Markenhof

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Hachschara Center Markenhof near Kirchzarten (October 2004; Alemannia Judaica, J. Krüger, CC-by-SA 4.0)

The Markenhof is an agricultural property in Kirchzarten , a municipality in the southern Black Forest in the Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district in Baden-Württemberg .

History of the Markenhof

The first documentary mention of a farm that later became the Markenhof dates back to 1397. This farm in the Dreisamtal was then owned by the St. Märgen Monastery . In 1462 the monastery sold the farm to the city of Freiburg , which was managed by several owners in the following years.

Around 1648 the farm comes into the possession of Mathias Markh, after which the Markenhof was probably named. In the following years the farm changes between different owners from the Markh family and burned down in 1760, now owned by a Simon Markh. He rebuilt the farm and was also the last owner who bore the name Markh. The farm became the property of his daughter Maria, who married a Michel Gremmelsbacher. Descendants from this family then managed the farm, which burned down again on January 22, 1795, with "an old woman" perishing in the flames. During the subsequent reconstruction, the courtyard building was created in accordance with the regulations of the time, according to which at least the base of new Black Forest houses must be made of stone.

Local researcher Motsch does not seem to have found out anything about the further fate of the farm, and in 1937 it was obviously not opportune to enter into the acquisition of the farm by a Jewish manufacturer in 1919. "After several changes of ownership in the past and in the present century, a peasant high school, which was replaced by a division of the female labor service for some time was finally on the Markenhof." Böcker mentioned a family of Wolgau that in the 1909 count's family Kageneck married and owned the farm until 1919.

From the Markenhof to the Beit Zera kibbutz

Jewish teaching estate at Markenhof

Markenhof founder Konrad Goldmann (seated in the middle of the picture) in the circle of a Hachschara group (probably 1921)

In 1919 the Markenhof was sold to the Jewish owner of the Freiburg wire and cable works Konrad Goldmann from Freiburg. Under the direction of Alexander Moch from Schwanau -Nonnenweier an agriculture was operated, which also served as Hachschara , i.e. the preparation for immigration to Palestine . The teaching estate, which, according to Ernst Fraenkel, also included a small winery on the Kaiserstuhl , is considered the first kibbutz-like facility for German Jews and the first hachshara facility. In the six years of its existence (until 1925), around 300 graduates received one to two years of training here. According to the website of the kibbutz Beit Zera (Beth Sera), many of them were close to the Jewish hiking association Blau-Weiß . Ruben Frankenstein describes the composition of the Markenhof students in a somewhat more differentiated way: “Most of the students came from middle-class families, were either high school graduates or young academics from southern Germany, from Berlin and Cologne, but also from Lithuania, Galicia, Russia, Czechoslovakia and Bukovina. Among them were members of the Jewish hiking association "Blau-Weiß" as well as of "Jung Juda", that radical Berlin group around Gerhard Scholem . "

In December 1920, an article appeared in the Blau-Weiss-Blätter des Blau-Weiß newspaper that gave an insight into the still new facility, the Jüdisches Lehrgut Markenhof . The “washrooms [..] with running water, showers as clean as in a hospital” are admired as well as “an ornamental garden, just to go for a walk”. This is followed by a look at the actual purpose of the courtyard:

“Small and large cattle sheds, feed barn, the large harvest barn, then our own power plant that supplies power and light, everything looks very carefully. These are purely functional buildings, but arranged intelligently and practical, and therefore also beautiful to look at. It is already being built again on the Markenhof. A new stable building for poultry, a housekeeping school. There is life and enterprise in it. [..] What raises the Markenhof above other Jewish teaching materials in agricultural matters is the clear direction towards training in the types of culture approximated to the agricultural branches of Palestine. "

- Werner Rosolio : The Markenhof near Freiburg

What the visitor complains about is the lack of community spirit among the interns living and working at the Markenhof. To him, their composition seems too unspecific, adjusted only because the work is urgent, but not according to overarching criteria. Rosolio lacked someone “who, as the undisputed leader, has the whole thing in hand. So the common spirit has not developed, which is the first prerequisite for joyful and good work as well as for the true enjoyment of the rest from work In contrast to the earlier, now overcome stages of the Markenhof, one that is based on the closest cooperation, human trust, but also a feeling for discipline and for submission to the more experienced, responsible manager. ”His conclusion:

“As a Zionist teaching material, the Markenhof is undoubtedly the most promising that we currently have. It has the enormous advantage over others that the whole farm is reliable and ideally suited for our training. What is still missing, in part, are the people who, through their work and their whole coexistence, bring forth the spirit that for us represents a very essential element of Palestine education. Our task is to bring these people there, to bring all of our people to the point where each of them is a reliable member of the community wherever he is. Nobody can or should help us here. And the most beautiful and best soil and climatic conditions, the safest preconditions mean nothing for our training if we do not bring with us the qualities from the outset that make us mature for education to be true Palestinian pioneers. "

- Werner Rosolio : The Markenhof near Freiburg

From the Kewuzat Markenhof to the Beit Zera kibbutz

The northern region of Israel

A year after Rosolio's report, a first pioneer group of four women and three men emigrated to Palestine in December 1921 . They had been prepared for their new task by Arthur Ruppin , to whom the proposed name Kewuzat Markenhof (Kibbutz Markenhof) goes back. Her first stop in Palestine was Ein Ganim , a settlement founded in 1908 as the first moshav , which was incorporated into Petach Tikwa in 1937 .

In 1923 the groups had to leave Ein Ganim. They settled in Rub-al-Nazra in the Jezreel plain , where a second group was also settled. Since there was not enough space for two groups, the now 23 Markenhofer moved to a new settlement with some Czechs in October 1926. They found it just a few kilometers below the southern end of the Sea of ​​Galilee in the Jordan Valley near Degania on the site of the abandoned Arab village of Um-Djuni . Their first huts were destroyed by an earthquake in the summer of 1927. But they were not discouraged by this and celebrated the inauguration of their new settlement on September 20, 1927, which - after a few other names - was named Beit Zera (Seed House). He was the fourth kibbutz established in the Jordan Valley.

About 20 of the founding members of Beit Zera had completed their training at the Markenhof.

Surname Birth Name First name Origin: city (country) Membership in a youth association Training center Immigration to Palestine Joining the Beit Zera kibbutz or its predecessors
Efrat Goitein Theodora (Dorle) Frankfurt am Main Blue-White & Hechaluz Markenhof 1925
Ziv Silberstein Zem Blue-White & Hechaluz Markenhof
Carmel German Zippora (Zephora) Vyshnytsia ( Bukovina ) Blue White Markenhof December 1921
Poppy part Margot Frankfurt am Main Markenhof 1924
Poppy Alexander (Alex) Berlin Markenhof 1923
Eliasberg George Berlin Markenhof 1927
Carmel Yehuda Krakow (Poland) Communist youth Markenhof 1924
Porat Kahane Shingle Krakow Markenhof December 1921
Carpenter Tree knight Judith (Henny) Frankfurt am Main Blue-White & Hechaluz Markenhof March 6, 1923
Dorle Efrat (née Goitein), a founding member of Beit Zera

For two people who completed their training at the Markenhof, there are some further tips, Dora Goitein and Ernst Fraenkel. However, only Dora Goitein is one of the founders of Beit zera, while Fraenkel contributed many details about the work at the Markenhof in a later interview:

  • Theodora (Dorle) Goitein (married Efrat) (1905–1998) is the daughter of Jakob Löb Goitein . Her cousin is Shlomo Dov Goitein , who accompanied her on her trip to Palestine in 1924.
  • Ernst Fraenkel also came from Frankfurt am Main, where he first attended a Jewish school and then the Goethe Gymnasium . In 1922 Fraenkel broke off his studies in Heidelberg and moved to the Markenhof. He reported on his work there in an interview in 1987: “I loved the work even though I came from university. Also, it's a bit strange what goes on in your head when you ... I had a lot of other interests, I had learned the Talmud, I learned Hebrew and the like. I was a committed Zionist, so I was pretty much in the spiritual life. And suddenly I was doing one hundred percent physical work. At first my head went completely crazy. The adjustment in the first few weeks was very difficult in the sense that I could no longer use my head. I had to do physical work all the time, and the adjustment was difficult. But then you had the old and the new. Then you were much more receptive to all the beautiful that was there. [..] And what was still there back then, which no child knows today: I took the horses to the forge every few weeks. And I also took the grain in a little cart to the miller to grind our grain. We baked our own bread there .... ”One of the peculiarities he reported was that there was a pig farm at the Markenhof,“ although the estate was then run in an orthodox manner ”.
    After the closure of the Markenhof, Fraenkel continued his training in an agricultural machine shop. However, he did not initially emigrate to Palestine, but had to join his father's business for family reasons. Nonetheless, he was still committed to Zionism and the preparation for emigration to Palestine and was “involved in setting up a religiously oriented hachshara in Betzenrod near Fulda. The teaching estate started operating in 1927 and took over part of the Eleven from the already closed Markenhof, possibly at Ernst Fraenkel's efforts. "

The synagogue on the Markenhof

The synagogue windows of Friedrich Adler, "12 Tribes of Israel", Tel Aviv Museum of Art (courtesy of Ruben Frankenstein)

Werner Rosolio already mentioned in 1920 "a small synagogue , nicely furnished, with colorful windows". This is described in more detail by Ernst Schäll. "This synagogue room for approx. 35 people has been preserved to this day with wall paneling, coffered ceiling and the niche for the former Torah shrine, as well as the square window in which the 12-tree windows were once installed." This synagogue was designed by Konrad Goldmann when he bought the Markenhof, and he also had it fitted with special windows. They were stained-glass windows designed by Friedrich Adler from Laupheim and executed by Eduard Stritt , the motifs of which represented the 12 tribes of Israel .

Although Goldmann had to sell the Markenhof to the Evangelical Abbey in 1925 , the subsequent owners allowed him to expand the synagogue windows in 1931. In the same year he gave it to Meir Dizengoff , who then handed it over to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art , which he founded in 1932 . This museum, which at that time still bore the name of Meir's late wife Zina, was located in their shared home, the later Independence Hall . Friedrich Adler, who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942 , toured Palestine in 1936 and saw his Markenhof window again in the Art Museum in Tel Aviv . Copies of the windows can be seen today in the Museum of the History of Christians and Jews in Laupheim .

Around 1950 Ernst Fraenkel visited his former training facility and received permission to remove the wooden pillars from the still-preserved Torah shrine and transfer them to the Beit HaEmek kibbutz near Naharija , where his son lived. These columns were built into the Torah shrine of the kibbutz synagogue. Memorial plaques here also commemorate Konrad Goldmann, who died in the Drancy collection camp, and the Markenhof.

The Markenhof between 1925 and 1960

In 1925, the Evangelical Monastery bought the Markenhof and leased it to Heinrich Bachmann, who ran it as an agricultural lease until 1930. He was succeeded as tenant by his son-in-law Johannes Zeisset, who remained so until 1967. The tenant family managed the majority of the property and lived in the main house of the farm for the entire lease period.

In 1926, Baden's first Christian farming college was opened on a small part of the estate and in an outbuilding . As can be seen from a report from 1932, this was based on the concept of the Danish folk high schools developed by Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig and offered further training in winter courses for young farmers who were intended to act as a kind of multiplier within the peasantry.

“Anyone who knows the importance of a strong and culturally upscale peasant class for a people struggling for their right to live knows that a Christian peasant college cannot limit itself to imparting all kinds of knowledge. What is fundamentally new lies in its character as an educational community; their work goes in depth, not in breadth. The aim is to make the innermost core of a German Christian education accessible to the spiritually ambitious, mature young farmer. Therefore it seems necessary to make a selection of talented, internally active people in order to increase the effectiveness, in order to transplant them into the rural communities as germ cells. It would not serve our country folk if we created a new secondary school for them. An idealism must be released here through intellectual work, which animates the professionally active person and generates in him a constructive force. This idealism demands the household and living community, the Christian family - community life in the farmer's college. "

- Karl Reinmuth : Report on the 6th course of the Christian farming college in Markenhof near Kirchzarten (Baden-Württemberg State Archives)

Shortly after Reinmuth had submitted this report, there were talks in the summer of 1932 about a collaboration with the Badische Bauernschule at Ittendorf Castle , which was founded in 1931 , as can be seen in a letter from Pastor Wilhelm Bornhäuser, the then head of the Evangelical Monastery .

“As you may know, we were on the board of the Bad. Farmer's school [..] plowed negotiations to this end, the establishment of the Ittendorf peasant school, as well as that of the Evang. Friborg Abbey on the Markenhof on a denominational basis. The cath. Ordinariate here and the Ev Oberkirchenrat in Karlsruhe would be happy to welcome this solution. "

- Wilhelm Bornhäuser : Cover letter to the report by Karl Reinmuth, Freiburg, September 1932 (Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg)

How close this cooperation was can no longer be determined from the documents, and neither can the reason for the closure of the facility. The Badische Bauernschule was forcibly closed in 1933. It is unclear whether this fate also happened to the Christian Farmers' College on the Markenhof, or from 1934 onwards it had to be handed over to the rural farmers for financial reasons and continued in the spirit of National Socialist ideology, as Ruben Frankenstein writes. What is certain, however, is that there was a change of ownership in 1935: Georg Miedtke, managing director of a Hamburg hardware export company who lived with his family in Monterrey (Mexico), bought the farm. “It was planned that his younger son, who was attending agricultural school, would one day take him over. That was the only reason why the acquisition in the Third Reich was even possible. ”The change of ownership did not affect the lease with Johannes Zeisset, who did not become a member of the NSDAP and who was denied the right to train young farmers as teachers in 1935 because he was still working with Jewish cattle dealers socializing and doing business with them.

Presumably on the part of the Markenhof previously used by the Christian Farmer College, the Reich Labor Service set up a training center for young women ( labor maids ) in 1937 . Young girls and women were trained here to help with the household or as rural helpers for agriculture. "The Markenhof labor camp was generally referred to as a model operation in southern Germany."

After the end of the Second World War, the Evangelical Abbey used part of the Markenhof as an orphanage and children's home. “The children could first be accommodated in a barrack room, later in a chicken coop converted into a“ home school ”. This interim solution lasted until 1959 ”. This description fits the parts of the Markenhof used by the Christian Farmer College and the Reich Labor Service; The Zeisset family's farm remained unaffected and, as mentioned above, continued to exist until 1967.

Former Hachschara Center Markenhof near Kirchzarten (October 2004; Alemannia Judaica, J. Krüger, CC-by-SA 4.0)

The Markenhof today

The Markenhof is still - now in the third generation - owned by the Miedtke family. Fruit is grown, pressed and processed into fine brandies in our own distillery. It is unclear when exactly Rolf Miedtke took over the property as heir to his fallen brother and whether he initially limited his activities to the areas that had become vacant since the evangelical monastery moved out . But a new era began with him. “Comprehensive repair work, for the financing of which some properties had to be sold, were necessary, and he did a lot of work himself. Then he cultivated part of the area for 20 years. Above all, the existing orchard meadow provided a basis, because there was also a distilling right on the farm from ancient times. Another part of the agricultural land was leased to a forest nursery. He raised four sons with his wife on this farm, of whom the second oldest, with a doctorate, has taken over the estate since 1995 and converted it into an orchard. ”Rolf Miedtke (1919–2006) was actually a doctor, but has practiced since taking over the Markenhof no longer. Since 1978 he has been working as a painter.

The outlines of the building ensemble of the Markenhof are supposed to correspond to the state of 1919–1925, but have now been partially converted for private residential use.

The commemoration evening for the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 2020 in Freiburg also focused on the memory of the Jewish history of the Markenhof. Shaked Ashkenazi, the great-granddaughter of Dorle Efrat (see above), who emigrated from the Markenhof to Palestine and was one of the founders of Beit Zera , took part in the event . Thirty-five-year-old Shaked Ashkenazi lived in Beit Zera until she was 20 .

swell

literature

  • Hermann Althaus: The Markenhof in Kirchzarten and its synagogue . In: Badische Heimat vol. 80, issue 2, 2000. pp. 259–267.
  • Klaus-Dieter Alicke: Lexicon of the Jewish communities in the German-speaking area. Volume 2: Großbock - Ochtendung. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2008, ISBN 978-3-579-08078-9 ( online edition ).

Web links

Commons : Markenhof  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e Karl Motsch: The history of the Markenhof (see sources )
  2. a b Julia Franziska Maria Böcker: HACHSCHARA AT THE MARKENHOF (see sources )
  3. a b c d Ernst Fraenkel in an interview with Ulrich Tromm: The Markenhof near Freiburg im Breisgau as Zionist emigrant teaching material 1919-1925
  4. Alemannia Judaica: Gut Markenhof near Kirchzarten (see web links )
  5. a b Official history of Beit Zera (see web links)
  6. Ruben Frankenstein: Hachschara in the Markenhof near Freiburg (see sources)
  7. a b c d Werner Rosolio: The brand yard near Freiburg
  8. There is only one article on Ein Ganim in the English WIKIPEDIA: en: Ein Ganim
  9. a b c d Ruben Frankenstein: Hachschara in the Markenhof near Freiburg (online version)
  10. ^ Ruben Frankenstein: Hachschara in the Markenhof near Freiburg (online version). For the history of Beit Zera see also the article in the English WIKIPEDIA: en: Beit Zera .
  11. The data are based on a table made available by the Beit Zera archive on February 19, 2013 in Hebrew. The information, in turn, is based on personal information from the kibbutz members and on video interviews with a number of veterans in 1980. The names were partially verified by comparing them with Ruben Frankenstein's article Hachschara in the Markenhof near Freiburg (see sources).
  12. The address book of the city of Frankfurt am Main for the year 1920 contains only one entry with this name on page 26 (pdf page 44): "Baumritter, B., Schuhmacher -bedarfs-Großhdlg., Thomasisus-Str. 4 II ". The same address is used in the newspaper Blau-Weiss-Blätter. The Führer newspaper listed an Arthur Baumritter as the address of the Frankfurt Blue and White Association. ( Blau-Weiss-Blätter. Führerzeitung , edited by the federal administration of the Jewish Wanderbünde Blau-Weiss, Issue 3 (December 1920-1921), pdf-p. 2). This suggests that Judith Baumritter came from this family.
  13. a b c d For a detailed description of the windows see: Ernst Schäll: Glass painting drafts by Friedrich Adler and the executing glass art establishments
  14. They are shown on the website Alemannia Judaica: Gut Markenhof near Kirchzarten (see web links ).
  15. On Beit HaEmek see the article in the English WIKIPEDIA: en: Beit HaEmek
  16. a b c Written communication dated March 24, 2020 from Johannes Zeisset, the grandson of the Markenhof leaseholder in the years 1930-67, to Rubin Frankenstein.
  17. ^ A b Art and Culture Association Freiburg-Kappel eV: Dr. Rolf Miedke . This son, who was supposed to run the farm, died in World War II.
  18. Welcome to the Markenhof
  19. ^ Anja Bochtler: When Zionism offered Jews in Freiburg perspectives , Badische Zeitung , January 28, 2020

Coordinates: 47 ° 58 ′ 23.3 "  N , 7 ° 58 ′ 42.2"  E