Jewish cemetery (Eppingen)

Gravestones in the Jewish cemetery in Eppingen

The Jewish cemetery in Eppingen in the district of Heilbronn in northern Baden-Württemberg was laid out in 1819 and was the burial place of the Jewish community of Eppingen and the surrounding Jewish communities of Gemmingen , Ittlingen , Mühlbach , Richen and Stebbach until 1939 .

location

The Jewish cemetery is located southwest of Eppingen, in the extension of Weinbrennerstraße on the terraced western edge of the crest of the Großer Hellberg above the Hellbach . The area of 4121 m², surrounded by a wall, is roughly trapezoidal and follows the topographical conditions on the edge of an old ravine. The distance to the urban area, that is to say to the Bretten suburb , was around 750 meters in the middle of the 19th century.

history

The Jewish cemetery in Oberöwisheim and the Jewish cemetery in Heinsheim were traditional old burial places for the Jews of Eppingen . The initiative to set up a Jewish cemetery in Eppingen came from the Eppingen District Office in 1814 ; if possible, it should be a cemetery for all Jewish communities within the district. Since some Jews from the district authorities had already acquired grave sites elsewhere, were too poor to participate in the costs or wanted to follow traditional traditions, there was initially no unanimous approval of the cemetery plan. The Jewish communities of Gemmingen , Ittlingen , Mühlbach , Richen and Stebbach were partially or with concessions willing to participate in the Eppingen cemetery, while the Jewish communities of Berwangen and Hilsbach refused to be buried in Eppingen. In 1817, the Jewish community in Eppingen announced that it would, if necessary, build a cemetery on its own if the other district communities did not join. First of all, a site on the Galgenberg was aimed at, which was approved by the management of the Pfinz and Enz district in 1818 subject to conditions for the participating municipalities. However, the targeted area turned out to be unsuitable due to the nature of the soil, so that the landlord Reichert bought a field on the Großer Hellberg , which was approved by the district office as a burial place and was walled in in 1819.

The cemetery was initially occupied in the (today) central part, where the oldest gravestone from 1819 is located. The first person buried there was the Eppinger community leader Issak Moses Regensburger, who died on September 28, 1819, and who had been very committed to the construction of the cemetery during his lifetime. The graves were uniformly south-facing, with the tombstone at the north end. In the years up to 1869, only around 40 percent of the deceased Eppinger Jews were buried in the cemetery, as many of them were still buried at the earlier burial sites of their ancestors. The cemetery was first expanded to the west in 1857, and in 1870 the cemetery was extended to the north by a new cemetery on a field acquired by the Jewish community of Eppingen in 1855, which gave it its present size. The walling was gradually adapted to the enlarged area. To the south, in the southeast corner, there is a grave field for children and women who have recently given birth on the original cemetery area (occupied from 1822 to 1857), in the southwest corner there is a purely children's cemetery within the western extension from 1857 (occupied from 1859 to 1929).

The gravestones are mostly uniform as high-rectangular sandstone gravestones with antique style elements, Hebrew lettering and typical Jewish gravestone symbolism such as handshake, jug and open book. The gravestones are essentially numbered consecutively according to the date of death. The numbering began around 1860, with the older tombstones being numbered later. The numbering is not always conclusive. The Hebrew texts of the tombstones are in most cases common grave inscriptions, beginning with Hier rests ... , followed by a short typing, name, place of residence, date of death (and sometimes burial) and the phrase It is his / her soul in the covenant of life involved . On the younger tombstones there are often textual decorations, which often form an acrostic and describe the deceased in a typifying flowery way. In addition to biblical names, men's names also contain Jewish-German or Germanized versions of names, while women are traditionally referred to with nicknames. If there are also German inscriptions in addition to Hebrew inscriptions, the names were often transferred in a German-looking manner.

War memorial in the Jewish cemetery

The cemetery is almost completely occupied. In 1928 the Jewish community acquired a neighboring field from the city for a possible expansion. Nevertheless, since the late 19th century, due to the shrinking size of the community, there have been fewer and fewer burials in the cemetery. After the First World War, a war memorial for the eight fallen of the Jewish communities was erected at the entrance . During National Socialism, the number of burials continued to decline as a result of the emigration of Jews, later as a result of harassment, and finally due to the extermination of the association communities. The last burial in the cemetery took place in 1940.

In 1939 the cemetery came into the possession of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany , and during the Second World War it came under the control of the Reich Finance Administration, which wanted to auction the tombstones and sell the site to the community, which did not succeed because the city of Eppingen was under bidding. In 1949 the cemetery came into the possession of the JRSO ; since 1961 it has been the property of the Israelite Religious Community of Baden , based in Karlsruhe.

Due to the remote location of the cemetery, it was soon a multiple target of vandalism, which was not necessarily anti-Semitic. Damage to property is documented as early as 1825, 1835 and 1839. In 1928, four headstones were knocked over by drunk students. Little is known about desecrations during the time of National Socialism. There was probably no scheduled desecration in the vicinity of the Reichspogromnacht 1938. However, the cemetery was already devastated by the spring of 1945 before it was further damaged by artillery fire.

From October 1 to 16, 1945, former members of Nazi organizations were obliged to do labor in the cemetery. In more than 4500 hours of work, the wall was repaired, tombstones were erected and the overgrown vegetation of hedges, lichens and moss that had covered many tombstones was removed. From 1945 to 1948 numerous tombs were repaired by sculptors, but there was still damage to the wall and the tombstones, which the city of Eppingen refused to repair in 1950. Bushes and trees threatened to push the tombstones over, so that in 1950 the JRSO ordered the complete clearing of the cemetery. In 1959, however, trees were planted again because the barren cemetery was now perceived as unsuitable for the landscape. After the cemetery came into the possession of the Israelite Religious Community of North Baden in 1961, the North Baden regional council took over a large part of the maintenance costs. In 1963, some paths in the cemetery were paved, later over 300 grave borders were removed to simplify the maintenance of the site.

In 1971, 16 tombstones were damaged by two perpetrators, but the damage was repaired in the same year and the following year as a result of extensive landscaping maintenance. The largest desecration of the cemetery so far occurred on September 29, 1982, when a drunken group tried to dig up skulls and knocked over 44 tombstones out of anger over failure. The group was convicted of community disturbance of the peace of the dead and community damage to property. The damage was repaired in 1982 and 1984 by students from the Eppingen secondary school as well as sculptors and municipal workers.

Occupancy numbers

Place of origin of the Jews buried in Eppingen:

Eppingen: 223
Gemmingen: 226
Richen: 119
Ittlingen: 73
Stebbach: 55
Mühlbach: 30
Others: 16

literature

Edmund Kiehnle : The Jews in Eppingen and their cult buildings . In: Around the Ottilienberg. Contributions to the history of the city of Eppingen and its surroundings . tape 3 . Heimatfreunde Eppingen , Eppingen 1985.
Ralf Bischoff and Reinhard Hauke (eds.): The Jewish cemetery in Eppingen. A documentation . 2nd Edition. Heimatfreunde Eppingen, Eppingen 1996 ( Around the Ottilienberg. Contributions to the history of the city of Eppingen and its surroundings . Volume 5).