Wolfsthalplatz
The Museum of Jewish History and Culture has been located in the former rabbinate building in Aschaffenburg since 1983 . The permanent exhibition there on the history of the former Jewish community in Aschaffenburg begins in 1267, when a Jewish school is mentioned for the first time, and goes back to the time of persecution under National Socialism. The place where the synagogue stood Aschaffenburg, was after the Second World War in Wolfsthal Place renamed and redesigned as a park.
synagogue
A new place of worship is being built on the foundation walls of the old synagogue from 1698, which is now in poor structural condition. Rabbi Dr. In 1889, Simon Bamberger was commissioned to build a new synagogue for the growing Jewish community . Within four years a domed building supported by 10 columns in the oriental style was built. The ceremonial opening took place on September 29, 1893 in front of numerous invited guests: The evening before, September 28, 1893, all rooms of the synagogue were festively lit between 7 and 9 p.m. and opened to the public for viewing. The congregation celebrated the last service in this synagogue on the morning of November 9th, 1938. During the November pogroms in 1938 , the synagogue was set on fire by the National Socialists and burned down completely. After the dome collapsed in January 1939, the ruin was demolished in 1939 at the expense of the Jewish community. A model of the former synagogue can be seen in the permanent exhibition on Jewish history in the rabbinate building.
Rabbinate building
In the “Vorburgschen Haus” from the 17th century, which the Israelite religious community acquired in 1805, a rabbi apartment , a women's bath and a Jewish school were set up in 1806 . In 1898/99 the rabbinate building, the Jewish school and the women's bath were rebuilt. The house was not destroyed and was owned by the German Reich and the Free State of Bavaria from 1939 to 1950. In 1950 the city of Aschaffenburg acquired it. Since no more Jewish communities were founded in Aschaffenburg, the Aschaffenburg Documentation Center Wolfsthalplatz with a memorial plaque was built here on July 27, 1983:
- In memory and in memory of our persecuted and murdered Jewish fellow citizens. During the National Socialist tyranny, over 300 Jews from Aschaffenburg were deported to the extermination camps from this city and other places. Your fate must admonish and oblige us
The Torah scrolls found during the renovation work , which are no longer allowed to be used for worship, because they were desecrated, were buried under a memorial stone in the presence of the chairman of the Jewish community of Würzburg , David Schuster , in the Jewish cemetery next to the old town cemetery .
people
The namesake, Otto Wolfsthal, born on June 26, 1872 in Bamberg, came to Aschaffenburg in 1889 and 10 years later joined the bank founded by his uncle Raphael Wolfsthal (1816–1876), whose partner at the time was the banker, councilor and bank director Oskar -Otto Dilsheimer (1856-1935), also an uncle, was. In 1905 the partners sold their company to the Bayerische Handelsbank in Munich.
The name Otto Wolfsthal is associated with many charities. The Dilsheimer-Wolfsthal-Stiftung from 1909 supported bank employees and their relatives in distress through no fault of their own for a year. The capital had to be invested in war bonds and was worthless after inflation. During the First World War, Wolfsthal donated around 22,500 marks for national and social purposes until 1918. He also took sick people into his house, donated a telephone connection to the Sisters of the Most Holy Redeemer (social station, nursing, handicraft school), in 1915 the first public X-ray machine, supported needy warrior families, took on the costs of feeding needy children, as well as 100 quintals of coal for the poorest fellow citizens . The "Otto and Maria Wolfsthalsche Wöchnerinnenstiftung" established by him and his wife, which after two donations in 1923 had a capital of 200,000 marks, was continued after the inflation and even survived the Third Reich.
After the seizure of power Otto Wolfsthal stayed with his family in Aschaffenburg, although he had the opportunity to emigrate to Luxembourg and France. He and his wife Maria Hedwig Wolfsthal, née Schrag (1879–1942), from Bruchsal , declared, however, that they were Germans and were not aware of any guilt and therefore viewed emigration as an admission of guilt. When the couple then received the deportation notice, they ended their lives by suicide on September 6, 1942. Together with relatives Babette Dilsheimer, geb. Weil (1864–1942), widow of Oskar Otto Dilsheimer, who died in 1935, and Max Levi (1875–1942), a merchant in the textile business of his wife, H. Hamburger, who died in 1930, and sons, the unmarried Ida Hamburger (1876–1942), the housemaid Lina Isaac (1876–1942) and the merchant widow Emma Trier, b. Mayer (1865–1942) they poisoned themselves with the sleeping pill veronal, which was coveted among threatened Jews and was traded at black market prices. Five of them died on the same day, Otto Wolfsthal on the 8th and Emma Trier, the last, on September 9th, 1942. The last wish of the Wolfsthal couple to be buried in the old town cemetery was not fulfilled by Mayor Wilhelm Wohlgemuth . The city of Aschaffenburg has had a common tombstone placed on the Jewish cemetery on the Erbig to commemorate its Jewish fellow citizens who were divorced through suicide .
At the moment the project “ Stolpersteine ” by the artist Gunter Demnig is running , who is inserting brass plates in the pavement in front of the last residence of the Jewish fellow citizens. The city of Aschaffenburg's culture award for 2010 goes to the support group Haus Wolfsthalplatz for its "... work against forgetting".
literature
- Carsten Pollnick: Aschaffenburg street names - people and personalities and their significance in local history I. Contributions to the history of the city, Volume I Aschaffenburg: City of Aschaffenburg - city and monastery archive 1990, ISBN 3-9801478-5-1
- Alois Grimm: Aschaffenburg House Book IV ... Entengasse ... Aschaffenburg: History and Art Association eV 1996, ISBN 978-3-87965-071-2
- Alois Grimm: Aschaffenburger Häuserbuch V ... Treibgasse ... Aschaffenburg: Geschichts- und Kunstverein eV 2001, ISBN 978-3-87965-084-2
- Carsten Pollnick: Aschaffenburg - A journey through time, Aschaffenburg: Geschichts- und Kunstverein eV 2002, ISBN 3-87965-090-X
- Peter Körner: "Biographical manual of the Jews in the city and old district of Aschaffenburg" Aschaffenburg: Geschichts- und Kunstverein eV 1993, ISBN 3-87965-062-4
- Dieter Sabiwalski: "The fate of the Aschaffenburg Jews in the Theresienstadt Ghetto 1942 to 1945" Aschaffenburger Jahrbuch - Volume 26 - Geschichts- und Kunstverein eV 2002, ISBN 978-3-87965-110-8
Individual evidence
- ↑ Aschaffenburger Zeitung No. 260 of September 28, 1893
- ↑ Förderkreis Haus Wolfsthalplatz eV database - Jews in Lower Franconia, grave number 220, serial number 1884, 1885, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890
- ↑ History of the Stolpersteine in Aschaffenburg ( Memento of the original from May 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) 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.
- ^ Website main-netz.de
Web links
- Support group Haus Wolfsthalplatz
- Museum of Jewish History and Culture
- The synagogues in Aschaffenburg
- Synagogue Memorial Volume Bavaria 2 volumes
- Water sculpture "Zeitwagen" by Reiner Stoltz
- Jewish cemeteries in Aschaffenburg
Coordinates: 49 ° 58 ′ 35 " N , 9 ° 8 ′ 46.7" E