Jewish cemetery (Potsdam)

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Jewish cemetery in Potsdam
Mourning hall

The Jewish cemetery on the Pfingstberg in Potsdam , the capital of the State of Brandenburg ( Germany ), was laid out in 1743. It is located at Puschkinallee 18, near the Belvedere and is a protected monument .

This Jewish cemetery is the only authentic memorial that bears witness to the life cycle of the Jewish population in the former Prussian residence and garrison city.

history

  • The Jewish cemetery on what was then Eichberg has been a burial place since October 28, 1743. The Eichberg was renamed Judenberg. Frederick II gave the Jews living in Potsdam a piece of land far outside the city to build the cemetery. At that time, the area could not be used sensibly, as it was located on the slope and was difficult to reach from the city through the Black Ditch , which often flooded the access.
    Until then, the deceased of the Jewish community in Potsdam usually had to be brought to Berlin for burial. There are still numerous tombstones ( mazewot ) from the 18th century , the oldest is from the year it was founded.
  • In the course of time the cemetery was expanded to an area of ​​9,335 m². Like all Jewish cemeteries, it was fenced in from the start. In 1801 the fence, which was always damaged, was replaced by a wall, which was additionally supported by the 38 wall graves of wealthy Potsdam Jewish families. From 1817 the hill was called Pfingstberg after King Friedrich Wilhelm III. bought a plot of land with a pavilion, the Temple of Pomona.
  • The cemetery was exposed to anti-Semitic desecrations early on. The first evidence of this is a police warning issued at the cemetery in 1801, which made destruction of the building and the cemetery wall a punishable offense.
  • The first, simple morgue was replaced by new buildings in 1856 and 1881. The mourning hall (with Tahara house ) that still exists today and the small house for the cemetery gardener were created in 1910/11 according to plans by Carl Börnstein and Emil Kopp .
  • The looting of the mourning hall by Nazi members is documented for 1938. Attempts were also made to set fire to the gardener's cottage. As part of the Reichsmetall donation, almost all metal parts were dismantled from 1940 onwards. In 1943 the city was commissioned to buy the site from a trust company that was used at the time.
  • There were also several attacks on the cemetery during the GDR era, but these were only partially documented and therefore hardly known. In 1948 strangers stole urns from a hereditary burial and scattered their ashes in the cemetery. In 1980, 18 tombs were smeared with Nazi symbols using acidic paint. The cemetery was neglected in GDR times and some buildings were used for other purposes and thus desecrated. The use of the mourning hall as a furniture store was officially approved.
  • A large memorial stone in the fourth section of the funeral commemorates the Jews who were expelled from Potsdam between 1933 and 1943 or who did not survive their deportation to the extermination camps. A memorial plaque in the mourning hall commemorates the Jewish soldiers who died in the First World War.
  • In 1977 the grave complex was included in the list of monuments of the city of Potsdam, and since 1999 it has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site .
  • At the beginning of the 1990s around 520 graves were counted. In the meantime, the cemetery is said to be almost completely occupied with graves.
  • The cemetery has been the target of right-wing extremist attacks several times. In 2000, a wooden crucifix with a swastika was placed between two Jewish gravestones. In January 2001, an arson attack was carried out on the mourning hall. Brandenburg's attorney general Erardo Rautenberg expressed suspicion in November 2016 that the Brandenburg constitutional protection could be involved in the act.

literature

Web links

Commons : Jüdischer Friedhof Potsdam  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ according to other sources 'Schaderberg'
  2. ↑ The Black Ditch - formerly the border between Potsdam and Bornstedt
  3. ^ Association for Jewish Studies eV (ed.): Search for traces on the Jewish cemetery in Potsdam , 2016, p. 16
  4. ^ Carl Börnstein, architect (* 1868)
  5. ^ Association for Jewish Studies eV (ed.): Search for traces on the Jewish cemetery in Potsdam , 2016, p. 16
  6. ^ Association for Jewish Studies eV (ed.): Search for traces on the Jewish cemetery in Potsdam , 2016, p. 16
  7. ^ Association for Jewish Studies eV (ed.): Search for traces on the Jewish cemetery in Potsdam , 2016, p. 16
  8. ↑ "Brandenburg's Attorney General Erardo Rautenberg has expressed the suspicion that the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution may have been involved in the 2001 arson attack on the mourning hall of the Jewish cemetery in Potsdam." In: Der Tagesspiegel of November 18, 2016
  9. ↑ Arson attack on the Jewish mourning hall in 2001: Attorney General raises suspicions against the protection of the constitution - Berlin - Tagesspiegel. In: tagesspiegel.de . November 18, 2016, accessed November 19, 2016 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 25 '2.6 "  N , 13 ° 3' 28.7"  E