Judaism in Dresden

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Dresden Synagogue from 2001

The Judaism has in Dresden a long tradition in writing prior to the beginning of the city's history goes back in the 13th century. Since a Jewish trader roamed the Dresden region as early as the 9th century, it can be assumed that Jews were already living in Dresden when the city was founded in the 12th century .

middle Ages

The first documentary mention of a Jewish community contains the Jewish ordinance of the Meissen Margrave Heinrich the Illustrious of 1265. In this he placed the Jews under his protection, granted them the same rights as Christians and exempted them from customs duties in return for a lump sum. In the chronicles of this time, in addition to the Jüdenteich and the Judengasse , a Jüdenhof is also mentioned, where a stately synagogue (near today's Johanneum ) could be seen. During the plague years of 1349, a pogrom in the form of the burning of Jews is documented. The Dresden Jews were expelled or murdered. Between 1386 and 1393 Jews are again mentioned in Dresden. They lived in the Große and Kleine Judengasse. In 1411, on the orders of Frederick the Arguable , the land and property of the Dresden Jews were confiscated. The synagogue became the property of the margrave, after which the city of Dresden acquired the sacred building. After the insurance letters that Friedrich the arguable had given the Dresden Jews on May 23, 1425 had expired, they were prosecuted again and expelled five years later.

Augustan era

It was not until the end of the 17th century that August the Strong permitted the immigration of Jews again due to the financial advantages that were hoped for. In 1696 he brought Issachar Berend Lehmann to his residence in Dresden as a court Jew . A year later, Lehmann procured him 10 million thalers to purchase the Polish royal crown . August reciprocated by granting Behrend's family extensive residence permits. In 1708, Berend Lehmann received a letter of protection from August the Strong, which also guaranteed the protection and settlement of his son Lehmann Berend and his brother-in-law, Jonas Meyer. From 1718 she worked in the exchange business and as a purveyor to the court for luxury goods. In general, however, the settlement of Jews in Saxony was still subject to considerable restrictions. a. were resigned in the Jewish mandate of 1746. From 1772 Jews were only allowed to live in the old town, and even this only with special permission and with more difficult legal registration requirements. Nevertheless, in 1751 the community received its own cemetery on Pulsnitzer Strasse in the Äußere Neustadt , the Old Jewish Cemetery .

Emancipation in the 19th and 20th centuries

The situation improved after the bourgeois revolution of 1830 , when the Jews were given the right to establish one of their two Saxon religious communities in Dresden in 1837 - Jews were not tolerated on a permanent basis outside of Dresden and Leipzig. Now they were allowed to purchase land in both cities for the purpose of building houses of prayer and schools. By Gottfried Semper built synagogue was dedicated to the 1840th In a speech to the state parliament in 1837, King Johann strongly advocated the emancipation of the Jews:

“With all due respect for public opinion, I must speak up for the Jews. I think we owe it to the Jews as human beings, we owe it to them as fellow citizens. I have no other sympathy for the Jews than for all of my fellow men, and I cannot refuse them. "

But it was not until 1869 that Jews in Dresden received full citizenship through a law of the North German Confederation . At the same time, the ordinance on the basic rights of the Jews in Saxony, which had been hotly contested for twenty years, was passed.

In the second half of the 19th century the number of members of Dresden's Jewish community skyrocketed. From 1834 (682 people) to 1905 (3510 people) it had increased more than fivefold. A large part of the community assimilated largely to the culture of the newly formed German Empire , while the Jews who immigrated from Eastern Europe remained more firmly attached to tradition and later turned to Zionism .

Persecution in the time of National Socialism

In takeover of the Nazi Party in January 1933, the Jewish community of Dresden comprised about 5000 members. From the beginning they were subject to a variety of harassment such as resettlement in certain parts of the city, exit restrictions, "controls" and interrogations by the Gestapo , arbitrary confiscation of property and the like. During the November pogroms from November 9th to 10th, 1938 the Dresden synagogue was burned down and looted.

In August 1940, the district president of Bautzen-Dresden forbade Jews from entering the Königsufer and all municipal parks. The license to practice medicine was revoked from Jewish doctors in 1941. Only Willy Katz received an exception in Dresden . In 1942, the Dresden supervisory authority banned Jews from buying flowers and ice cream. Older Jews were forced to walk through Dresden in winter coats for hours in high summer temperatures.

As early as 1942, Dresden's Jewish population had shrunk from 5,000 to 985. Under the direction of Oberregierungsrat Klein and SS-Obersturmführer Henry Schmidt , the deportations of Dresden Jews to concentration and extermination camps began . From July 1, 1942 to January 11, 1944, 375 were brought to the Theresienstadt concentration camp ; further transports were carried out, in particular to Auschwitz and Riga . At the end of the war there were only 41 Jews left in Dresden.

Impressively describes the 1912 converted to Protestantism, born Jew Victor Klemperer in his diaries (published in 1995 under the title I want to bear witness to the last. Diaries from 1933 to 1945 ) the developing anti-Semitism and Nazism in Dresden until the end of World War II from the View of a person concerned.

New beginning

The synagogue at Fiedlerstrasse 3 was created for the Jewish community by converting a mortuary hall to the New Jewish Cemetery . Dresden's Jews also experienced a considerable degree of repression in the newly founded GDR , which was not least fueled by anti-capitalist prejudices, but also from the traditionally good connections between the State of Israel and the "class enemy" USA . The arrest of the head of the Dresden Jewish community, Leon Löwenkopf , by the SED authorities in 1950 is representative of many things . The persecution of the SED functionary Paul Merker , who comes from the Dresden area, in the course of the Slansky trial is to a certain extent related to his committed, but undesirable, advocacy of Jewish restitution claims on the part of the party.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Dresden Jewish community experienced a certain growth due to the influx of Eastern European Jews. The Hatikva Jewish Cultural Association was founded in 1992 . From 1996 to 2001, the Saarbrücken architecture firm Wandel & Höfer built a new synagogue on the east end of the Brühlsche Terrasse . Today around 730 Jews live in Dresden, 80 of whom belong to Orthodox Judaism . Akiva Weingarten has been rabbi of the Jewish community in Dresden since August 2019 .

See also

literature

  • Franz Josef Wiegelmann: Wi (e) der die Juden. Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Journalism from Seven Centuries - Supplement Dresden . Bernstein-Verlag, Bonn 2007, ISBN 978-3-939431-12-1 .
  • Gorch Pieken , Matthias Rogg (Ed.): Shoes from dead. Dresden and the Shoah . Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2014, ISBN 978-3-95498-054-3 (volume accompanying the exhibition in the Military History Museum ).
  • Kerstin Hagemeyer: Jewish life in Dresden. Exhibition on the occasion of the consecration of the new Dresden synagogue on November 9, 2001 . Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-910005-27-6 .
  • Jürgen Helfricht : The synagogue in Dresden . Tauchaer Verlag, Taucha 2001, ISBN 3-89772-036-1 .
  • Gunda Ulbricht: Jews in Dresden . In: Stadtmuseum Dresden (Ed.): Dresdner Geschichtsbuch . No. 10 . DZA, Altenburg 2004, p. 82-101 .
  • Cathleen Bürgelt: The Jewish court factor Berend Lehmann and the financing of the Polish royal crown for August the Strong . In: medaon.de, magazine for Jewish life in research and education . No. 1 , 2007 ( medaon.de [PDF; 450 kB ; accessed on February 28, 2018]).
  • Heike Volle: The tradition of Jewish life in Dresden in late medieval city books . In: medaon.de, magazine for Jewish life in research and education . No. 1 , 2007 ( medaon.de [PDF; 381 kB ; accessed on February 28, 2018]).
  • Joachim Albrecht: Concessions, Passports, Decrees - Residence Permits for Saxon Jews in the 18th Century . In: medaon.de, magazine for Jewish life in research and education . No. 1 , 2007 ( medaon.de [PDF; 377 kB ; accessed on February 28, 2018]).
  • Joachim Albrecht: The names of the Dresden Jews as a source - 1746 to the beginning of the 19th century . In: medaon.de, magazine for Jewish life in research and education . No. 2 , 2008 ( medaon.de [PDF; 234 kB ; accessed on February 28, 2018]).

Individual evidence

  1. Hagemeyer, p. 20 and p. 227
  2. Hagemeyer, p. 228
  3. Hagemeyer, p. 228

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