Jewish war memorial (Worms)

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Cenotaph for the Jewish Fallen in Worms

The Jewish war memorial in Worms was erected after the First World War . The war memorial is as part of the new Jewish cemetery , a monument of culture .

Geographical location

The memorial is located in the main cemetery Hochheimer Höhe of the city of Worms in the Worms-Hochheim district . The Jewish part of the cemetery has been occupied since 1911. The memorial is located behind the Jewish mourning hall of Georg Metzler , an architectural monument from this time in the "Darmstadt Art Nouveau ".

history

Since 1919 there has been a memorial for the fallen soldiers of the First World War on the communal part of the cemetery in Worms-Hochheim , which forms the center of the war cemetery there and was designed by Ernst Müller-Braunschweig from Charlottenburg .

The driving force behind the erection of a memorial for the fallen of the Jewish community of Worms was the local group of the Reichsbundischer Jewish Frontsoldaten (RjF). The local group existed since 1924 and was - until his professional change to Breslau in 1928 - under the chairmanship of the radiologist Carl Fried (1889-1958). The pursuit of a special memorial for the fallen of the Jewish faith was also the massively increasing anti-Semitism in the 1920s . The monument was erected between 1926 and 1988, although the exact time of completion is not known. The cemetery and memorial survived the period of Nazi destruction and the Second World War unscathed.

description

The memorial consists of an arch, the decoration of which still hints of Art Nouveau. The front is facing the mourning hall, the back is designed more simply. The arch is covered with a parapet, which allows you to see through, but not to walk through. To the left and right of the arch are the names of the 19 fallen soldiers on two panels and the inscription "UNSERN HELDEN" above the arch. On the back it says in Hebrew :

Honor our heroes, healing our fatherland and peace on our earth .

In German it says:

PRIZE THOSE WHO DIED GLORY
LET THE LORD SCAR THE WOUNDS
AND DON'T BE PEACELESS! .

The executing sculptor is not known. Together with eight individual graves of those who fell or who died after the war, the memorial forms a complete complex .

classification

Since in the vast majority of cases memorial plaques were placed in synagogues for those who died of the Jewish faith , these were often victims of Nazi destruction. Such memorials are therefore rarely preserved. The next comparable memorial is in the Jewish cemetery in Darmstadt and was inaugurated in 1922. There are others in Wiesbaden and Groß-Gerau , both destroyed or damaged and later rebuilt or provided with information boards.

The Worms facility is a cultural monument due to the Rhineland Palatinate Monument Protection Act .

useful information

A few meters from the memorial and the field of honor for the fallen Worms there is a grave field for the Russian prisoners of war of Jewish faith who died in the prison camp there during the First World War .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bönnen, p. 376.
  2. ^ Bönnen, p. 368.
  3. ↑ Bönnen, p. 370.
  4. ↑ Bönnen, p. 380.
  5. ↑ Bönnen, p. 379.
  6. ↑ a b Spille, p. 232.
  7. ^ Bönnen, p. 382.
  8. ^ Bönnen, p. 383.
  9. ^ Bönnen, p. 395.
  10. ^ Bönnen, p. 386.
  11. ^ Bönnen, p. 388.
  12. ↑ Bönnen, p. 392.
  13. ↑ Bönnen, pp. 383, 385; Spille, p. 232.

Coordinates: 49 ° 38 ′ 40.6 ″  N , 8 ° 20 ′ 19.7 ″  E