 florins. In 1793/95 another stately Jewish house with six apartments was built in the direct vicinity of the church. The wealthier Wollenberg Jews bought or built their own houses on site, so that only poor families lived in the stately Jewish houses. In 1825 the Jewish community finally built a separate synagogue with a teacher's apartment after the synagogue in the large Jewish house had become too small. A mikveh was built in 1846 .

The community in Wollenberg had its own Jewish schoolmaster, who was also a prayer leader , but was looked after by the rabbinate in Neckarbischofsheim . The income of most of the Wollenberg Jews was modest. Most of them hired as peddlers . One of the wealthier Wollenberg Jews in the early 19th century was the Reis family, who ran a wholesale trade.

As in most rural Jewish communities, the number of community members decreased in the second half of the 19th century due to emigration and relocation to the larger cities. From 1830 to 1900 the size of the community decreased by around 80 percent, from around 150 to around 30 Jews. The large Jewish house, which the landlords had sold to three Jewish citizens in 1837, burned down in 1869 and was never rebuilt.

National Socialist Persecution

Some of the Jews living in Wollenberg in 1933 emigrated or moved to other German communities. The last 11 were deported to Gurs on October 22, 1940 . Two of them died in French camps and two in Auschwitz . One Jew reached the USA, six Jews are missing. Of three Wollenberg Jews who moved abroad, two perished in Theresienstadt and one in Izbica . (Angerbauer / Frank, p. 244)

The synagogue on Poststrasse was demolished in 1938 by an external SA troop , its remains were torn down in 1965 and a farm building was built over it.

A memorial stone at the Protestant parish hall commemorates the last Jewish residents of Wollenberg, who were deported to Gurs in 1940.

The memorial book of the Federal Archives lists 12 Jewish citizens born in Wollenberg who fell victim to the genocide of the National Socialist regime .

Common names

When all Jews in Baden had to adopt hereditary family names in 1809, the 24 heads of families of the Jews in Wollenberg took the following names: Kander (4), Strauss (3), Kuhn (2), Löbmann (2), Reuss and Reis (2) , Born (1), Böhm (1), Brüller (1), Grumbacher (1), Hanauer (1), Kern (1), Krumbein (1), Mannheimer (1), Neidensteiner (1), Schuster (1) and Black Forests (1).

Community development

year	Parishioners
1717/18	8 people
1726/27	14 people
1752/53	15 families
1759/60	22 families
1775/76	17 families
1796/97	18 families
1806	95 people
1824	116 families
1830	150 people
1875	97 people
1900	32 people
1933	21 people

literature

• Rudolf Petzold: The Jewish community in Wollenberg , in: Bad Rappenauer Heimatbote 23, December 2012, pp. 7-19.
• Wolfram Angerbauer , Hans Georg Frank: Jewish communities in the district and city of Heilbronn. History, fates, documents . Heilbronn district, Heilbronn 1986 ( series of publications by the Heilbronn district . Volume 1), pp. 238–244.
• Joachim Hahn and Jürgen Krüger: Synagogues in Baden-Württemberg . Volume 2: Joachim Hahn: Places and Facilities . Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1843-5 ( Memorial Book of the Synagogues in Germany . Volume 4), pp. 37–38.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Commemorative Book - Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 - 1945 . Retrieved October 29, 2009.