Jewish cemetery (Strelitz Alt)

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Entrance to the Strelitz-Alt Jewish Cemetery Memorial

The Altstrelitz Jewish Cemetery , also known colloquially as the Altstrelitz Jewish Cemetery , is located on Kalkhorstweg in the Strelitz-Alt district of Neustrelitz , in the Mecklenburg Lake District ( Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania ). It is a protected architectural monument and is included in the list of architectural monuments in Strelitz-Alt .

description

Jewish cemetery in Altstrelitz 1880 - lower left - signature welcome pl.

Jewish cemeteries were designated as burial places on official maps and were signed with an L (symbolic for an upright gravestone) instead of a † for Christian cemeteries. Mostly they were created far outside the cities or towns. In Altstrelitz the cemetery was far from the city.

The cemetery is located in the Kalkhorst district approx. 1500 m outside the city center of Altstrelitz in an easterly direction, directly on the Kalkhorstweg / corner of Vogelsangweg. It is surrounded by rural single-family houses with garden use. The area is divided into a memorial and a derelict wasteland. The entire complex is enclosed with a field stone wall.

Less than an eighth of the total area with two gravestones and a memorial stone was preserved. Three sides of the surrounding wall, which was built after an inserted date of 1887, have also been preserved. Only the tombstones of the chief and regional rabbi Jacob Hamburger and the linguist Daniel Sanders have been completely preserved. A third gravestone was reworked in 1988 to commemorate the Jewish victims of fascism . It bears the inscription: In memory / of the Jewish victims / of fascism .

history

From 1704, Jewish families were allowed to settle in the old Strelitz residence and formed the Strelitz Jewish community . This, which at that time included the entire area of ​​the duchy in addition to the city of Strelitz, grew to the largest in Mecklenburg with around 600 people around 1800.

In 1728 the community received permission to create its own cemetery on a piece of land that the first court Jew had acquired from Adolf Friedrich II . Until well into the 19th century, it was the only burial place for Jews from the Stargarder heartland of Mecklenburg-Strelitz . With an area of ​​around 4500 m², it was one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Mecklenburg.

In the 18th century, a simple half-timbered house was built on the cemetery directly on Kalkhorstweg, which served as a Tahara House and a cemetery keeper's house. In the following decades the cemetery area was expanded several times. Over time, the Jewish cemetery in Altstrelitz developed into one of the largest and most important Jewish cemeteries in Mecklenburg.

With the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in 1933 and the increasing restrictions and reprisals, the care and maintenance of the cemetery became more and more difficult for the steadily shrinking Jewish community and its relatives, and the entire area became increasingly overgrown. In 1938, the year of the Reichspogromnacht , in which the Altstrelitz synagogue was also pillaged , the last two burials took place. The cemetery was largely spared from desecration and devastation during the Nazi era and survived the Second World War relatively unscathed. Only individual tombstones were knocked over and erected again in 1948.

Around 1942, the city is said to have left around half of the area of ​​the cemetery with the mortuary to the operators of a private chicken farm. In 1956, the Jewish state community sold the Altstrelitz Jewish cemetery to a narrow strip of about one sixth of the previous area. In 1958 the area was abandoned and leveled at the instigation of the city. Around 100 surviving tombstones were cleared and smashed, and the site was then largely sold. Fragments of the tombstones have been used as path markers in various parts of the city. At the same time as this campaign, the planning and execution of a reminder and memorial site on a remaining area of ​​around 660 m² on Vogelsangweg began. Only 14 fragments were recovered in 1993 and returned to the cemetery.

On May 15, 1961, the memorial and memorial for the Jewish victims of fascism was inaugurated. The tombstones of Daniel Sanders and Jacob Hamburger stand next to the memorial stone for the Jewish victims of fascism on a small mound made of broken tombstones . Today most of the cemetery is again owned by the Jewish State Community of Schwerin , which belongs to the State Association of Jewish Communities in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . This restored the cemetery wall in November 2002 and prepared the rest of the cemetery grounds.

literature

  • Michael Brocke; Eckehard Ruthenberg; Kai Uwe Schulenburg: stone and name. The Jewish cemeteries in East Germany (New Federal States / GDR and Berlin). Institute Church and Judaism Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-923095-19-8 . (This source contains numerous inaccuracies and errors and is therefore only of limited scientific and historical suitability.)
  • W. Karge; H. beet seeds; A. Wagner: Inventory of political memorials in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Ed. Project memorial work in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , Schwerin 1998, ISBN 3-933521-00-9 .
  • Irene Diekmann [ed.]: Guide through the Jewish Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Potsdam 1998, ISBN 3-930850-77-X (especially Klaus Giese: Alt Strelitz, p. 51 ff.)
  • Helmut Sakowski : Quiet place - Oll mochum. Novella. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-355-01189-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Research project "Jewish cemeteries". of the Fachhochschule Neubrandenburg , published in: KLEKs OnlineEditor
  2. ↑ Harald Witzke: In 1760, 60 Jewish families lived in Altstrelitz. In: Freie Erde , Neustrelitz, 07/1988, note : The material on the history of the Strelitz Jews was compiled by the research assistant at the Karbe-Wagner Archive Neustrelitz, Harald Witzke, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Reichspogromnacht . For editorial reasons, only an abridged version appeared in the newspaper. The complete version can be viewed in the Karbe-Wagner archive. (According to the editor's note at the beginning of the article).
  3. ^ History of the Jewish cemetery in Altstrelitz. Alemannia Judaica , accessed February 26, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Irene Diekmann (Ed.): Guide through the Jewish Mecklenburg, Potsdam 1998, p. 51 ff.
  5. ↑ Brocke / Ruthenberg / Schulenburg: Stein und Name, Berlin 1994, p. 227 ff.

Coordinates: 53 ° 19 ′ 47.8 "  N , 13 ° 4 ′ 47.3"  E