Jewish cemetery (Koblenz)

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The Jewish cemetery in Koblenz-Rauental

The Jewish cemetery in Koblenz is a well-preserved burial place of the Jewish religious community in northern Rhineland-Palatinate . The Jewish cemetery in the Rauental district, first built in 1303, is bordered to the north by today's synagogue of the Jewish community of Koblenz and the surrounding districts, which served as a mourning hall until 1947 . In its history, the cemetery has been closed and destroyed several times, but the Jewish community in Koblenz has refurbished it again and again.

history

Jewish gravestone in the Koblenz Church of Our Lady
The tombstone for Josef Landau († 1831) with a Levite jug

The Archbishop of Trier, Heinrich II von Finstingen , brought the first Jews to Koblenz in 1281, against the protest of the Koblenz citizens. These settled in the old town between the old castle and the Florinskirche . There was also a Judengasse there , today's Münzstraße. In 1303 the Jewish community bought half an acre of vineyards from the Koblenz-based couple Sifrid and Mechtild von Montabur at the gates of the city in today's Rauental district , in order to set up a cemetery here.

In 1418 all Jews were expelled from Kurtrier . The Jewish cemetery in Koblenz fell to the electorate and was then leased as a fief to the Gotthard Sack family from Dieblich , who used the site as pasture. The tombstones were used as building material and were used in the construction of the new choir of the Liebfrauenkirche . During archaeological excavations in the church in 1962 and 1979, some of these tombstones were recovered and one exhibited inside.

The Jews returned to Koblenz in 1592 and were given the right by edict to rebuild a cemetery. Until 1657, however, the dead were buried elsewhere in the Koblenz area. On June 23, 1638 the purchase of the old cemetery by the Jewish community was confirmed by the Trier Cathedral Chapter . However, it was only used after the burial was regulated against payment in a further contract with the Schütz family from Holzhausen , who received the site as a fief on December 8, 1655. This led to a number of lawsuits in the period that followed, as the cemetery was actually owned by the Jewish community.

After the conquest of Koblenz by the French revolutionary army in 1794, the cemetery tax was abolished with the Napoleonic decree of 1805. In 1822 the Umbscheiden family sued the Jewish community for payment of the levy because they continued to see themselves as the owners of the cemetery. In the subsequent process, however, the request was rejected. Until the middle of the 19th century, the Jews from the Moselle buried their dead in Koblenz. The Rabbi Lewin took stock of the existing grave stones from 1880 to 1885. All burials up to 1942 were listed in a burial book that is now in Jerusalem . In 1905, the Jewish community in Koblenz-Neuendorf purchased a piece of land that was to serve as a new Jewish cemetery, since according to the Jewish rite grave sites must never be kept and the Koblenz cemetery was almost completely occupied. However, for unknown reasons, the new cemetery was never used.

A memorial was erected in the cemetery in 1920 for the 23 Jewish fallen from the Koblenz community in the First World War , which was destroyed by the National Socialists in 1938 . Since the Jewish cemetery was fully occupied in 1922, the western half of the property was filled with earth almost 2 m high, so that the new graves came to lie on top of the old ones without disturbing the earlier burials, so the plan for a new cemetery already appears at this point in time to have been given up. According to plans by Carl Schorn, a mourning hall was built north of the cemetery in 1925 , the design of which was actually intended for the new cemetery area that was never used. The avenue of then 64 old horse chestnut trees was declared a natural monument in 1937 . The Jewish cemetery was devastated during the November pogroms in 1938 . The tombstones were used to build a staircase in the garden of a kindergarten in Koblenz-Lützel, and tombstones are also said to have been used for a National Socialist mother's home. The Jews who died between 1938 and 1942 and were buried in Koblenz were not allowed to put tombstones during the Nazi era . The deportation began in 1942 , during which 870 Jews from the region were deported to the concentration camps in the east via the Koblenz-Lützel train station .

After the Second World War , the stairs in Lützel made of gravestones initially remained unchanged. However, after the scandalous situation became public, the decision was made, with the consent of the Jewish community, consisting of only a few survivors and apparently overwhelmed, to only grind off the Hebrew characters, only when the French occupying power and the Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister Peter Altmeier decided turned on, the tombstones were returned to the cemetery. In 2010 it turned out that there was another staircase made of Jewish tombstones in the immediate vicinity. As requested by the Jewish community, these stones were also removed and returned to the cemetery.

A memorial was erected in the cemetery in 1947 for the Jewish people from Koblenz who were killed during the Nazi era. Since the synagogue in the Bürresheimer Hof was also devastated in 1938 and was finally destroyed in the air raids on Koblenz , the few survivors converted the mourning hall of the cemetery into the new Koblenz synagogue in 1947 . As a replacement for the destroyed memorial from 1920, a memorial stone was attached to the back wall of the synagogue in 1995.

  • View over the Jewish cemetery

  • Tombstones

  • Retaining wall along Kastanienallee

  • Gravestones with the synagogue in the background

Cemetery complex

Memorial to the Jews from Koblenz who were murdered during the Nazi era
The memorial for those killed in the First World War, restored in 1995

In the Jewish cemetery there are around 706 graves (as of 2009), with and without tombstones , for Jews from Koblenz and the surrounding area, who have died since the mid-19th century until today. The names of 495 are still recognizable on the graves. The oldest tombstone for Rebecka Geisen dates from 1816.

The shape of today's 8,590 m² facility with an avenue of chestnut trees along the cemetery was laid out in the 19th century. The 38 horse chestnuts have been designated natural monuments since 1937 . The gravestones used are mostly standing slabs in a traditionally semicircular closed form, but also obelisks , columns and steles , as well as lying sarcophagus-like tombs. All are labeled in Hebrew , most of them also in Latin . A few gravestones also have motifs, such as the one for Abraham Loeb († 1910) with a Levite jug . On the west side of the avenue, old gravestones and fragments from the Baroque period , the oldest from the 17th century, form a wall . This was built as a retaining wall when the cemetery was filled up in 1922. However, there are also some tombstone fragments built into the wall, all of which are similar in size and rectangular in shape - these are probably the pieces that were made into steps during the Nazi era.

In the center of the western half is a memorial stone erected in 1947 in memory of the Jews murdered by the National Socialists in the Holocaust . On the stele made of shell limestone with a final wreath of leaves reads under a star of David :

“ The dead as a reminder, the living as a reminder! Remember our 6 million brothers a. Sisters who became victims of racial madness. Of 500 Koblenz Jews, 22. "

Monument protection

The Jewish cemetery is a protected cultural monument under the Monument Protection Act (DSchG) and entered in the list of monuments of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate . It is located in Koblenz-Rauental in the Jewish cemetery monument zone. In addition, the avenue of chestnut trees was declared a natural monument in 1937. Back then there were 64 trees there, today there are 32.

The Jewish cemetery has been part of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002 .

See also

literature

  • Energieversorgung Mittelrhein GmbH (ed.): History of the city of Koblenz. Overall editing: Ingrid Bátori in conjunction with Dieter Kerber and Hans Josef Schmidt. Theiss, Stuttgart 1992-1993;
  • Norbert A. Heyeckhaus: Koblenz - Neuwied. A complete photographic documentation of the Koblenz and Neuwied-Niederbieber cemeteries (= Jewish Cemeteries in Germany. Vol. 9). (1 DVD). Verlag Friedhof & Denkmal, Altendiez 2005, ISBN 3-938454-14-8 .
  • Peter Kleber: "In Koblenz the stones don't speak, they scream ...". Jewish gravestones as steps at the kindergarten in Koblenz-Lützel. ( Online publication of the Koblenz City Archives (PDF; 26.75 MB) ).
  • Ulrike Weber: City of Koblenz. Volume 3: City districts (= monument topography Federal Republic of Germany. Cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate. Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany. Vol. 3). Werner, Worms 2013, ISBN 978-3-88462-345-9 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Kleber: "In Koblenz the stones don't speak, they scream ...". Jewish gravestones as steps at the kindergarten in Koblenz-Lützel. P. 10.
  2. ↑ Beate Dorfey, Petra Weiß: Only the trees were protected: The Jewish cemetery . In: City of Koblenz, City Archives, State Main Archives Koblenz (Ed.): City Guide Koblenz; On the trail of National Socialism . 2nd, revised edition. Johannes Fuck print shop, Koblenz 2016, p. 25 .
  3. ↑ a b Ordinance on Safeguarding Natural Monuments in the Koblenz District. Retrieved December 22, 2019 .
  4. ↑ See on this Peter Kleber: "In Koblenz the stones don't speak, they scream ...". Jewish gravestones as steps at the kindergarten in Koblenz-Lützel.
  5. ↑ City administration Koblenz: Current list of natural monuments in Koblenz (PDF; 25 kB), as of August 27, 2012.
  6. ↑ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - district-free city of Koblenz (PDF; 1.5 MB), Koblenz 2013.
  7. ↑ Current list of natural monuments in Koblenz. Retrieved December 22, 2019 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 21 ′ 43.5 ″  N , 7 ° 35 ′ 8 ″  E