Moses Field of Flowers

Moses Field of Flowers

Former synagogue on II. Weberstrasse, Essen

Moses Abraham Blumenfeld (born December 21, 1821 in Schwerte ; † January 9, 1902 in Essen ) was a German Jewish teacher, preacher and politician.

Live and act

Moses Blumenfeld received his first lessons from 1831 with Rabbi Löb Cohen in Hattingen . There he studied the Talmud and rabbinical sciences. At the age of 13 he was accepted into the teachers' seminar at the Marks-Haindorf-Institut in Münster . In 1837 he passed the general and Jewish teacher examination in Soest .

He started his first teaching position for four years in Viersen on the Lower Rhine. In 1841 he was appointed preacher for the Jewish community and teacher at the Jewish elementary school in Essen. He campaigned for the professionalization of Jewish religious education and endeavored to integrate this into the subject canon of the Prussian schools. Blumenfeld was a cantor . He introduced the organ and choral singing to Jewish services in Essen. He liberalized the prayer order of the synagogue on II. Weberstrasse (today Gerswidastrasse) and said prayers in German.

In the revolutionary year of 1848, he took part in the so-called Westphalian Congress in Münster for the Essen vigilante. At the time of the Kulturkampf he was a supporter of Bismarck . On December 12th of that year he was arrested as a democratic monarchist in school and remained under investigation in the prison in Münster until April 6th, 1849. During this time, Pastor Peter Beising had Jewish children taught in the Catholic elementary school by the Jewish teacher Felsenthal from Steele . In a trial in Hamm , Blumenfeld was acquitted in 1850. A little later he married Lisette nee Fränkel, who was related to Heinrich Heine . They had seven children together.

After 1871, Blumenfeld increasingly gave political speeches and wrote political writings, with which he enjoyed a certain reputation among the citizens of Essen. He was the second chairman of the German Association and co-founder of the Essen advanced training school, a men's choir, an association against begging and impoverishment, the teachers', widows' and orphans' pension fund and the Essen trade association, of which he was chairman and later honorary chairman. He was also chairman of the Association of Israeli Elementary Teachers for the Rhine Province and the Province of Westphalia . In 1894 he retired after 53 years of employment.

Moses Blumenfeld was buried in the Jewish cemetery on Reckhammerweg . Its extensive library went to the Jewish community, but was stolen by the National Socialists in 1933 and was lost. Three of his daughters, Ottilie married Koppelman (born 1854), Selma (born 1859) and Emma married Gompertz (born 1863) were deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp on July 21, 1942 and murdered. His son Ernst died as a child in 1866 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery on Lazarettstrasse in Essen.

Blumenfeldstrasse in Essen's northern district has been named after him since 1902.

literature

• Erwin Dickhoff: Essen heads . Ed .: City of Essen - Historical Association for City and Monastery of Essen. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8375-1231-1 .
• Carl Cohen: Moses Blumenfeld, preacher and teacher in Essen; in: The minster on Hellweg . Ed .: Münsterbauverein eV Degener Genealogieverlag, Essen March 1967, p. 25-29 .