Jewish cemetery (Mannheim)

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The Jewish cemetery in Mannheim was laid out in 1842 by the Jewish community next to the main cemetery that was built at the same time . It is the largest Jewish cemetery in Baden-Württemberg .

graveyard

Morgue
Gravestones in the oldest part of the cemetery
Tombs on the western wall

The approximately 2.8 hectare cemetery is located east of the main cemetery in the Wohlhotels district northeast of Mannheim city center on the right side of the Neckar . The consecration hall is to the left of the entrance. The cemetery has been continuously occupied in the northeast direction over time. The main path is lined with lime trees and horse chestnuts. At the beginning there are uniform gravestones made of red sandstone . From around 1870 the design changed. The materials became more diverse and the related styles more varied. The upper middle class erected magnificent tombs on the cemetery walls . After the First World War , there was a return and the gravestones became simpler again.

In the front area there is a collective grave with over 3500 dead who were transferred here from the old cemetery in 1938. It is surrounded by 31 tombstones from the old cemetery, another 14 are on the cemetery wall. In between stands the memorial "To those who did not find a grave", which was built in 1954. In the rear area of ​​the cemetery is the grave field created in 1969 - mainly with pillow stones - in which Jews were buried whose urns were transferred from concentration camps or who killed themselves before the deportations to Gurs . Further graves of Mannheim Jews can be found in the cemetery in Gurs, which was laid out in 1962 by Baden cities. Also in the rear area is a mixed marriage field in which Jews were buried with their Christian spouses.

Numerous well-known Mannheim personalities were buried in the cemetery, including:

history

Old graveyard

Floor plan of Mannheim 1799, far right the Bastion St. Judas (F7)

After the Thirty Years War , Elector Karl I. Ludwig encouraged the settlement of Jews in Mannheim. The Heiliger Sand cemetery in Worms was used for burials until a concession in 1660 allowed Jews to “buy a burial place wherever they like.” Just one year later, the so-called St. Judas Bastion - one of the bastions of the Mannheim city fortifications - a cemetery will be laid out in today's square F7 . In the course of time, the cemetery was expanded several times through the purchase of neighboring properties and in the end it had a size of 0.28 hectares.

After the new Jewish cemetery was opened in 1842, the old one was closed, but remained untouched in accordance with Jewish tradition. The Chewra Kadisha gathered alternately in the new and the old cemetery. In 1907 the historian Friedrich Walter described it as an "interesting and atmospheric remnant of old Mannheim."

After the National Socialist seizure of power, the Nazi newspaper "Hakenkreuzbanner" polemicized against the cemetery in June 1933. In 1935, Lord Mayor Carl Renninger threatened to speak to the city council in Berlin. Finally, in 1938, the Jewish community gave in to the massive pressure and moved the dead to the new cemetery and also relocated some of the old tombstones. On July 17, 1938, she said goodbye to the old cemetery with a sermon.

The structural measures announced by the National Socialists were no longer carried out because of the Second World War . The devastated square was only redesigned in 1960 by the city administration, which created a day nursery for babies and a green area and put up a memorial plaque . In 2007 the city archives had another plaque erected on a sandstone stele to commemorate what happened.

New cemetery

Memorial "To those who did not find a grave"

The old cemeteries in Mannheim - separated according to denomination - were all within the former city fortifications. In 1839 the city planned a large, central cemetery and asked the Jewish community whether it was prepared to “acquire a piece of land together with the Christian communities”. The city rabbi agreed to a system separated by a wall, so that in 1842 the new Jewish cemetery could be opened together with the main cemetery. The first funeral took place on August 15th. At the entrance was a building designed by Anton Mutschlechner , which contained a prayer room and a mortuary. The community used the introduction of the morgue in 1903 to redesign the building. A three-part building complex was created with a morgue and overseer's apartment. In the center was a prayer hall with a dome in the Romanesque-Gothic style.

During the November pogroms in 1938 , SA men blew up the buildings. Some gravestones were also damaged. However, the cemetery escaped closure. In autumn 1941, the Ministry of the Interior decided that the Mannheim cemetery should remain open as one of nine of the 76 Jewish cemeteries still in existence in Baden. After the Second World War, the city had the old morgue rebuilt in a simplified manner in 1954. On October 22nd - 14 years after the deportations to Gurs - it was inaugurated together with the memorial “To those who did not find a grave”. In the 1990s the cemetery was expanded to the east.

literature

  • Rudolf Haas, Wolfgang Münkel: Guide to the graves of well-known Mannheim personalities . Mannheim 1981
  • Hans Huth: The art monuments of the Mannheim II district . Munich 1982, ISBN 3-422-00556-0
  • Support group of historical graves in Mannheim (ed.): The cemeteries in Mannheim . Mannheim 1992
  • Volker Keller: Jewish life in Mannheim . Mannheim 1995, ISBN 3-923003-71-4

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Martina Strehlen: Registration of Jewish cemeteries in Baden-Württemberg: Second project report. ( Memento of the original from October 17, 2007 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. In: Preservation of monuments in Baden-Württemberg: News sheet of the state preservation of monuments. Issue 1/2002, ISSN 0342-0027 , p. 33  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.landesdenkmalamt-bw.de 
  2. ^ Karl Otto Watzinger: History of the Jews in Mannheim 1650-1945 . Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-17-008696-0 , p. 14
  3. ^ Friedrich Walter : Mannheim in the past and present: Volume 1 History of Mannheim from the first beginnings to the transition to Baden (1802) . Frankfurt / Main 1977, unaltered reprint of the 1907 edition, ISBN 3-8128-0000-4 , p. 298
  4. ^ Hans-Joachim Fliedner: The persecution of the Jews in Mannheim 1933-1945: Documents . Stuttgart 1971, ISBN 3-17-079032-3 , p. 230
  5. ↑ City Archives Mannheim - Institute for City History: Jewish Cemetery in F 7  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.mannheim.de  
  6. ^ The cemeteries in Mannheim . P. 305
  7. ↑ Hans-Joachim Fliedner: The persecution of the Jews in Mannheim 1933-1945: representation . Stuttgart 1971, ISBN 3-17-079031-5 , p. 62

Web links

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

Coordinates: 49 ° 29 ′ 25.7 "  N , 8 ° 29 ′ 36.7"  E