Jewish history of Salzburg

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The documented Jewish history of Salzburg begins in the Middle Ages , but there are assumptions that Jews lived in Salzburg as far back as ancient times . So far, however, no evidence is known.

Prince Archbishopric of Salzburg

In the Middle Ages, Judengasse was built in the city of Salzburg, next to Waagplatz , the center of the town, and it still exists today. This points to an early settlement of the Jews in the city of Salzburg. The canonical prohibition of interest by Christians gave the Jews a prominent position in finance and long-distance trade in the Middle Ages. The synagogue at the confluence of Judengasse and Waagplatz was also built at this time (today in the area of ​​the Radisson Hotel in the Old Town, previously Höllbräu).

In the first half of the 14th century the number of Jews in Salzburg increased sharply. As a result of the plague , which struck the Salzburg plains from 1349, the first pogrom against Salzburg Jews took place. The rumor spread that the cause of the plague was well poisoning by the Jews. This led to a major pogrom, to which almost the entire Jewish community fell victim, with the exception of a few Jews who were able to save themselves through baptism. A little later, however, there was a resettlement of Jews and a repurchase of the synagogue, which had become Christian property in 1349.

In 1404 the next Jewish pogrom took place in Salzburg. The reason for this was a church theft with wafer sales and the rumor of a ritual murder of a Christian boy. On July 10th, the Jews from the city of Salzburg and Hallein were rounded up and publicly burned with the exception of 25 children and one Jew who was baptized. Two pregnant women were given reprieve until after their children were born. Archbishop Erhard III. confiscated the property of the Jews, thereby improving the precarious financial situation of him and his family.

Soon afterwards Jews settled again. They supported the archbishop in financial matters, including with the collection of debts. They had to pay taxes to the archbishop, their “patron”, on a regular basis. In the following decades, however, the Jewish community did not regain its old importance. It is also not known whether there was a replacement for the old synagogue.

In 1498 the Prince Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach ordered the expulsion of the last Jews from Salzburg.

Under Bavarian rule

From 1810 to 1816 Salzburg belonged to the Kingdom of Bavaria . The Bavarian Jewish edict there of 1813 did not yet grant the Jews full civil rights, but it represents a milestone on the way to equal rights.

Under the Habsburg Monarchy

In the state constitution of 1867 freedom of settlement was established, which again made it possible for Jews to settle in Salzburg. The founder of the Salzburg Jewish community was the gold and silver dealer Albert Pollak from Mattersburg, who was the first Jew to be accepted into the community association in 1872 and who was granted civil rights in 1873. The immigrants came mainly from the area of ​​West Hungary / Burgenland and Bohemia / Moravia. They were mainly engaged in trade. By 1910 the proportion of Jews in the population of the city of Salzburg rose to 0.8 percent. From 1893 there was again a Jewish cemetery in Salzburg and from 1901 there was again a synagogue in Salzburg .

However, the Salzburg Jews were not integrated into the Salzburg pre-war (first world) society. They were economically successful but too few to create an independent cultural milieu. They withdrew into the religious or religiously related area. At least since the end of the highly liberal era, anti-Semitism developed as the basis and integral part of the basic bourgeois consensus across party lines. There was an almost complete exclusion of Jews from civil society.

During the Nazi tyranny

Immediately after the annexation of Austria , the Aryanization of Jewish property and the persecution of Jews began. After a few months, most of the Jewish businesses and businesses, as well as apartments, were expropriated. The most famous victims were the merchants Paul and Max Schwarz, the owner of the Schwarz department store on the Alten Markt, Robert Ornstein, the owner of a department store in the Getreidegasse, the writer Stefan Zweig (whose divorced wife had already sold the property on the Kapuzinerberg before 1938) and the co-founder of the Salzburg Festival Max Reinhardt . There were house searches, arrests and various regulations such as occupational bans, which restricted the freedom of movement and employment of Jews. The goal was to be expelled. Most of the arrestees were released if they promised to leave the country in the shortest possible time. Various laws, ordinances and edicts drastically restricted the human rights of Jews in a very short time. A high point of the persecution were the November pogroms on November 8th and 9th, 1938, during which Jewish shops that had not yet been Aryanized were administered and the synagogue and files of the Jewish cultural community were removed. Despite the report that Salzburg was “ Jew-free ” in 1941 , there were still 40 so-called full Jews and so-called “ mixed race ”, of which 71 were “first” and 57 “second” degrees. In 1942 there were still 18 religious Jews. They all faced constant persecution, including arrests and admission to concentration camps. It is not known how many of the 200 Jews who lived in the city of Salzburg at the time of the “ Anschluss ” fell victim to the Holocaust . Most of them, however, probably managed to emigrate in good time before the end of the war, influenced by the brutal repression that began with the Anschluss. When books were burned on April 30, 1938, books by Jewish authors were also burned.

From 1945

Particularly from difficult exile places such as Shanghai or Israel / Palestine, some of the expelled Jews returned after the war. There were also survivors from the Buchenwald concentration camp , who had been stopped on the demarcation line in Enns on the way home to Vienna and sent back near Salzburg. They participated in the reconstruction of the Salzburg community.

In addition, there were Displaced Persons (DPs) from Eastern Europe who were unable to return to Eastern Europe because of the anti-Semitism that continued after 1945. Between 1945 and 1948, 200,000 Jews migrated through Europe. Since the then (until 1948) British mandate power over Palestine and other countries regulated or partially prevented immigration, the refugees were illegally u. a. funneled across the Krimmler Tauern. Thousands lived in refugee quarters across the country. Hundreds of DPs settled in Salzburg and thus ensured the continued existence of the Jewish community. The Jewish cemetery in Aigen, which was badly damaged during National Socialism, was in use again from 1946. In 1968 the synagogue , which had been destroyed by the National Socialists , was re-inaugurated.

Today (at the beginning of the 21st century), however, the community is suffering from an aging population.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinz Dopsch, Robert Hoffmann: Salzburg. The whole history of the city . 2nd updated edition. Pustet, Salzburg / Vienna / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7025-0598-1 , pp. 161 .
  2. ^ Heinz Dopsch, Robert Hoffmann: Salzburg. The whole history of the city . 2nd updated edition. Pustet, Salzburg / Vienna / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7025-0598-1 , pp. 176 f .
  3. ^ Heinz Dopsch, Robert Hoffmann: Salzburg. The whole history of the city . 2nd updated edition. Pustet, Salzburg / Vienna / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7025-0598-1 , pp. 190 .
  4. ^ Heinz Dopsch, Robert Hoffmann: Salzburg. The whole history of the city . 2nd updated edition. Pustet, Salzburg / Vienna / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7025-0598-1 , pp. 446 f .
  5. ^ Heinz Dopsch, Robert Hoffmann: Salzburg. The whole history of the city . 2nd updated edition. Pustet, Salzburg / Vienna / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7025-0598-1 , pp. 481 .
  6. ^ Heinz Dopsch, Robert Hoffmann: Salzburg. The whole history of the city . 2nd updated edition. Pustet, Salzburg / Vienna / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7025-0598-1 , pp. 563 f .
  7. ^ Helga Embacher: The Salzburg Jewish Community from its re-establishment in liberalism to the present . In: Helga Embacher (Ed.): Jews in Salzburg. History, Cultures, Fates . Verlag Anton Pustet, Salzburg 2002, ISBN 3-7025-0449-4 , p. 61-65 .