Jews in Reutlingen

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The history of the Jews in Reutlingen stretches from the medieval Jewish quarter on the market square to today's community center of the Israelite Religious Community of Württemberg (IRGW), which was inaugurated on September 7, 2003. The new Jewish community is being looked after by Rabbi Pushkin. A medieval synagogue existed on the site of the later building at Kanzleistraße 2.

history

middle Ages

Reutlingen, market square with town hall, right town house (steep gable + bell tower on the roof ridge), office building, Königsbronn monastery courtyard with crenellated gable and tower-like building.

A Jewish community is documented for the first time in Reutlingen around 1329, and in that year a Jew from Reutlingen became a citizen of Nuremberg. Further mentions follow shortly afterwards. In 1330 Ludwig the Bavarian left the city of Reutlingen for four years in taxes, Jews and court in return for payment of 3,000 pounds sterling. And when Count Ulrich von Württemberg certified in 1331 that he had waived his rights to Reutlingen, the Jews were also named in addition to the court and taxes. In 1334 a Jew named Jakob Lange, who lived in Reutlingen, acknowledged the payment of a debt to Abbot Ulrich von Zwiefalten. And in 1339 David, a Jew from Hagenau, sold perpetual money from his house in Reutlingen.

While the plague started in southern Europe in 1347 and spread over a large part of the continent - in 1348 it had already reached southern Germany - numerous pogroms took place in the affected regions . The Jews were accused of having caused the Black Death by poisoning wells . In Reutlingen, too, on December 8, 1348, the Jews were persecuted. Only an entry in the Deutz Memorbuch , one of those Jewish yearbooks that served to commemorate the dead and, in this case, the “soul memory of those communities in which martyrs fell”, testifies to the effects on the persecuted . There it says literally: “May God remember the martyrs in the parishes of”, and then next to Reutlingen, the names of ten other Württemberg cities in which pogroms had taken place in quick succession follow. From this it can be concluded that Jews were killed everywhere there. On April 20, 1349, Emperor Charles IV granted the city (as before and afterwards also others) an amnesty, with which it was acquitted of any guilt in the so-called "Jewish run-up". At the same time he handed over to the Counts of Württemberg all goods that the Jews had left behind in Reutlingen. The Jewish houses - "es eien huser hofstet, die zee Rutligen are gelgent, Bettegewant, husgeschurie calinat" - the counts sold to the city of Reutlingen for 1200 guilders.

After this persecution, Jews did not settle in Reutlingen again until around 1371. In a certificate from this year about the sale of perpetual money from a house in Vochezengasse, a "Hans the Jew" who died in the neighboring house is mentioned. In 1377 Charles IV issued the city of Reutlingen the outstanding Jewish money, d. H. the special taxes levied against Jews were left to her. In 1424 a Judengasse is mentioned, which ran on today's Rebentalstraße and a piece of Kanzleistraße between Reutlinger Marktplatz and Oberamteistraße.

Sometime between 1424 and 1476 the Jews were then expelled again. This can be concluded from the fact that Friedrich III. that year ordered the city of Reutlingen to accept Jews, which it did. They were deported again in 1495 - with the express permission of Emperor Maximilian I , who conceded to the city of Reutlingen that they “so yetzo bey Inen […] sat and happily, took leave and asked and forced to move from there “May. In 1516, Maximilian finally drew the conclusion that the 21-year absence of the Jews had been useful for the city of Reutlingen and the citizens of Reutlingen, and allowed the city not to "let any Jews come or live" in Reutlingen forever, so that “the Jews have significant wins in and around the city of Reutlingen”.

It is not clear where the synagogue was located; there is no contemporary evidence of it. It was not until the 16th century that Martin Crusius gave information about the former location of the church, "according to the ancients". Accordingly, it was at the place of the later building at Kanzleistraße 2. The building is said to have been the shoemaker's guild room. The urban historians consider this source to be reliable. In that case, however, the synagogue would no longer have been used by them before Maximilian I expelled them from the city in 1495. Because a year earlier, a brawl was documented in the guild room. No Jews lived in Reutlingen from the end of the 15th century to the second half of the 19th century. For the year 1736 it is documented that Christian Gottlieb Bleibtreu was baptized in Reutlingen's Marienkirche.

Modern times up to the Weimar Republic

In the early modern period there were numerous business relationships between Reutlingen citizens and foreign Jews. However, their stay in the city was limited to one day and they had to pay a personal tax for such “escort of Jews” . Only with the introduction of freedom of trade in Württemberg on February 18, 1862 were Jewish merchants allowed to settle in Reutlingen. Until then, the Reutlingen guild houses "successfully prevented" this. Two families from Wankheim were the first Jews to settle in Reutlingen; one was the Spiro family. The Tübingen synagogue served as a place of worship for the "returnees". Around 1900 " Eastern Jews " came to the city from Galicia. Much of the now resurgent Jewish population were merchants who traded in clothing, footwear, food, and cattle. In addition, there were individual manufacturers and civil servants who belonged to the urban upper class. During the Weimar Republic , around 85 people of Jewish denomination lived in Reutlingen. In the first years of National Socialism, the Jewish community consisted of at least 74 people. Over 100 Jews were active in Reutlingen, including many students from the State Technical Center for the Textile Industry .

Under National Socialism

In July 1935, a banner was stretched on Wilhelmstrasse between the Jewish shops “Kronenladen” (No. 17-23) and “Kaufhaus der Einheitpreise - Kadep” (No. 18-20), on which it was possible to read: “Who is the Jew is a traitor ”. The Kronenladen textile shop belonged to the Stuttgart company Landauer AG until 1936 and the Kadep was owned by the Stuttgart merchants Max Feldmann and Samuel Tanne from 1932 to 1936. The Reutlinger Tagblatt commented on the anti-Semitic action on July 13, 1935:

“This call is aimed at all those who have still not understood what the purpose of exterminating an alien race from the German national body is. There are even those who buy in Jewish shops not just out of indifference but out of a certain spirit of opposition. "

In 1933 and 1934, various Jewish merchants gave up their business and emigrated with their families. The siblings of the founder of the business, David Abosch , decided not to take over the shoe shop at Wilhelmstrasse 31, which their parents had inherited, and emigrated to Palestine. Likewise, her cousin Berta Schnebalg, who sold her “shoe clinic” in Metzgerstrasse. The shoe shop at Wilhelmstrasse 31, which was founded by David Abosch, was then continued to run by Heinrich Rosenrauch and his mother Frime.

The Abraham family also went to Palestine after Julius Abraham - owner of a debt collection agency - had been in the Heuberg concentration camp from April to August 1933 . Leon and Sofie Wrubel sold their men's clothing store "Goldene 22" and emigrated to Switzerland, before they had to pay 41,000 marks in the Reich flight tax. The Elsässer family sold their oil wholesale business in early 1934 and moved to Palestine. By 1934, 24 Reutlingen residents of Jewish origin emigrated.

The law to restore the civil service affected various Jews in Reutlingen, such as Egon Gottschalk, who was baptized as a Protestant and was dismissed from civil service as a magistrate. He tried to continue working as a lawyer in Reutlingen, but then emigrated to Brazil with his family in September 1934. The teacher Hans-Martin Berger was a teacher at the grammar school and was dismissed. He tried to work as a private teacher in Reutlingen, but in 1937 went to a Jewish school in Danzig and then to England. In the post-war period he returned to Reutlingen and became a teacher at the Kepler Gymnasium . The chemist H. Kauffmann was a professor at the technical center for the textile industry before he was dismissed. In 1921 he came to the Reutlingen Technical Center for the Textile Industry as a full-time lecturer in the chemical-technical department; in November 1922 he was accepted as a civil servant there, but continued to teach at the Technical University of Stuttgart . The Kauffmann couple managed to emigrate to the USA in 1939.

In October 1937, Samuel Kahn sold his department store, which was centrally located on the market square and had been running since 1911, to Walter Törber, who was a party member and SA Obersturmführer. The 67-year-old Kahn had previously been accused of racial disgrace . He had sexual relations with Aryan female employees of his company.

In the night of the pogrom in 1938 , two Jewish businessmen were dragged out of bed and their shop fittings were destroyed, such as Willy Salmon's electronics store and Heinrich Rosenrauch's shoe store, who was deported to Dachau the next day .

Salomon Spiro and his wife were among the first Jews to move to Reutlingen in 1864. Their four children were all born in Reutlingen, the two daughters Alice and Martha stayed in Reutlingen and worked as clerks in Reutlingen companies. Salomon Spiro ran a cattle shop in his house at Unter den Linden 31. In 1931 Spiro converted the cattle shed into a garage for ten to twelve cars. With the regulation on the elimination of Jews from German economic life of November 12, 1938, Spiro was no longer allowed to rent out the garage and the family had to sell their property. The proceeds from their property went to a Sperrmark account from which they were only allowed to withdraw a small amount per month, so that emigration could not be financed. The Spiro couple were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in the summer of 1942 , where they both died in the summer of 1943. The daughter Alice Spiro was protected by her mixed marriage with Walter Wieland, while her sister Martha was deported from Stuttgart to the Jungfernhof concentration camp near Riga on December 1, 1941 , and shot by the SS in a mass execution in March 1942. According to Heinrich Himmler 's service obligation for male "half-breeds of the first degree and Jewish relatives ", Walter Wieland, Alice's husband, had to report to Sonderkommando J at the Todt Organization in October 1944 . With a certificate from the doctor Dr. Luitgard Schneider went to the Gestapo in Stuttgart, accompanied by his daughter-in-law, who temporarily put him back.

In total, more than 50 people of Jewish origin who lived in Reutlingen were murdered. If the Jewish technical college students are included, there are 70 victims. Only eight Reutlingen Jews survived the concentration camp.

present

In May 1987, a memorial was placed opposite the Reutlingen City Library and Adult Education Center with the following inscription, which was designed according to the design of a 12-year-old student from Reutlingen as part of a student competition:

  • Don't forget hope
  • in memory of
  • to our Reutlingers
  • Jewish fellow citizens

Jews from the CIS countries have come to Reutlingen since the 1990s; since 2003 about 120 members of the Israelite religious community of Württemberg have lived in Reutlingen or in the immediate vicinity. In 2003 the community center with prayer hall was built. The Reutlingen synagogue was inaugurated on September 7, 2003. The Torah shrine and the lectern were created by the Israeli artist Jakob Abitbol , who lives in Schwäbisch Hall . At the inauguration, the director of the Reutlingen local history museum, Dr. Werner Ströbele present on behalf of Mayor Barbara Bosch . The chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Reutlingen municipal council, Ulrich Lukaszewitz, was also present at the inauguration as senior member of the municipal council.

literature

  • Reutlingen (RT)… prayer room / synagogue. In: Joachim Hahn , Jürgen Krüger: Synagogues in Baden-Württemberg . Volume 2: Joachim Hahn: Places and Facilities . Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1843-5 ( Memorial Book of the Synagogues in Germany , Volume 4), p. 394f
  • Bernd Serger, Karin-Anne Böttcher: There were Jews in Reutlingen: history - memories - fates; a historical reader, published by the Reutlingen City Archives. Reutlingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-933820-67-9
  • Theodor Schön: History of the Jews in Reutlingen. In: Reutlinger Geschichtsblätter V (1894), p. 36ff and 59ff, and VI (1895), p. 64.
  • 106 Discontinued synagogue, later Zunfhaus der Schuhmacher (I), market square, area between No. 20 and 22 (formerly Kanzleistraße 2) . In: Alois Schneider, Dorothee Ade-Rademacher: Archaeological City Register Baden-Württemberg . Volume 23: Reutlingen . Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg , Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-927714-70-4 , p. 178 f.
  • Karin-Anne Böttcher: Exclusion and Persecution - Effects of the National Socialist Racial Policy in Reutlingen. In: Heinz Alfred Gemeinhardt: Reutlingen 1930–1950: National Socialism and the Post-War Period . Reutlingen 1995, ISBN 3-927228-61-3 , p. 130ff (here p. 141ff: "Excluded, expelled, destroyed - Reutlingen Jews under National Socialism")
  • Gerhard Kost: Christian Gottlieb Bleibtreu - A Reutlingen baptism of Jews in 1736 . Reutlinger Geschichtsblätter, New Series 36, 1997, pp. 257ff
  • Christoph Friedrich Gayler: Historical monuments of the former free imperial city izt royal Württemberg district town Reutlingen, from the beginning to the end of the Reformation in 1577 . Reutlingen 1840
  • Karl Keim: The Reutlingen guild houses . In: Reutlinger Geschichtsblätter, old series 43, 1936, p. 13ff

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Purim in the IRGW Community Center of the IsraelitischeReutlingen . In: Israelitische Gemeindezeitung IRGW January / February 2013, p. 8.
  2. ↑ Prayer times in the small synagogue in Stuttgart, Esslingen, Heilbronn, Reutlingen and Ulm . In: Israelitische Gemeindezeitung IRGW, January / February 2013, pp. 6–7.
  3. ↑ Judlin of Reutlingen . In: Schneider, Ade-Rademacher, p. 159.
  4. ^ Reutlingen City Archives: Privilege Book I, 4.
  5. ^ WR, No. 6082.
  6. ↑ Main State Archives Stuttgart: B 551, Bü 191.
  7. ^ Reutlingen City Archives: RUA, No. 1557.
  8. ↑ Karl Heinz Burmeister : The Black Death: The persecution of the Jews on the occasion of the plague of 1348/49. Jewish Museum Göppingen, 1999, accessed on June 7, 2019 (reproduced on edjewnet.de / Juden in Göppingen and Jebenhausen).
  9. ↑ Main State Archives Stuttgart: H 51, U 536.
  10. ↑ Main State Archives Stuttgart: H 201, U 222.
  11. ^ Reutlingen City Archives: RUA, No. 1611.
  12. ↑ Jewish money . In: Former Academy of Sciences of the GDR, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (Hrsg.): German legal dictionary . tape 6 , issue 4 (edited by Hans Blesken, Siegfried Reicke ). Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1964, OCLC 833208293 ( adw.uni-heidelberg.de ).
  13. ↑ a b c Main State Archives Stuttgart: B 201, U 14.
  14. ^ Schneider, Ade-Rademacher, p. 178 f.
  15. ^ Schneider, Ade-Rademacher, p. 178.
  16. ↑ Paraleipomenos, 59.
  17. ↑ Jewish escort money . In: Former Academy of Sciences of the GDR, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (Hrsg.): German legal dictionary . tape 6 , issue 4 (edited by Hans Blesken, Siegfried Reicke ). Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1964, OCLC 833208293 ( adw.uni-heidelberg.de ).
  18. ↑ a b Böttcher, p. 141.
  19. ↑ a b Böttcher, p. 142.
  20. ↑ Böttcher, p. 161 f.
  21. ↑ Böttcher, p. 167.
  22. ↑ Böttcher, p. 163.
  23. ↑ Böttcher, p. 164.
  24. ↑ Böttcher, p. 168.
  25. ^ Reutlingen Synagogue: Report on the inauguration of the Jewish prayer hall in Reutlingen on September 7, 2003. (No longer available online.) In: kirche-eningen.de. July 22, 2005, archived from the original on April 12, 2013 ; accessed on June 7, 2019 .