Creglingen Jewish cemetery

The Jewish cemetery in Creglingen

Detail view

The Jewish cemetery of Creglingen , a town in the Main-Tauber district in northern Baden-Württemberg , served as a burial place for the Jewish community members in Creglingen and the surrounding area until the 1930s .

Jewish communities in Creglingen and the surrounding area

There were Jews living in the urban area in the Jewish community of Creglingen and the neighboring Jewish community of Archshofen for the first time in the Middle Ages and then again since the 16./17. Century. Synagogues were also built in both places . Around the middle of the 19th century, the Jewish community in Creglingen reached its highest number of members with around 130 people, in 1933 Creglingen still had 73 Jewish inhabitants. On March 25, 1933, the members of the Creglingen Jewish community were rounded up by an external SA terror group under the command of Fritz Klein from Heilbronn . Sixteen men were badly mistreated in the town hall, two of them, Hermann Stern and Arnold Rosenfeld, died from the brutal beatings. The Würzburg professor Horst F. Rupp writes: If there were a list of names of the more than 6,000,000 murdered Jews, Hermann Stern and Arnold Rosenfeld would be at the top as the first victims of the Shoa . At least Hermann Stern's grave has been preserved in the Creglingen Jewish cemetery; Arnold Rosenfeld was also buried there. In Lion Feuchtwanger's novel Die Geschwister Oppenheim , in which the incident is described, Stern has been renamed Berg.

Cemetery complex

The Jewish cemetery, laid out in the 17th century, is about one kilometer from Creglingen. It served as a burial place for Jews from Creglingen, Archshofen - the community bought into the cemetery in 1847 -, Craintal, Allersheim, Waldmannshofen, Hechingen and Welbhausen. From the middle to the end of the 19th century, the cemetery was apparently gradually expanded to include a southern part; between the hilly northern part, which was probably covered and heaped up in several layers, and the younger southern part, there is an open lawn. The first burial on the southern part took place in 1890. By 1930 91 graves were occupied there; the last burial took place in 1939. After the cemetery was expanded and a cemetery association was founded in 1892, a stone fence was built around the cemetery in 1892 according to the plans of the architect Johann Wendelin Braunwald , which had previously only been enclosed by a picket fence. In 1943 the cemetery was forcibly sold to the city of Creglingen; there were various violations. In 1998 a plaque in memory of the victims of National Socialism was attached to the surrounding wall. In 2001 it was donated to the Israelite Religious Community of Württemberg .

The gravestones on the older northern part are largely made of sandstone . Probably the oldest tombstone with a legible inscription dates back to 1696 and describes the grave of Eisik Jizchak ben Mosche. The senior teacher Josef Preßburger carried out an initial inventory in 1930. He counted 341 tombstones, the inscriptions of which he could still decipher, and numerous others with illegible inscriptions. In 1997 the tombstones were re-cataloged.

literature

Hartwig Behr, Horst F. Rupp: From life and death. Jews in Creglingen . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1834-6 .
S. Michal Antmann: The Jewish cemetery of Creglingen. Basic documentation on behalf of the city of Creglingen. 1998.
Claudia Heuwinkel: Jewish Creglingen. A walk through the city . (= Places of Jewish culture ). Schubert, Haigerloch 2001, ISBN 3-933231-19-1 .
Eva Maria Kraiss, Marion Reuter: Bet Hachajim - House of Life. Jewish cemeteries in Wuerttemberg Franconia . Swiridoff, Künzelsau 2003, ISBN 3-89929-009-7 .
Gerhard Naser (Hrsg.): Life paths Creglinger Jews. The pogrom of 1933. The difficult handling of the past . Eppe, Bergatreute 1999, ISBN 3-89089-057-1 .
Horst F. Rupp: Dispute about the Jewish Museum. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2966-6 .
State Archive Ludwigsburg - archival unit: Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg - documentation of Jewish gravestones in Baden-Württemberg. 1989-2007. 2. Photo documentation of the Jewish gravestones in Baden-Württemberg. b. Württemberg. Order signature: EL 228 b No. 347. Title: 08: Creglingen, Friedhof