The Jewish Community of Leipzig
Leipzig
A city in Saxony, Germany
Leipzig is the largest city in Saxony, and the 10th most populous city in Germany. It is located 99 miles (160km) southwest of Berlin, where the White Elster, Pleisse, and Parthe Rivers meet.
Leipzig is home to one of the most active Jewish communities in Central Germany. The synagogue on Keil Street (the Brody Synagogue), Leipzig’s only synagogue to have survived World War II, is the only one in Central Germany to host a daily minyan. The community includes a kosher store, a kosher bakery in the local farmer’s market, a mikvah (ritual bath) that was built in 2006, and two cemeteries. A Jewish Community Center (the Ariowitsch-Haus) opened in 2006 and serves as a cultural center for Leipzig’s Jewish community. The community center hosts holiday celebrations, programming related to Israel, and provides Jewish educational opportunities.
Educational opportunities for Jewish children include a Jewish kindergarten run by the Jewish community. Additionally, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation opened the Tora Zentrum (Torah Center) in 2005, where Jews from Leipzig and the surrounding area can gather to meet each other, and to learn about Judaism. Tora Zentrum hosts celebrations on Jewish holidays, classes for students and adults, seminars, and social gatherings.
In 2012 Leipzig’s Jewish community had approximately 1,300 members.
HISTORY
Or Zarua, a collection of responsa compiled by Rabbi Yitshak ben Moshe of Vienna between 1250 and 1285, is the first Jewish source to mention a Jewish community in Leipzig; a responsum references Rabbi Yitshak’s arbitration of a dispute between his son-in-law, a resident of Leipzig, and a Jew living in other town. Based on Rabbi Yitshak’s answer, it appears that the Jews of Leipzig already had a synagogue and a Talmud Torah by that time, and their main source of income was from finance. Additionally, a document published by Duke Heinrich the Enlightened (Heinrich der Erlauchte, 1221-1288) in 1248 praises Leipzig’s Jews and their contributions to the commercial development of Leipzig. Indeed, the Leipzig fair regulations of 1268 granted the Jews rights equal to those of Christian merchants, and the market day was changed from Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) to Friday, indicating how important their presence was at the fairs. Leipzig’s Jews lived on a Jewish Street, located on the city’s outskirts, outside of the city wall and close to the road from Leipzig to Merseburg.
The Jews were expelled from Leipzig in the aftermath of the Black Death (1348-1349), when Jews throughout Europe were subject to anti-Jewish violence and expulsions, but were permitted to return shortly thereafter. A synagogue had been established by 1352, and records from 1359 mention the existence of a Judengasse (Jewish Street) and a Judenburg (Jewish Town). By 1364 there was also a Jewish school (Scola Sudaeorum), which also served as a synagogue and Talmud Torah.
Though the Jews of Leipzig were relatively safe, and enjoyed a number of protections, they were nonetheless subject to a number of anti-Jewish regulations, which grew in severity over time. They were compelled to pay protection money in exchange for the security of their personal and communal property. Additionally, from the beginning of the 15th century they were forbidden to conduct public prayers in the synagogue. In 1430 the Jews of Leipzig were among those expelled from Saxony; their property was also confiscated. Though they continued to be admitted to Leipzig on fair days, they were not permitted to remain; when they came to trade they prayed in groups in houses that were outside of the city limits, or in the areas where they were permitted to stay during fair days. Every Jew who came to the Leipzig fair had to pay protection money and to present a "character document" issued by the authorities. Jews were forbidden from opening shops on the main streets, or to trade on Sundays and Christian holidays.
In spite of the restrictions and limitations placed on the Jews, in 1659 there were 450-500 Jewish traders at the fairs; in 1700 there were over 1,000 traders, and in 1800 more than 2,000. By 1840 there were 3,596 Jewish businessmen coming to the Leipzig fair. Between the years 1668-1764, approximately 82,000 Jewish businessmen were registered as having attended the Leipzig fair. One of the visitors to the Leipzig fair was the Jewish philosopher and emancipation proponent, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786).
Most of the Jewish merchants, traders, and businessmen who came to the Leipzig fair dealt in cloth, furs, cotton, silk and food products. Eventually, the controversial decision was made to allow Jews to open shops on the main streets during the fairs. This decision was opposed by Christian businessmen and Leipzig’s town council, and the debates that swirled regarding what rights Jews should have during the fairs lasted for about 100 years and prompted a great deal of anti-Semitism.
With the development of international trade, the importance of the Leipzig fair grew, as did the significance and scope of Jewish participation in the fair. Jewish businessmen from Poland and Russia were the principal buyers in Leipzig fairs and made the city the center of the fur trade. As a result, restrictions began to be eased. The Bruehl Quarter was opened to the Jews, and regulations were passed to further enable the participation of Jewish traders at the Leipzig fairs. Jewish businessmen from Russia, Poland and Hungary were exempt from paying protection money, and paid the same taxes as Christian merchants.
Ultimately, in 1710 the mintmaster and merchant Gerd Levi was permitted to settle in Leipzig; by the mid-18th century seven Jewish families were granted permission to live in the city, and by the end of the century there were up to 50 Jewish merchants living in Leipzig. Beginning in 1810 Jews from Brody, Poland who came to the fair, were permitted to remain and trade in Leipzig. and in 1810. Thus began the nucleus of a new Jewish community in Leipzig.
At the beginning of the 19th century Jews were once again permitted to hold public prayer services, and in 1815 a major milestone was reached when the municipal council agreed to the request to open Leipzig’s first Jewish cemetery; until then, anyone who died during the fairs was transferred to Dessau or Halle for burial. This cemetery was used until 1864, when a new cemetery was consecrated; an additional cemetery was opened in the 1920s. Permission was granted in 1837 for the Jews to establish an organized community; that community was officially recognized in 1847.
The Chief Rabbi of Dresden, Rabbi Zechariah Frankel, attempted to found a synagogue in Leipzig in 1837. His efforts, however, were unsuccessful and it was only in 1855 that a synagogue was consecrated. This synagogue was designed to accommodate the many hundreds of Jews who traded at the fairs and was most closely affiliated with the Reform Movement.
Rabbi Dr. Adolf Jellinek was the first rabbi to serve the Jewish community of Leipzig. He served from 1848 to 1855, until he was elected Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community of Vienna. His successor was Rabbi Abraham Meir Goldschmidt, who served from 1858 to 1886. In 1887 Dr. Nathan Porges was appointed as Leipzig’s Chief Rabbi, a position he held until 1917 when he was succeeded by Rabbi Dr. Felix Goldmann. Rabbi Goldmann became was one of the most prominent leaders of liberal Jews in Germany; he also helped found the Jewish Agency for Palestine and Keren Hayesod. In addition to his religious leadership, Rabbi Goldmann was renowned for his scientific work and his writing on the subject of anti-Semitism. He remained in office until his death in 1934. His deputy, who succeeded him after his death, was Rabbi Dr. Gustav Kohn, Leipzig’s last rabbi before World War II (1939-1945).
The first rabbis of Leipzig all identified with liberal Judaism, but there were some Orthodox rabbis who were active in the city. Dr. Nehemia Nobel served as an Orthodox rabbi between 1902 and 1905. However, the city’s first official Orthodox rabbi was Rabbi Dr. Ephraim Carlebach. In 1917 Rabbi Carlebach was appointed as the Chief Orthodox Rabbi of Leipzig, and in 1924 he was officially elected to lead the Orthodox rabbinate along with Rabbi Goldmann. Rabbi Carlebach immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1935 and was succeeded by Rabbi Dr. David Ochs, who served the community until the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, when he also immigrated to Palestine.
Besides the official community rabbis, a number of rabbis served community associations and synagogues. Two, Rabbi David Feldmann, who published the “Shortened Shulkhan Arukh” (“Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh”), and Rabbi Moshe Rogoznitzki, were chosen to serve as the dayanim (judges) of the community. They served until the Nazi rise to power in 1933, when they immigrated to England.
In 1869 the Organization of Jewish Communities in Germany (Deutsch-Israelitischer Gemeindebund) was founded in Leipzig and led by Moritz Kohner and Jacob Nachod. Membership was compulsory for all Jewish residents, regardless of whether they were German citizens; according to the laws of the State of Saxony any secession from the community was regarded as a secession from Judaism. As a result, community organizations that were not part of the official unified community were not established in Leipzig; this was in contrast to Prussia, where the ultra-Orthodox were allowed to found communities that broke away from the general communities.
In 1838 there were 45,516 inhabitants in Leipzig, of whom 162 were Jews. The Jewish community grew steadily, however, particularly during the last decades of the 19th century when many Jews from Galicia and other countries in Eastern Europe came immigrated to Leipzig. By the beginning of the 20th century the Jewish community consisted of approximately 6,000 people. In 1910 the Jewish population was 9,728, and in 1925 Leipzig was officially the largest Jewish community in Saxony, with 13,047 Jews (out of a total population of 679,159).
The Jewish community of Leipzig established a number of funds to help the needy; indeed, until World War I (1914-1918) there were 48 active charitable funds. Haim Eitingon founded a Jewish hospital in 1928, and a Jewish old age home was opened around the same time by the Ariowitsch family. Communal and charitable institutions included a public kitchen, as well as two Jewish libraries. The community also established a number of social and youth organizations, particularly during the 1920s, including a branch of the Bar Kochba Association.
In 1898 Professor Abraham Adler, a court counsellor, established Leipzig’s first commercial high school. This was followed in 1912 by a Jewish secondary school for boys and girls, founded by Rabbi Carlebach, who served as its director until he left for Palestine. The school functioned until the early years of World War II, when it was converted to one of the forty "Jewish houses" in which the Jews were confined before being sent to the concentration and death camps. The building survived the war, and during the 1990s it is used as a library for the blind. A Talmud Torah school was founded by Rabbi Feldmann, who directed it until the Nazis came to power. Classes were held in the afternoons, once the children had been dismissed from their regular schools. In 1911 the first women's seminary was opened by Henrietta Goldschmidt, with funding from Henri Hinrichsen; Hinrichsen published music books and in 1901 he established a music library which contained over 15,000 books.
With the extension of Jewish emancipation throughout Germany, Jews were able to take an active role in the University of Leipzig, as well as in the city’s academic and cultural life more broadly. In 1839 Julius Fuerst became the first Jew to be accepted as a lecturer at the university. During his academic career Fuerst published Orient, a platform for researching Jewish history and literature. Among the Jewish academics who followed at the University of Leipzig were Professor Yeshayahu Kahan, the first lecturer on the subject of literature after the Biblical era, and Georg Witkowski, an authority on German studies with a focus on the works of Goethe. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartoldi, the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, founded Leipzig’s music conservatory. Mendelssohn-Bartoldi recruited the pianist and teacher Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870), who eventually succeeded him as the head of the conservatory. Gustav Brecher and Angelo Neumann served as directors of Leipzig’s operas.
A number of Leipzig’s Jews also served in prominent judicial positions. Martin Eduard Sigismund von Simson officiated as the president of the law courts in Leipzig from 1879 until 1891.
With the rise of the Nazis to power in March 1933, Jewish activity in the economic and cultural spheres of Leipzig, as well as within Germany as a whole, became more circumscribed. An economic boycott of the Jews was enacted on April 1, 1933; subsequently, Jews were gradually removed from public office, and artists, scientists, and writers were dismissed from their posts. On the night of November 9, 1936 members of the Nazi party pulled down the statue of Felix Mendelssohn that had stood in front of the Leipzig concert hall Gewandhaus. Jewish publishing houses were forcibly closed down in 1937, prompting many of their managers to emigrate with their families.
In august 1938 the community of Leipzig numbered 10,800, making it the sixth-largest in Germany.
THE HOLOCAUST
Approximately 5,000 Jews of Polish origin were expelled from Leipzig on October 28-29, 1938 and sent on special trains to the Polish border. The Kristallnacht Pogrom took place only weeks later, on the night of November 9, 1938. During the pogrom all of Leipzig’s synagogues of, with one exception, were destroyed, along with the funeral parlor in the new Jewish cemetery; the Brody Synagogue, on Keil Street, was the only synagogue that was not destroyed during Kristallnacht, because it was located in a residential building.
Before the synagogues were set on fire, the Gestapo confiscated community documents and papers. They looted Jewish shops, and later transferred ownership of the shops to Aryans. To add insult to injury, an owner of one of the Jewish commercial houses was charged for the damage caused by the fire, which had been set by the Nazis. Kristallnacht prompted a wave of Jewish emigration from Leipzig, and from Germany as a whole.
At the beginning of 1942 about 2,000 of the Jews remaining in Leipzig were living in special "Jewish houses,” from which they would be deported in groups to the camps. During the first aktion more than half were sent to camps in Riga; later, many were sent to the Belzec death camp and to Theresienstadt. The last transport left Leipzig for Theresienstadt on February 11 or 12, 1945 and comprised 55 Jews, including people categorized by the Nazi authorities as “half Jews”, who were no longer protected from deportation because their non-Jewish spouses had either died or divorced them. If the non-Jewish spouse of a mixed marriage had died, the offspring of such marriages was now also destined for deportation. Following this transport Leipzig was considered “judenrein”.
POSTWAR
The Jewish community was revived after the war. The synagogue on Keil Street was reconsecrated. The cemeteries and funeral halls were also restored. However, many of those who helped revive the postwar Jewish community were not native to Leipzig; the new community consisted of a few natives of Leipzig who had spent the war years in the city, but most were concentration camp survivors from other areas throughout Europe who came Leipzig after the war.
In 1968 there were 100 Jews living in Leipzig. The community was under the supervision of an East Berlin rabbi. Snice 1950 religious services were led by the cantor Werner Sander, who also organized the choir Leipziger Synagogalcho in 1962.
During the 1970s and 1980s membership in Leipzig’s Jewish community declined, and by 1991 there were only 35 Jews in Leipzig’s Jewish community. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, and Jewish emigration from former Soviet countries, the community began to grow dramatically beginning in the 1990s. In 2005 the Jewish community numbered 1,133.
Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner
(Personality)Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (1902-1983), scholar of art and architecture, born in Leipzig, Germany. He was assistant keeper of Dresden Art Gallery from 1924 to 1929 and then taught for four years at the University of Goettingen. He fled Nazi Germany for England in 1934. From 1949 to 1955 he was professor of fine art at Cambridge and from 1959 professor of the history of art at Birkbeck College. From 1949 Pevsner was art editor of Penguin Books, editing the Penguin History of Art and the King Penguin series. A prolific author, his outstanding contributions included the 46-volume Buildings of England series that he edited and his standard Outline of European Architecture.
Fritz Kaufmann
(Personality)Fritz Kaufmann (1891-1958), philosopher, born in Leipzig, Germany. Kaufmann was the assistant of philosopher and mathematician Edmund Husserl who founded the school of phenomenology at Freiburg, Germany. In 1936 Kaufmann went to Berlin to join the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums.
Two years later he fled from Nazi Germany and went to the USA where he was appointed to the faculty of Northwestern University and the University of Buffalo. He wrote several books on phenomenology and helped to popularise its teachings in America. He also wrote short biographies on Martin Buber, Cassirer, Thomas Mann, Nietzche, Goethe, Flaubert and has teacher Husserl.
Gerhart Eisler
(Personality)Gerhart Eisler (1897-1968), communist activist, born in Leipzig, Germany, son of the philosopher Rudolf Eisler and brother of composer Hans Eisler. He served with the Austro-Humgarian army in World War I after which he became a communist. In 1930 he was political secretary of the Far East bureau of the Communist Trade Union International in Shanghai. In 1936 he went to Spain. In 1940 Eisler escaped from France to the United States where he was a communist activist. In 1949 he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for refusing to testify before the Committee on Un-American Activities but while on bail escaped as a stowaway on a liner to England. The US demanded his extradition but after a long struggle he was released and went to Prague. Later he was minister of information in the East German government and chairman of the East German radio authority.
Hanns Eisler
(Personality)Hanns Eisler (1898-1962), composer, best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, born in Leipzig, Germany. He studied (1919-1923) with Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna. From 1925-1928 he taught at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin. In 1926 he joined the Communist Party and began to write politically committed music, mainly to texts by Bertolt Brecht. In 1933 he left Germany and in 1938 he settled in the United States, where he lectured at the New School for Social Research. In the US he composed film scores (he was musical assistant to Charlie Chaplin) and wrote, together with Theodore W. Adorno, the book Composing for the Film (1947). In 1947 he was censured by the congressional Committee on Un-American Activities and was deported "voluntarily" in 1948. He went back to East Germany, became an ideological leader of musical activities in the country and taught composition in Berlin. In 1950 he won a state prize.
Following an initial phase of 12-tone compositions, Eisler devoted himself to the socialist movement as a "proletarian composer". He wrote more than 40 works for the theater, among them music for plays by Brecht Rote Revue (1932), Die Mutter (1932), Furcht und Ellend des II. Reiches (1945), Galileo Galilei (1947) and Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg (1957). He also wrote music for numerous films, the opera Johannes Faustus (1953), many vocal works -choral pieces, cantatas and songs, among them the East German anthem - and instrumental compositions (symphonies, suites and chamber music. Eisler died in East Berlin, German Democratic Republic.
Bernard Katz
(Personality)Bernard Katz (1911-2003), biophysicist, noted for his work on nerve biochemistry, who shared the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1970, born in Leipzig, Germany. He studied Medicine at the University of Leipzig, 1929-1934; received the Siegfried Garten Prize for physiological research in 1933 and obtained his M.D. In 1934.
He left Germany in 1935 and was accepted as a Ph. D. student at University College, London. In 1942, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science (London University).
In 1939, he joined J. C. Eccles' laboratory at Sydney Hospital, Australia, as a Carnegie Research Fellow. There he collaborated with J. C. Eccles and S. W. Kuffler in neuromuscular research.
In 1942 he joined the Royal Australian Air Force, and served as a Radar Officer in the South West Pacific until the end of WW 2. In 1946, returning from Australia to University College, London, Katz became Assistant Director of Research and Henry Head Research Fellow (appointed by the Royal Society). He was appointed Reader in Physiology in 1950 and in 1952 became Professor of Biophysics at University College, London.
Katz was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1952; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1968. He was a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (1968), Accademia Nazionale Lincei (1969); American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969); Fellow of University College, London (1961). He was a member of the Agricultural Research Council from 1967 and Biological Secretary of the Royal Society from 1968.
His major fields of research include studies of nerve and muscle, especially of the physico-chemical mechanism of neuromuscular transmission.
Shabtai Petrushka
(Personality)Shabtai Petrushka (1903-1997), composer and conductor, born in Leipzig, Germany. He studied piano, cello and theory at the Leipzig Conservatory. In 1923 he moved to Berlin and graduated in engineering. He then became music manager of theaters and founded a jazz band (Sid Kay’s Fellows) that participated in theater productions in Berlin as well as in Vienna, Breslau and Munich. Petrushka arranged music for the film company UFA and the German Gramophon Company.
In 1938 he arrived in Eretz Israel and was employed as conductor, composer, arranger and orchestra performer. From 1948 until his retirement in 1968 Petrushka was director of the music department of Kol Israel (The Voice of Israel) - the Israel Bradcasting Service. From 1969 he taught orchestration at the Jerusalem Academy of Music.
Among his works are PRELUDE AND FUGUE for flute, clarinet and bassoon (1938); STRING TRIO (1939); SUITE for orchestra (1947); FOUR PIECES for wind instruments (1953); and LITTLE DIVERTIMENTO for wind instruments (1970). Petrushka also arranged numerous Israeli and Jewish folk songs and dances, among them FIVE ORIENTAL DANCES (1954), THREE HEBREW SONGS for women’s choir (1958) and THREE SPANISH ROMANCES for women’s choir (1976). He died in Jerusalem, Israel.
Hermann Guthe
(Personality)Hermann Guthe (1849 -1936), scholar of Semitic Studies, born in Westerlinde, a village in Lower Saxony, Germany. He was educated at Göttingen, Erlangen, and at Leipzig University, Germany, where in 1884 he became professor of Old Testament studies.
In 1881 and 1894 he traveled in Palestine. During his 1881 journey he excavated at the Ophel in Jerusalem and discovered part of the eastern wall of the Temple Mount. He copied the recently discovered Siloam inscription. From 1877 to 1896 he edited the bulletin, and then from 1897 to 1906 the journal, of the German Palestine Association. In 1904 he visited Megiddo and Madba and copied the mosaic map which was found there. He wrote on some of the Minor Prophets in Kautzsch's translation of the Bible and a metrical version of Amos (1907)
Guthe published many works in the fields of philology, religion, archeology and topography.
Moses Saul Lobzower
(Personality)Moses Saul Lobzower (Reich) (1879-1940), merchant, born in Krakow, Poland (then an autonomous province of Galicia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire), just 12 years after the ghetto in Krakow had been abolished. Lobzower had neither higher education, nor any special skills nor even a financial cushion. His position was therefore precarious when Galicia was plunged into an economic crisis with serious anti-Semitic and xenophobic overtones in the 1880s and 1890s.
Shortly after their marriage in 1902, he and his wife Ernestina decided to move to Vienna, Austria, although their actually departure from Krakow was delayed for five years until 1907, after the birth of their two elder children. They had hoped for a better life in Vienna and indeed succeeded in giving their children a good secular secondary and vocational education. The economic situation in Vienna after WWI was however desperate. The city was no longer the capital city of great empire and the great depression compounded the problems. Their son Emil was forced to leave Vienna for Saxony in eastern Germany in order to seek work, and Moses and Ernestina eventually went to Leipzig, Germany. Ernestina died there in 1936, while Moses passed away there in 1940.
Moses’ father was Alter Lobzower. He married Doba Bluma Reicher and called his 8 children after mother Doba. It was quite expensive to register a wedding with the local authorities so many couples did not do so - the Jewish religious ceremony sufficed. The children were obviously those of the mother. In a few short years the name Reicher became Reich, but clearly the Reiches of 2010 should really be called Lobzower.
Ignaz Moscheles
(Personality)Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870) , pianist and composer. Born in Prague, Austria-Hungary , later Czechoslovakia, he studied in Vienna with J.G. Albrechtsberger and A. Salieri. In 1821 he settled in England. In 1846, at the invitation of Mendelssohn, to whom he had given piano lessons in 1824, he became director of piano instruction at the Leipzig Conservatory.
His list of works includes virtuoso piano pieces, eight piano concertos, chamber music, piano sonatas and piano etudes. He died in Leipzig, Germany.
Karl Tausig
(Personality)Karl Tausig (1841-1871) Pianist and composer.
Born in Warsaw, Poland, he first studied piano with his father Aloys Tausig. From the age of 14 he studied with Liszt. Tausig made his debut in 1858 in Berlin and following it became one of the most significant piano virtuosi of his time, giving concerts on major stages all over Europe. In 1865 he settled in Berlin and founded a school for advanced piano playing. Tausig composed exercises for daily practice and several arrangements of orchestral music. He died in Leipzig, Germany.