Jewish cemetery (Rheydt)

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Jewish Cemetery
Jewish Cemetery

The Jewish cemetery is located in the Rheydt district in Mönchengladbach ( North Rhine-Westphalia ) on Eifelstrasse.

The Jewish cemetery was laid out before 1840. It was entered under No. E 027 on August 24, 1994 in the monuments list of the city of Mönchengladbach .

architecture

The cemetery can be reached from Eifelstrasse. The cemetery complex, which is around 2700 square meters in size and surrounded by a brick wall, is still occupied today. It is noticeable that a large number of gravestones (Mazewa) are missing.

During the Nazi era , these monuments were illegally cleared by stone masons from Rheydt and given a new use. The cemetery area is divided into six plots of different sizes . The two northern pieces on Eifelstrasse have only been documented since the Second World War .

The origin of the cemetery goes back to the eastern part of the central area, which must have served the first burials before 1840 . Gravestones subject to uniform, traditional design criteria dominate here. Their simplicity points to the equality of all people after death. The mostly high rectangular stones close with a triangular gable , wave gable, a hip or tent roof , attachments and / or side arches. In addition, there are also low monuments that are reminiscent of an open book. These grave monuments were erected mainly from a light brown sandstone (Ruhr sandstone). Inscription tablets are usually made of white marble and set deep in the gravestones. They have Hebrew or Hebrew / German inscriptions on the front, German or no inscriptions on the reverse .

The first extension from 1900 included the area south of the first occupied plot. After the turn of the century, as a result of the tendencies towards secularization and the liberalization of the Jewish faith, the shape of the tombstones was less uniform. In addition to the traditional gravestone formats, increasingly tall, narrow steles and obelisks made of igneous, basic rocks (e.g. 'diabase') were erected. The grave inscriptions of the stones erected shortly before 1900 are in Hebrew or Hebrew / German on the front, in German on the reverse or are missing, after 1900 there are also increasing numbers of German texts on both sides or only on the front.

After 1913, the two western parcels were included in the use of the cemetery. Even now the traditional gravestone formats - with the exception of the obelisk - are being displayed, but a greater wealth of variation develops, which leads to more elaborate, broad-based gravestones and monumental memorials for family graves. In contrast, individual graves have prevailed up to now as a sign that all earthly bonds have been dissolved by death. Inscriptions can now only be found on the front of the grave monuments in German or Hebrew / German.

To commemorate the Jewish dead of the First World War, a war memorial is also set up on this plot . It bears the inscription:

1914 + 1918 / IN MEMORY OF THE / FALLEN IN THE WAR; IN / FOREIGN EARTH RESTING / SONS OF OUR CHURCH / KAN. JOS. GOLDSTEIN / MUSK. MAX KLEIN / LDST. SAM. MOLL / MUSK. ALB. SELIGMANN / LDST. FERD. STAR / LT. MAX STERN / LIKE YOU REST IN PEACE

Almost all of the gravestones erected in the second half of the 19th century record the names under civil law in Latin script and the dates of birth and death in Arabic numerals and according to Christian counting. Only Hebrew texts and information based on Jewish counting are the exception. There are no symbols on the monuments, since the beginning of the 20th century the monuments have shown David's shield , which represents belonging to Judaism . Hebrew is limited to the formulas:

'Here rests': po nikba 'Let his / her soul be tied into the bundle of eternal life': tanzeba

There are grave borders and the grave sites are occasionally covered with pebbles. Since the Second World War, rectangular gravestones or inclined inscription plates - as a substitute for lost monuments - have been the rule. Only since then have the graves been planted.

See also

literature

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monuments list of the city of Mönchengladbach ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / pb.moenchengladbach.de

Coordinates: 51 ° 10 ′ 5.8 ″  N , 6 ° 26 ′ 10.5 ″  E