Jewish life in Berlin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
New synagogue , inaugurated in 1866
Seat of the Central Council of Jews in Germany since 1999

The history of the Jews in Berlin begins shortly after the city emerged. Until the beginning of modern times , Jews were expelled from Berlin and resettled several times . Since 1671 there has been a permanent Jewish population in Berlin, which grew in the 19th and early 20th centuries to 173,000 people in 1925. The Jewish population played an important and formative role in Berlin during this period.

During the National Socialist era , 55,000 Jews were victims of the Shoah , most of the others fled or were expelled. Only 9,000 Jews survived underground or in a marriage with a non-Jewish spouse .

The number of Jews in Berlin has increased again since 1990, in particular due to the influx of Jews from the successor states of the Soviet Union . At the beginning of the 21st century, more than 12,000 Jews live in the city. This makes the Jewish community in Berlin the largest in Germany. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 mostly secular Israelis also live in Berlin.

history

City emergence up to expulsion from 1200–1573

There were already Jewish traders in the Mark Brandenburg when the two cities of Berlin and Cölln were founded in the late 12th century . The first documented mention of Jews in Berlin comes from the year 1295. In a privilege of the Berlin cloth makers' guild, wool weavers belonging to the guild are forbidden from buying yarn from Jews. The Jews did not have to live in a ghetto in Berlin , but lived close together in the Klosterviertel, an area that was characterized by the Great Jüdenhof until the Second World War and has since been found on Jüdenstrasse at the Rotes Rathaus .

At this time the Jews had a special legal status and were, if necessary, dependent on the benevolence of the rulers; they were left with only a few fields of activity such as credit and trade to earn a living. Persecutions and expulsions occurred again and again, especially in times of crisis. Mostly, however, Jews soon settled again. In 1348/1349, when the plague raged in Europe, the first major persecution of Jews in Berlin occurred . In 1446, Elector Friedrich II expelled the Jews from the Mark Brandenburg.

As a result of a theft in 1510 from the church in the Havelland town of Knoblauch by the Christian tinker Paul Fromm from Bernau, there was an anti-Jewish trial in Berlin that ultimately cost 50 Jews their lives. More and more Jews were suspected of desecrating the host and of ritual murder through “confessions” extorted under torture . From July 11 to 19, the trial of 41 people took place on the Neuer Markt in Berlin, as a result of which Fromm and 38 Jews were burned at the stake. Two Jews who had previously converted were beheaded, and ten others had previously died from torture. All Jews were subsequently expelled from the Mark Brandenburg.

Jews were allowed to settle in Berlin again as early as 1539, but were expelled again in 1573, and this time for a century. The reason for this was provided by the electoral mint master Lippold , who was highly regarded as financier of the country and the court by his employer Joachim II , but was hated by his subjects, both Christians and Jews, because of his tough regime. After the sudden death of the elector, Lippold was arrested in 1571 for theft and embezzlement. There were pogroms , which was then used in the synagogue during which Klosterstraße was destroyed. After an interim release, Lippold was tried on charges of sorcery and murder of the Elector; In 1573 he was cruelly executed. The Jews were expelled from the Mark Brandenburg “for all eternity”. Whether a cemetery in the Judengasse , which was only named in the 18th century , in the residential area Berolina- / Mollstraße , was used for Jewish burials during this period is controversial.

Re-establishment of the Jewish community 1671–1780

The Jewish community that existed towards the end of the 20th century dates back to 1671 when several Jewish families came to Berlin. They were expelled from Vienna by Leopold I in 1670 . Since Brandenburg was defeated after the Thirty Years War , the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm endeavored to bring immigrants into the country to help rebuild it. In addition to the Huguenots , who came to the country from 1685, he also allowed 50 wealthy Jewish families to settle in Brandenburg on May 21, 1671, although conditions were much worse. The privilege of Friedrich Wilhelm allowed the Jews to settle in the whole of the Mark and assigned them to trade as a field of activity. The guilds were closed to them. In addition to the usual taxes, every Jewish family had to pay an annual nominal fee. Only families with one child were allowed to settle in the Mark. An extra fee had to be paid to get a marriage license. The emerging Jewish communities were allowed to employ a teacher and a slaughterhouse and set up a cemetery; the construction of synagogues was temporarily prohibited. The community consisted not only of Viennese refugees, but also of other origins such as the court factors Baruch and Moses Benjamin Wulff and Jost Liebmann .

Old synagogue, built in 1714

On September 10, 1671, the first two families received a letter of protection. Since then, this date has been considered the founding date of the Berlin Jewish Community. Nine families initially settled in Berlin. The number grew over the next few decades. In 1688 there were already 40 and from 1700 on 117 Jewish families living in Berlin. In accordance with the electoral privilege, a Jewish cemetery was laid out in front of the Spandauer Tor in 1672 . From 1675 a burial brotherhood is documented. Services initially had to be held in private apartments. It was not until September 14, 1714 that a synagogue, later called the Old Synagogue , was inaugurated in Heidereuthergasse . Queen Sophie Dorothea was present at the inauguration of the magnificent building . The synagogue was set into the ground because it was not allowed to tower over the surrounding buildings.

The restrictive regulations for Berlin Jews were relaxed somewhat in 1714, for example trade restrictions were lifted. The General Regulations of 1730 and the Revised General Privilege of 1750 laid down new financial burdens for Prussian Jews as well as a number of other restrictions - one of which was that Jews were only allowed into Berlin through a single city gate and had to face some questioning there . These provisions essentially remained in place until the beginning of the 19th century at the time of the Prussian reforms .

Rise of the Jewish community 1750–1900

Moses Mendelssohn (oil painting by Anton Graff , 1771)

Moses Mendelssohn is one of the most important humanists of the 18th century and the main representative of the Berlin Haskala , the Jewish Enlightenment. He founded the Mendelssohn banking family and the Mendelssohn banking house on Jägerstrasse , which subsequently became a center of Berlin's cultural and literary scene. In addition to Moses Mendelssohn's grandson Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and his sister Fanny Hensel , Rahel Levin , Dorothea Veit , Amalie Beer and Henriette Herz in particular contributed decisive cultural impulses. For example, Amalie Beer ran an important salon . It established a public space in which the bourgeoisie and the nobility met. As a Jew, she did not choose the path of assimilation, but of acculturation . "On the basis of the Enlightenment, tolerance and humanity, the Beer couple combined their Jewish faith with German cultural awareness and Prussian patriotism, which they demonstrated during the wars of liberation." Prussian Order of Luise . Without these salons, literary life in Berlin at the beginning of the 19th century would be inconceivable. Starting from the literary salons in the vicinity of these women, numerous literary groups emerged around this time , such as the North Star Association and the Serapion Brothers .

Henriette Herz, 1778

The Prussian Jewish edict of 1812 led to partial legal equality of the Jews living in Prussia. Although they were denied access to the officer corps, the judiciary and public administration until the Emancipation Act of the North German Confederation of 1869, Jews in Berlin were exceptionally well integrated from the 19th to the first third of the 20th century. Aaron Bernstein , a participant in the revolution of 1848 , was a co-founder of the liberal reform church . Other notable personalities from this period include Moritz Veit , Wilhelm Beer , Paul Singer , Samuel Fischer , Moritz Coschell , Leopold Ullstein and Max Liebermann , founding members of the Berlin Secession . See also "Imperial Jews" .

The oldest synagogue in Berlin was on Heidereutergasse, the most important was the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse . King Wilhelm I willingly agreed to its construction - as long as it was not higher than the old Hohenzollern Cathedral . It served as the main synagogue until 1938. The last service took place on March 30, 1940. Abused as a warehouse for the Wehrmacht and badly damaged by British bombs at the end of November 1943, the ruins of the main room and the heavily damaged dome were demolished in 1958 at the instigation of the GDR government . From 1988 the front part of the building was rebuilt. After its reconstruction, which was completed in 1995, what was once the largest and most beautiful synagogue in Europe is now a museum.

The Jewish cemetery in front of Schönhauser Tor from 1827 was only used for burials until the end of the 19th century. The Jewish cemetery in Weißensee took over its role from 1880 , which gradually developed into the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe. In 1869, the Adass Yisroel Jewish Synagogue Congregation split off, as the Jewish community tended more and more towards Reform Judaism . In 1873 Adass Jisroel bought her own cemetery in Weißensee, which she used from 1880 and ran her own hospital on what was then Lothringer Straße .

The heyday and pogroms 1900–1990

After a steady influx of Jewish people from Eastern Europe, especially from Galicia since 1870, the Jewish population of Berlin represented an important part of urban life. Many of them initially stayed with friends and relatives around the Scheunenviertel .

Rykestrasse Synagogue , built in 1904

In 1902 the library of the Jewish community was founded.

In 1904 the Rykestrasse Synagogue in Prenzlauer Berg was inaugurated , which is the synagogue with the largest number of members in Germany in the 21st century. At the same time, another synagogue was inaugurated on Passauer Strasse , and famous rabbis of the time such as Joseph Carlebach and Alexander Altmann worked here. Regina Jonas , born in Berlin, became the first woman in the world to be ordained a rabbi and to hold this religious office. She preached in several Berlin synagogues from the 1930s to 1940s .

Before the transfer of power to the NSDAP , 160,000 members were registered in Berlin's Jewish communities, a third of the Jewish population of the German Reich . Due to the increasing persecution of Jews, those affected suffered more than the rest of Berlin's population from poverty and unemployment. The first effects of the election success of the NSDAP were already felt in the everyday behavior of Berliners. In the Jewish community itself an attempt was made to defuse the situation a little by restructuring. A wave of emigration began.

Heinrich Stahl was the chairman of the Berlin Jewish Community from 1933 until he was abducted in 1942 .

After the Scheunenviertel pogrom during the hyperinflation of 1923 , the SS staged another pogrom in March 1933 against the mostly Eastern Jewish residents of Grenadierstrasse in the Scheunenviertel . Like the first Kurfürstendamm riot of 1931 , the Kurfürstendamm riot of 1935 was carried out by the Berlin SA and increased the anti-Jewish sentiment among the population. At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, the rulers planned the further timing of the extermination campaigns that were already underway in the East and considered including other Jewish groups of victims. The mass deportations ended in the spring of 1943 in the raid known as the factory action, during which there was a Rosenstrasse protest by relatives of the last deportation victims.

After the Nazi era , Erich Nehlhans headed the Berlin Jewish Community from 1945 to 1949, and Hans Erich Fabian took his place after the latter was arrested by the Soviet authorities. Heinz Galinski was chairman of the Jewish community in Berlin from April 1949 until his death in 1992 (from 1953 to 1989 of the West Berlin Jewish community).

Reunification and growth 1990–2015

With the German reunification in 1990, the two Jewish communities (East and West Berlin) also merged. In 2006, the move from the previous town hall, the Jewish town hall in the western part of the city, back to its original location on Oranienburger Straße in Berlin-Mitte.

The Heinz Galinski Prize has been awarded every year since 1989 to promote German-Jewish understanding.

The Touro College Berlin was founded in 2006

According to the American Jewish Committee , Berlin was the world's fastest growing Jewish community between 1990 and 2010. This was due to the immigration of Russian Jews and later of Israeli citizens. Meanwhile, over 80 percent of the community members are immigrant Jews from the Soviet Union or its successor states. The community newspaper Jewish Berlin appears bilingual in German and Russian.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany has had its seat in Berlin since 1999 . It has 23 regional associations with 108 municipalities and around 100,500 members (as of 2015).

The 14th European Maccabi Games were held from July 27th to August 5th, 2015 in Berlin . The European Maccabiade was held in Germany for the first time.

In December 2016, the Jewish Student Union Germany (JSUD) was founded as a nationwide political representation of Jewish students and young Jewish adults in Germany and has been based in Berlin ever since.

Jewish community in Berlin

The Jewish Community of Berlin is organized as a unified community that operates six community synagogues, both orthodox and liberal . Since 2006 there has also been a Sephardic synagogue in Berlin. Three rabbis from the Jewish community and several other rabbis, including a woman again since 2007, work in Berlin. With more than 10,000 members, the Jewish Community in Berlin is the largest Jewish community in Germany. It offers its members a wide-ranging Jewish infrastructure, including nine synagogues , two ritual immersion baths , several schools, adult education, a nursing home, assisted living, a senior citizens' home and an outpatient care service.

There is also the small Orthodox community of Adass Jisroel with 1,000 members and several thousand Jews who do not belong to any community. In addition, around 15,000 Israelis currently (2014) live in Berlin, 6,152 of whom were born in Israel.

The Jewish Community sees the social support of needy members as one of its most important tasks, in particular the integration of immigrants from the CIS countries , who in 2010 made up more than three quarters of the members. For a Jewish education, children and young people can visit the Jewish day-care center, the Heinz Galinski elementary school and the Jewish high school Moses Mendelssohn . There is also a youth center and numerous other activities for Jewish youth.

Chairperson

Jewish high school Moses Mendelssohn

Controversy

Since Gideon Joffe was elected chairman of the Jewish community in Berlin in February 2012, conflicts in the community have become public knowledge. Loud verbal arguments had taken place during the board elections. In the election there was talk of waste and nepotism.

Since then, a conflict has been simmering in the community between assimilated Berlin Jews and Jews who immigrated from former Soviet republics since 1990. According to a report in the magazine Der Spiegel , it is about power, vanities, intrigues, jobs, benefices and also about disreputable businesses. The municipal parliament has set up a committee of inquiry to investigate previous real estate deals of the old board of directors around Lala Süsskind. The community had financial deficits, and the Berlin Senate demanded nine million euros back.

After the election of the representative assembly in December 2015, allegations arose that the election had been manipulated. After more than half a year after the Berlin congregation had still not been able to agree on an election review procedure, the Central Council of Jews in Germany intervened, declaring in August 2016 that “this is no longer just an internal matter of the Jewish Congregation of Berlin ", and demanded from the community board to" clear up the questions in the room unreservedly and quickly ".

rabbi

Status: 2017

Synagogue on Fraenkelufer

Community rabbi

Voluntary rabbis

Cantors

Status: 2017

Contemporary culture

Memorial plaque for Abraham Geiger donated by the University of Potsdam

Jewish sons and daughters of Berlin

Hans Rosenthal (left) with Dalli Dalli

See also

literature

in order of appearance

  • Berlin Museum (Hrsg.): Synagogues in Berlin - On the history of a destroyed architecture. Part 1: The Congregational Synagogues . Verlag Willmuth Arenhövel, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-922912-04-4 .
  • Michael Brocke , Eckehart Ruthenberg, Kai Uwe Schulenburg: Stone and Name. The Jewish cemeteries in East Germany (New Federal States / GDR and Berlin) . Institute Church and Judaism, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-923095-19-8 .
  • Reinhard Rürup (ed.): Jewish history in Berlin. Pictures and documents . Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-89468-181-0 .
  • Horst Helas: Ghetto with open gates . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 6, 2000, ISSN  0944-5560 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  • Andreas Nachama , Ulrich Eckhardt : Jewish Berliners. Life after the Shoah . Jaron, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89773-068-5 .
  • Norbert Boesche alias Avigdor Ben Trojan, Tilly Boesche-Zacharow : Jewish search for traces in Berlin-Reinickendorf - "Greetings to Miss Ilse" . 2nd Edition. Mathilde et al. Norbert Boesche Verlag, Berlin / Haifa 2003, ISBN 3-923809-80-8 (Berlin-Reinickendorf / Frohnau).
  • Norbert Boesche alias Avigdor Ben Trojan, Tilly Boesche-Zacharow: Jewish traces in Berlin-Reinickendorf - “I often think of Uncle Franz” . 1st edition. Mathilde et al. Norbert Boesche Verlag, Berlin / Haifa 2004, ISBN 3-923809-82-4 (Berlin-Reinickendorf / Hermsdorf and the surrounding area).
  • Anatol Gotfryd: The sky in the puddles - A life between Galicia and the Kurfürstendamm . wjs, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-937989-04-8 (preface by George Tabori ).
  • Andreas Nachama, Ulrich Eckhardt: Jewish Places in Berlin . Nicolai, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89479-165-9 .
  • Katja Schmidt: The development of the Jewish religious society into a corporation under public law in Prussia from 1671 to 1918, with special appreciation of the conditions in Berlin . Weißensee Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-89998-094-8 .
  • Bill Rebiger: Jewish Berlin. Culture, religion and everyday life yesterday and today . Jaron Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-89773-137-1 .
  • Alexander Jungmann: Jewish life in Berlin. The current change in a metropolitan diaspora community . Transcript, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-811-7 .
  • Volker Wagner: History of the Berlin Jews . Elsengold Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-944594-47-7 .
  • Andreas Nachama, Ulrich Eckhardt: Jewish Berlin. City Guide . Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-85476-552-3 .

Web links

Commons : Judaism in Berlin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herbert Schwenk: The madness had a method . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 3, 1999, ISSN  0944-5560 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  2. ^ Petra Wilhelmy-Dollinger: The Berlin salons: with cultural-historical walks . De Gruyter, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-11-016414-0 , p. 93 (456 pp.).
  3. ↑ Evelyn Bartolmai: Synagogue Oranienburgerstrasse. On the history of the building. In: or-synagoge.de. Retrieved March 1, 2018 .
  4. ^ Berlin Jews in Theresienstadt. In: Theresienstadt Lexicon. Retrieved March 1, 2018 .
  5. ↑ The Jewish Community in Berlin 1930 . In: Jewish address book for Greater Berlin , 1931, p. 11.
  6. ^ Members: regional associations and Jewish communities. (No longer available online.) Central Council of Jews in Germany, archived from the original on March 8, 2010 ; accessed on March 1, 2018 .
  7. ↑ our regional associations on site. In: Zentralratderjuden.de.
  8. ↑ municipalities. In: Zentralratderjuden.de.
  9. ^ Jewish community in Berlin. In: jg-berlin.org. Retrieved March 1, 2018 .
  10. ^ Jews in Berlin. Jewish life past and present. In: berlin-judentum.de. haGalil.com, accessed March 1, 2018 .
  11. ^ Jewish life in Berlin. Israelis go to Berlin, not Germany. In: goethe.de. Goethe Institut, July 2014, accessed on March 1, 2018 (interview with Professor Anat Feinberg ).
  12. ↑ The Berliners really come from these cities and countries. In: rbb24.de. Broadcasting Berlin-Brandenburg, August 18, 2018 .
  13. ^ Conflicts in Berlin's Jewish Community - tumults overshadow board elections. In: sueddeutsche.de. Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 1, 2012, accessed on March 1, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Sven Becker, Michael Sontheimer : You make revolution . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 2013, p. 47/48 ( online ).
  15. ^ Press release on the allegations of manipulation in the last election in the Jewish community in Berlin. (No longer available online.) In: Zentralratdjuden.de. Central Council of Jews in Germany, August 1, 2016, archived from the original on July 7, 2017 ; accessed on March 1, 2018 .
  16. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  17. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  18. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  19. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  20. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  21. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  22. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  23. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  24. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  25. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  26. ↑ jg-berlin.org
  27. ^ Shalom Berlin. In: juedische-kulturtage.org. Jewish Culture Days, accessed March 1, 2018 .
  28. ^ Theater megalomania, German-Jewish stage Bimah. In: deutsch-juedisches-theater.de. Retrieved on March 1, 2018 (after the death of artistic director Dan Lahav without a (current) program).
  29. ^ Jewish Voice From Germany. In: jewish-voice-from-germany.de. SVoice from Germany GmbH (publisher and managing director: Dr. Rafael Seligmann), accessed on March 1, 2018 .
  30. ^ Jewish Film Festival Berlin & Brandenburg. In: jfbb.de. Welser 25 e. V. Circle of Friends of Jewish and Israeli Film, accessed on March 1, 2018 .
  31. ^ Jewish Food Week. In: noshberlin.com. Nosh Berlin (Food Festival), accessed on March 1, 2018 .
  32. ↑ Europe's largest Hanukkah chandelier shines at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. In: evangelisch.de. Community work of Evangelical Journalism (GEP) gGmbH, accessed on March 1, 2018 (the Chabad-Hanukkah).