Judengasse (Worms)

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The Worms Judengasse at the level of Judengasse 20, looking west
Back of the north line of Judengasse: the houses used the city wall as a back wall.

The Judengasse in Worms was the Jewish ghetto of Worms from the late Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century .

Geographical location

Judengasse was on the northern edge of the medieval core city. The houses on the north side used the inner city wall as a back wall. The Judengasse consisted of two streets in a broader sense:

  • The Judengasse, which ran parallel to the north-eastern section of the city wall between Martinspforte and Bärengasse. It was separated from the rest of the city by gates at both ends. The southeastern one was the Judenpforte . It led through the wall directly to the Rhine and was walled up during the reconstruction after the city was destroyed in 1689. After the opening of the ghetto it was reopened and in the 19th century was sometimes called the Hamburger Tor . On the other side, the Judengasse was separated from today's Friedrichstrasse by a gate . The Raschitor , a breakthrough through the city wall to the north, to today's Berliner Ring, and the Karolingerstraße, which crosses the Judengasse today, was not built until 1907/08.
  • The rear Judengasse, which meets the Judengasse at a right angle on the square in front of the synagogue . Before the Karolingerstraße was built, the other end of it led back into the eastern area of ​​Judengasse.

history

While in the High Middle Ages Jews were able to acquire and live in the entire city area, after the plague pogrom of 1349 the ghettoization set in: From then until 1792 Jews lived exclusively in Judengasse and Hinteren Judengasse . In 1801 the ghetto gates were torn down. After the destruction in World War II , some houses were no longer built, others in the 1950s style. It was only from the 1970s that greater attention was paid to preserving the appearance of the street.

building

The Worms synagogue in the center of Judengasse

The houses in Judengasse were mostly gable-free , the upper floors were often half-timbered and plastered. Since the space was very cramped, the houses were built narrow and high and usually had three storeys. Originally, the northern row of houses kept a narrow distance from the city wall. It was not until the reconstruction at the beginning of the 18th century that the city wall was included as the rear wall of the building and in some places also broken through with windows.

After the massive destruction in the course of the expulsion of the Jews in 1615, the destruction of the entire city and also the Judengasse in the Palatinate War of Succession in 1689 and again in the Second World War, little historical building fabric has been preserved above ground. A number of historical cellars, the oldest from the 14th century, still lie beneath the buildings. Since the new buildings often had to align themselves with the traditional property boundaries, the historical building lines have largely been preserved.

The houses have had house signs at least since the early modern period (house numbers were not yet known). Some have been preserved. They were carried over as family names to the residents of the houses and can be found on some of the tombstones of the Jewish cemetery, Heiliger Sand .

The medieval synagogue is located in the central square of Judengasse. The parish hall ("Haus zur Sonne") and the second, orthodox , Levy synagogue , which was consecrated in 1875 and did not survive the November pogrom of 1938 , the Second World War and the subsequent wrecking ball, also stood here. The synagogue garden was south of the old synagogue. This is where the entrance to the mikveh is located today , the community's tabernacle was set up for the festival of tabernacles and this is also where weddings according to the Jewish ritual took place under a canopy. The Rashi House is south of the garden . It stands on the site of a building that has been used in various ways in its 800-year history: as a Talmud school , hospital, dance and wedding house, rabbi apartment and old people's home. Today the new building from the 1980s houses the Worms City Archives and a Jewish museum .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Spille, p. 102.
  2. ↑ Spille, p. 98.
  3. ↑ Guido Kisch: The legal status of the Worms Jews in the Middle Ages . In: Ernst Róth: Festschrift for the rededication of the Old Synagogue in Worms . Ner Tamid Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1961, pp. 173-181 (177ff).
  4. ↑ Spille, p. 102.
  5. ↑ Spille, p. 102.
  6. ↑ Directorate-General, p. 23.
  7. ↑ Directorate-General, p. 23.
  8. ^ Fritz Reuter : Warmaisa - the Jewish Worms. From the beginning to Isidor Kiefer's Jewish Museum (1924). In: History of the City of Worms. Ed. I. A. of the city of Worms by Gerold Bönnen . Theiss, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-8062-1679-7 , p. 689.

Coordinates: 49 ° 38 '2.2 "  N , 8 ° 22" 0.2 "  E