Thea Altaras

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Thea Altaras uncovering the mikveh in Rotenburg an der Fulda in June 2003

Thea Altaras , née Fuhrmann ( March 11, 1924 in Zagreb , Kingdom of Yugoslavia - September 28, 2004 in Giessen ) was a Yugoslav - German architect .

Thea Altaras' work attracted worldwide attention through her research into the fate of rural Jewry , which was destroyed between 1933 and 1945 and mostly forgotten until the publication of her work in catalogs , the synagogues and mikvahs in Hesse , which survived the pogrom night of 1938 and the Second World War as buildings. as well as about the Jewish sites in Giessen.

Life

Born in Zagreb to German-Hungarian parents, Thea Fuhrmann was raised in the Jewish faith. In 1936, at the age of twelve, she and her sister Jelka went to Split by the sea for a few days . There she met her future husband Jakob Altaras and fell in love with him. Two years later they met again at the Purim Ball in Zagreb in 1938 .

After the destruction of Yugoslavia , she fled before the takeover of the Ustasha - regime in by the Fascist Italy of the Croatian coast occupied territories. There she was interned in the Kraljevica (Porto Re) concentration camp at the beginning of November 1942 , until she was transferred to the Kampor concentration camp on the island of Rab at the beginning of June 1943 . In September Italy capitulated and opened the camps before the Germans took them over two days later. During this time, with the help of the Yugoslav partisans, she and her mother managed to escape to the island of Vis . There she met again Jakob Altaras, who tried to persuade her to join the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army. She first went to Santa Maria di Leuca in southern Italy , liberated by the Allies, with her mother . While her mother was working in the Jewish hospital, Thea was busy translating radio messages for the Americans. In this role she also supported the Allies with crossings to the independent state of Croatia and for a time ran a children's home with children of wounded prisoners or killed partisans. After Split was liberated, she returned to Yugoslavia with her mother. In Split she joined the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia and as such traveled to already liberated areas within Yugoslavia, sought support from the population and was a delegate at congresses.

After completing her high school diploma in Split, she studied architecture at the University of Zagreb from 1947 . She completed her studies in 1953 as a Dipl.-Ing. from. She then worked as an architect in Zagreb and Paris, where she completed her studies.

In 1959 she married Jakob Altaras in Zagreb, their daughter Adriana was born in 1960. In 1964, Jakob Altaras was denounced for having committed anti-state and anti-socialism acts and fled Yugoslavia. Thea was supposed to follow suit with her daughter, but her passport was revoked and she stayed behind in Zagreb. After the daughter of family members was smuggled out of the country in the same year, Thea managed to escape to Italy in 1965. There she did not get a residence permit and moved to Constance , where she applied for political asylum and worked at the municipal building department. For three years she commuted between Konstanz, Italy (where her daughter lived) and Zurich, where her husband worked at the cantonal hospital. She acquired German citizenship in 1968. In 1969 Jakob Altaras was appointed professor of radiology at the University of Giessen. Thea Altaras got a job at the Gießen / Marburg building authorities. In 1978 Jakob and Thea Altaras founded the Jewish community in Giessen . In 1984 Thea Altaras had to retire early because of an eye condition. She began her research on the fate of the structural remains of former synagogues in Hesse.

In 1989 Thea Altaras received an honorary doctorate from the University of Gießen in recognition of her research on Hessian rural Jewry, and in 1995 she received the Hedwig Burgheim Medal from the city of Gießen. This year, the new Jewish Community Center in Giessen, which was essentially planned by her, was inaugurated. Its centerpiece is the converted and rebuilt half-timbered synagogue from Wohra in Upper Hesse .

On October 5, 1999, Thea Altaras was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon. In 2001 she was elected chairwoman of the Giessen Jewish Community to succeed her late husband Jakob Altaras.

Your book Synagogues in Hessen - What Happened Since 1945? (1987) was distributed in 1988, their second The Jewish Ritual Dip (1994) 1995 by the Hessian ministries of science and culture to all secondary schools in Hesse and to the administrations of the respective communities. This is intended to promote a dignified dealings with the real witnesses of centuries of German-Jewish past. Thea Altaras was then invited to numerous events in the relevant places, where she gave lectures and also gave advice. Since then, numerous buildings have been restored and put to good use. Memorial plaques were also attached to many of the former synagogues or prayer houses. Shortly before her death, Thea Altaras was able to largely complete the work on a combined and updated new edition of these volumes. The work contains 276 architectural descriptions and building histories of synagogues and ritual immersion baths from all 264 Hessian locations whose synagogue buildings survived the November pogroms of 1938 and the Second World War.

Altaras' grave at the New Cemetery in Giessen

obituary

  • Christoph Mohr: Dr. Ing.hc Thea Altaras died. In: Monument Preservation and Cultural History 4, 2004, p. 46.

Fonts

  • Places of the Jews in Giessen. From the beginning until today (= The Blue Books ). Langewiesche publishing house , Königstein i. Ts. 1998, ISBN 3-7845-7793-8 .
  • Synagogues in Hessen - what has happened since 1945? (= The Blue Books). Langewiesche publishing house, Königstein i. Ts. 1988, ISBN 3-7845-7790-3 .
    • 2nd, expanded edition under the title: The Jewish ritual immersion bath and: Synagogues in Hesse - What happened since 1945? Part II . Verlag Langewiesche (= The Blue Books), Königstein i. Ts. 1994, ISBN 3-7845-7792-X .
    • updated and expanded new edition under the title: Synagogues and Jewish ritual immersion baths in Hesse - What happened since 1945? A documentation and analysis from all 264 Hessian places whose synagogues survived the pogrom night of 1938 and the Second World War. 276 architectural descriptions and building histories. Edited from the estate by Gabriele Klempert and Hans-Curt Köster. Verlag Langewiesche (= The Blue Books), Königstein i. Ts. 2007, ISBN 978-3-7845-7794-4 .

Web links

Commons : Thea Altaras  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jaša Romano: Jevreji Jugoslavije 1941 - 1945: žrtve genoida i učesnici nor . Savez Jevrejskih Opština Jugoslavije, Belgrade 1980, p. 371 .
  2. ↑ Adriana Altaras: Tito's glasses: The story of my grueling family . 3. Edition. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2011, ISBN 978-3-462-30330-8 , pp. 124 ff .
  3. ↑ Adriana Altaras: Tito's glasses: The story of my grueling family . 3. Edition. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2011, ISBN 978-3-462-30330-8 , pp. 39 .
  4. ↑ a b Jewish Community Giessen - Dr. Thea Altaras. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 20, 2015 ; Retrieved April 9, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jg-giessen.de
  5. ^ Announcement from the Ordenskanzlei in the Office of the Federal President
  6. ^ German Digital Library - Altaras, Thea: Synagogues and Jewish ritual immersion baths in Hesse - What happened since 1945? Retrieved February 25, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Altaras, Thea
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Zagreb
DATE OF DEATH September 28, 2004
Place of death to water