Jewish cemetery (Nordhausen)

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The Nordhausen Jewish Cemetery is located in the Thuringian district town of Nordhausen in the district of the same name . There is a memorial to the Jewish soldiers who died in the First World War in the cemetery.

structure

There are 320 tombstones in the 5000 m² Jewish cemetery (address: Ammerberg 19) : the older tombstones are on the right of the main path and the younger tombstones and the children's graves on the left.

history

From the beginning of its use as a resting place to the present, there are no reports that the site (Am Ammerberg) fell victim to desecration. Therefore the cemetery is one of the few testimonies of past Jewish life that can still be seen. Today the cemetery can no longer be used as such, as it has been a listed building since December 2007. It is not the ornamental art alone that makes it a special monument, but also the clarification of religious customs and the break with traditional cemetery culture in the 19th century.

The re-establishment of the Jewish synagogue community, the growing number of members as well as the steady economic power of its members made it possible to acquire land and use it as an “Israelite cemetery”. In 1826, donations were collected for the construction of a cemetery wall and loans were taken out. According to the timetable of the Nordhausen magistrate, the inauguration of the new Jewish cemetery took place on September 1, 1828. Due to a lack of space, the complex was enlarged in 1854 and 1865 by purchasing additional land. This gave the cemetery a size of approx. 5,000 m.

Two years after the last land purchase, a Tahara house was built in 1867 , followed by a mourning hall around 1900 . With the construction work, the community followed the trend of the more recent times. In addition to the separation between the safekeeping of the corpse and the place of mourning for relatives, the aim was to enable the Kohen (a priest from the subgroup of the Levites) to take part in the funeral service, since according to tradition he was not allowed to have direct physical contact with a corpse.

In August 1928, an urn grove was laid out for cremation supporters according to the plan of the city gardening director Rotscheid. At the rear of the cemetery, separated by a hedge, steps lead down to the urn grove, on which gravestones are placed in an oval bed shape. It is an underground urn grove, ie the urns were let into the ground instead of being buried above ground in the walls of a columbarium or in an urn hall.

particularities

To commemorate the fallen Jewish soldiers of the First World War, the Jewish community donated and erected a memorial in the cemetery on September 25, 1921. Two bombs fell on the cemetery during World War II. The grave monument, some gravestones and the avenue of trees were damaged. On June 15, 2005, after its restoration, the memorial was inaugurated with military honors.

Web links

literature

  • Marie-Luis Zahradnik: The house of life. The Jewish cemetery in Nordhausen in the 19th century. In: Contributions to the history of the city and district of Nordhausen. Vol. 39, 2014, ZDB -ID 2076892-8 , pp. 231-246.
  • Marie-Luis Zahradnik: The First World War and the fate of the Jewish soldiers from Nordhausen - in the mirror of the grave monument in 1921. In: Nordhäuser Nachrichten. Südharzer Heimatblätter. Vol. 23, issue 4, 2014, ZDB -ID 916134-x , pp. 4–8.
  • Marie-Luis Zahradnik: Research abroad on fallen Jewish soldiers from Nordhausen at the "Anneau de Mémoire" in France. In: Nordhäuser Nachrichten. Südharzer Heimatblätter. Vol. 25/1. Half-year, 2016, pp. 25–26.
  • Marie-Luis Zahradnik: From the find to the family fate - the Nordhäuser Goldschmidts (Part I). In: Nordhäuser Nachrichten. Südharzer Heimatblätter. Vol. 27/2. Half-year, 2018, pp. 6–8.
  • Marie-Luis Zahradnik: From the find to the family fate - the Nordhäuser Goldschmidts (Part II). In: Nordhäuser Nachrichten. Südharzer Heimatblätter. Volume 28/1. Half-year, 2019, pp. 10–12.
  • Marie-Luis Zahradnik: From the imperial city protection Jew to the Prussian citizen of the Jewish faith. Chances and Limits of the Integration of the Nordhausen Jews in the 19th Century (Series of the Friedrich-Christian-Lesser-Stiftung, Vol. 37), Nordhausen 2018, ISBN 978-3-930558-33-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. Today was the re-inauguration: Nordhausen has the Free State's only Jewish war memorial on nordhausen.de/news, June 15, 2005

Coordinates: 51 ° 29 ′ 57.6 "  N , 10 ° 48 ′ 25.3"  E