Jewish cemetery (Memmingen)

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Jewish cemetery in Memmingen
Tomb of Mayer Loeb Heilbronner in the Jewish cemetery in Memmingen

The Jewish cemetery in Memmingen in Upper Swabia , a town in the Bavarian administrative district of Swabia , is located in the east of the city on the street "Am Judenfriedhof". A total of about 140 graves are laid out on the four grave fields, of which 134 tombstones ( Mazewot ) have been preserved to this day.

middle Ages

A Jewish community already existed in Memmingen in the Middle Ages . From an episode in the Chronicle of Johannes von Winterthur it can be concluded that there must have been a Jewish cemetery of its own in 1344 . The medieval community is last recorded in 1429, the location of its cemetery is not known.

Modern times

From August 1872, the new Jewish citizens of Memmingen, who moved there from 1861, intend to found their own religious community . One of the prerequisites for this was the establishment of a suitable cemetery. However, a corresponding request to the city was initially answered on December 17, 1872, saying that an expansion of the existing Christian cemetery was planned anyway and that a Jewish section would also be created in this context. However, it remains to be seen how the upcoming expansion of the station will be implemented. In the course of 1873, it was initially assumed that the Jewish cemetery in Fellheim would continue to be used as before .

Only on January 22nd, 1875 did the matter move again, when the city made a recently acquired garden available to the religious community that was being established for use as a cemetery. After repair work, the ceremonial inauguration took place on November 15, 1875 by Rabbi Ahron Cohn from Ichenhausen .

The plot of the cemetery was initially relatively small at 4.6 ares , so that the question of expanding it soon arose. On October 31, 1879, the banker Heinrich Mayer donated a neighboring hop garden of 4.1 ares to the community for this purpose , so that the cemetery could finally be expanded to 8.70 ares. The funds released by this donation ultimately formed the basis of the building fund for a synagogue to be built in the future .

In 1893 the cemetery was given its present-day appearance when the simple wooden fence that originally existed was replaced by a high brick wall .

After the Memmingen religious community was extinguished , the city of Memmingen ultimately unsuccessfully attempted to buy the cemetery property from the Reich Association of Jews in Germany , to which the property had been transferred. After it was taken over by the Reich Finance Administration , the purchase agreement dated May 27, 1943, which provided for the low purchase price of only 850 Reichsmarks , was not executed due to the intervention of the Munich Chief Finance President. The city had intended to build a road connection between Künersberger and Augsburger Strasse over the site of the cemetery. During the war, the cemetery grounds were misused for depositing rubble and black slaughtering, and from April 1, 1943, the city leased it to a master baker for use as a chicken breeding facility. As early as the spring of 1942, members of the Hitler Youth had knocked over gravestones.

After 1945, ownership of the cemetery passed to the State Association of Israelite Religious Communities in Bavaria , and it was occupied again. The last funeral to date took place in 1986. In addition, in the 2000s, the sons of a Jewish couple from Memmingen , who lived in the USA and Australia, who were murdered in Auschwitz in April 1942, erected a memorial stone for their parents in the cemetery. The cemetery was desecrated twice again in 1965 and 1969.

War memorial

War memorial for the Jewish fallen: "The honorable memory of our heroes 1914–1918"

There is a cemetery on the war memorial for the First World War fallen Jewish soldiers from Memmingen . It just bears an anonymous label. Corresponding memorial plaques with names were attached to the synagogue , which - in accordance with the policy of suppressing Jewish merit - were deliberately destroyed in the November pogrom in 1938 .

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A Jew from Memmingen is said to be with the Augsburg bishop, Heinrich III. von Schönegg , have obtained an interdict against the city because of many defaulting debtors . Christian funerals would no longer have been possible. In response to this, the mayor of Memmingen is said to have threatened to bury deceased Jews outside of their cemetery. See Bernhard Freuler: The Chronicle of Johann von Winterthur . Ziegler'sche Buchdruckerei, Winterthur 1866, p. 308 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive [accessed May 7, 2017]).
  2. ^ Miedel: The Jews in Memmingen . S. 12 .
  3. ^ Hager, Haas: Memmingen . In: Kraus, Hamm, Schwarz (ed.): More than stones ... p. 504 .
  4. ^ Miedel: The Jews in Memmingen . S. 91 ff .
  5. ↑ According to Miedel, the cost of this measure amounted to 500 guilders .
  6. ^ Miedel: The Jews in Memmingen . S. 94 .
  7. ^ Miedel: The Jews in Memmingen . S. 96 .
  8. ^ Miedel: The Jews in Memmingen . S. 95 .
  9. ↑ According to Miedel, the cost of this measure amounted to 3,060 marks .
  10. ↑ Parcel 1507 with 870 m²
  11. ^ Jewish Culture Museum Augsburg-Swabia : Synagogues in Bavarian Swabia. Retrieved May 7, 2017 (letter from Heinrich Berndl dated December 12, 1942, signature Memmingen 2-6-1).
  12. ↑ a b Hoser: History of the City of Memmingen . S. 222 .
  13. ↑ Today Münchner or Mindelheimer Straße.
  14. ^ Hoser: History of the City of Memmingen . S. 222 , footnote 174 .
  15. ^ Hager, Haas: Memmingen . In: Kraus, Hamm, Schwarz (ed.): More than stones ... p. 508 .
  16. ^ Hoser: History of the City of Memmingen . S. 222 , footnote 176 .
  17. ↑ a b Central archive: Memmingen. In: Jewish cemeteries in Bavaria. Retrieved May 7, 2017 .
  18. ↑ "The honorable memory of our heroes 1914-1918"
  19. ^ Hoser: History of the City of Memmingen . S. 229 , fig. 40 .
  20. ^ Edith Raim: Justice between dictatorship and democracy . Oldenbourg Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-70411-2 , p. 818 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed May 7, 2017]).

Coordinates: 47 ° 59 ′ 21.2 ″  N , 10 ° 11 ′ 27 ″  E