Jewish cemetery (Georgensgmünd)

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Georgensgmünd Jewish cemetery
Georgensgmünd Jewish cemetery

At the Georgensgmünd Jewish cemetery in the Georgensgmünd municipality in the Roth district in the Bavarian administrative district of Middle Franconia , almost 1,800 gravestones have been preserved, the oldest of which date from the end of the 16th century.

history

Jakob von Roth, the son-in-law of a doctor and merchant, must have acquired the first plot of the later Georgensgmünd cemetery as a burial place for himself and his relatives as early as 1582. The property is mentioned in his property register from 1582. The reason for the purchase was perhaps the unexpected death of his son in 1581, for whom the father had bought a house in Pappenheim . Jakob himself lived in the town of Roth , two hours from Georgensgmünd. One of Jacob's brothers lived in Georgensgmünd, other members of the family were scattered around the area, in Windsbach and Eckersmühlen . It cannot be proven whether they were all buried in Georgensgmünd, as some gravestones are missing. The gravestones of the first generation, the founder of the cemetery and his family, have also not survived. The two oldest surviving tombstones date from 1594. They were erected for Eliezer, Isaac's son, and his daughter Ettl.

The cemetery, which was initially owned by the family, was probably also open to other members of the Jewish communities in the area. The Jews of Schwabach also buried their dead in Georgensgmünd. The oldest tombstones of Jews from Thalmässing date from 1669/70, the oldest tombstone of a Windsbach Jew bears the year 1710. The tombstone of a child who belonged to the Jewish community of Hilpoltstein has been preserved from 1721 .

Of the buried, whose place of origin is noted and still legible on their tombstones, 556 came from Schwabach, 305 from Roth, 236 from Georgensgmünd, 168 from Windsbach, 163 from Thalmässing, twelve from Hilpoltstein and nine from other places. According to Peter Kuhn and Barbara Rösch, one must assume a significantly higher number of burials than gravestones have survived. Many tombs are weathered and children were often not given a tombstone. The authors speculate that well over 3000 burials took place in the Georgensgmünder Friedhof. The municipal accounts from the 18th century, which have been completely preserved for some years, indicate a very high child mortality rate. They show that more than half and sometimes up to three quarters of the funerals were children.

In addition to the funeral fee, which was payable to the local community, when entering foreign territory, the respective sovereign could levy body tolls for those accompanying the funeral procession and death tolls for the dead. Towns and villages around Georgensgmünd were almost exclusively subordinate to the Principality of Brandenburg-Ansbach , while the Jews of Thalmässing had to cross the Duchy of Palatinate-Neuburg and pay customs to get to the Georgensgmünder Friedhof. From 1832 they set up their own cemetery .

Extensions to the cemetery

Around 1700 the cemetery was expanded to include an acre adjoining it to the north, which was almost twice the size of the previous cemetery. Another field was acquired in 1741 - for 25 times its actual value. Initially, the Eichstadt prince-bishop, to whom the owner of the property was subordinate, had forbidden the sale of the property and only approved the purchase after several increases in the annual land interest payable by the Jews. The original parcel and the two acquisitions are known as the old cemetery .

In the second half of the 18th century, there was a further expansion, called the New Cemetery , which was occupied from 1844. The Georgensgmünd Jewish Cemetery became the joint property of the communities buried on it. He now owned a large Tahara house and was surrounded by a wall, the road to the village was paved.

Separate places were provided for women who had recently given birth . The murdered and those executed were buried separately near the Tahara house. From the middle of the 19th century, graves for rabbis and scholars were laid in the old part of the cemetery .

In June 1939 Siegfried Weinschenk received permission to place a tombstone for his mother Berta Weinschenk, who died four days before the November pogroms on November 5, 1938 in Windsheim. The last burial at the Georgensgmünd Jewish cemetery took place in 1948. At that time Manuel Graf from Schwabach was buried, the only one who had returned to his hometown from the concentration camp after the Second World War .

Tombstone

Tombstones

Of the gravestones preserved in 1756, 35 date from before 1700. Over a hundred stones can be assigned to the first third of the 18th century and 600 stones go back to the middle and second half of the 18th century. Most of the tombs were erected in the 19th century. 507 tombstones have been preserved in the New Cemetery.

The local castle sandstone was used for most of the stones . The tombstones are placed with the lettering to the east. There are no borders to the grave areas. The early stones from the end of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries were provided with a concise inscription in large square letters. From the 18th century the inscriptions became more extensive and smaller characters were used.

Symbols and decorative motifs

From the 1720s, the tombstones were decorated with reliefs and the typical motifs of the Jewish grave iconography.

The priestly hands blessing indicate the direct descendants of Aaron who, as Kohanim, gave the Aaronic blessing in the synagogue .

A jug or a jug was used by the Levites , who poured water over the hands of the Kohanim before giving blessings. Knife and bowl belong to the instruments of the circumciser ( mohel ). They are depicted on the tombstones of those who exercised this office. The tombstones of those who announced the beginning of a ten-day period of penance by blowing the horn on New Year's Day were decorated with the ram's horn ( shofar ).

The representation of one or more armed candlesticks can be found especially on tombstones of women, since lighting the Sabbath lights was one of their tasks.

Of the animal representations, lions are the most common in Georgensgmünd. In addition to the symbolic meaning, their representation can also refer to the name (Löw) of the deceased. The reliefs of deer appear as name symbols such as on the gravestone of Naftali Hirsch, who died in 1758, and the depiction of birds as an allusion to the first name of Vögla Mirjam, who died in 1727. The sculpted floral decorations can be interpreted in the same way as the stylized roses for Rosla from Thalmässing, who died in 1738, or the flower vase flanked by lions for Blümla from Schwabach, who died in 1760.

In Jewish symbolic language, a crown can mean: the crown of the Torah , the crown of the priesthood, the crown of royalty and the crown of the good name. In the first meaning, the crown of the Torah, it stands for erudition and adorns the tombstone of the district rabbi Abraham Josef Wechsler, who died in 1850 . In the meaning of the crown of the good name, it emphasizes the virtue of the buried person, as on the gravestone of Breinla Großhut, who died in 1856.

The double stelae, some of which end with a round arch, and which were often erected for married couples, may be reminiscent of the tablets of the law that Moses received from God.

  • Blessing hands

  • Circumcision device and deer

  • Vase of flowers

  • Flowers and bird

Tahara house

Tahara house
Inscription plaque on the Tahara house

The Tahara House in Georgensgmünd is the oldest surviving Jewish mortuary wash house in Bavaria. As early as 1630, the Kastner von Roth mentions a house in the cemetery for the washing of the dead. In 1723 a new Tahara house was built on the first extension area of ​​the old cemetery. The inscription from the year of construction has been preserved. It provides information about the construction date and names the founders: Josef Josla, Mose Jakob and his wife Serla from Schwabach. The building is also described. After that there was a large washroom on the first floor, in which there was a well that had to be drilled deep into the rock until the running water prescribed for the washing of the dead was reached. The upper floor was accessible via an external staircase and was divided into two waiting rooms, in which men and women could pray separately while the bodies were washed. In 1890/92 major renovations took place when an apartment was set up in the eastern part of the upper floor. Further renovations were carried out in the 1990s.

literature

Web links

Commons : Jewish Cemetery  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Kuhn, Barbara Rösch: The dead routes to the Jewish cemetery Georgensgmünd . In: Peter Kuhn: The art monuments of Bavaria. Georgensgmünd Jewish cemetery. New series vol. 6. Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich / Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-422-06559-8 , p. 51
  2. ↑ Peter Kuhn: The 18th century: heyday of the communities and the funeral culture . In: Peter Kuhn: The art monuments of Bavaria. Georgensgmünd Jewish cemetery. New series vol. 6. Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich / Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-422-06559-8 , p. 90

Coordinates: 49 ° 11 ′ 21.2 ″  N , 11 ° 0 ′ 47 ″  E