The Jewish Community of Lower Saxony - Niedersachsen

Germany

Bundesrepublik Deutschland - Federal Republic of Germany
A country in western Europe, member of the European Union (EU)

21st Century

Estimated Jewish population in 2018: 115,000 out of 83,000,000 (0.14%). Main umbrella organization of the Jewish communities:

Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland - Central Council of Jews in Germany
Phone: 49 30 28 44 56 0
Fax +49 30 28 44 56 13
Email: info@zentralratderjuden.de
Website: www.zentralratderjuden.de

 

HISTORY

The Jews of Germany

810 | The First Ashkenazi Elephant

A decree by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in 321 CE is the first mention of a tiny Jewish settlement in the city of Koln and other cities along the Rhine – Mainz, Worms and Speyer.
According to the decree, in these places, later to become known as “The lands of Ashkenaz”, Jews enjoyed certain civil rights, but were prohibited from spreading their faith and their share in government employment was limited.
Until the Crusades, which began in the late 11th century, Jews coexisted peacefully with the local population and were allowed to hold property and engage in all trades and occupations.
An historical anecdote tells of a Jew named Isaac, who was part of a diplomatic delegation on behalf of the Emperor Charlemagne to the Abbasid Caliph Haroun al-Rashid. Historians believe that Isaac was added to the delegation due to the great influence of Jews in the Abbasid court. The Abbasid Caliph, for his part, sent the Charlemagne an unusual gift: an elephant named “Abu Abbas.”
Word of the huge monster, which would peacefully eat from the hand of its handler, spread far and wide. When the elephant walked the streets of Germany during festivals and celebrations, tens of thousands of peasants would throng to the city to witness the zoological wonder, the likes of which had never been seen in Frankish domains before.
According to the sources, the elephant died in the year 810 CE.


1096 | Monogamy, Rabeinu Gershom Style

One of the first yeshivas founded in the lands of Ashkenaz was located in the city of Mainz and was founded by the man known throughout the Jewish world and to posterity as “Rabeinu Gershom Ma'or Hagolah” (“Our Rabbi Gershom, Light of the Diaspora”).
Many students flocked to Rabeinu Gershom to learn Torah from a prodigy who composed commentary on the Talmud and instituted important religious rulings, among them the famous “Ban of Rabeinu Gershom,” which forbade Jewish men to marry more than one wife at once.
The end of the 11th century saw the advent of the Crusades, intended to liberate the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, where Jesus is believed by the Christian faithful to be buried, from the hands of the Muslims – an act of piety for which all participants were promised a place in heaven. Concurrent with this religious fervor there grew a call to kill the Jewish heretics. This was a violation of the centuries-old policy started by St. Augustine, who maintained that the Jews must not be killed because their existence as second-class subjects was living proof that God held them in disfavor.
The height of the anti-Jewish hate in this period was reached in the year 1096, when the Rhineland Massacres (known in Jewish history as Gezerot Tatnu, or 4856, after the Hebrew date for the year) took place. According to various estimates, thousands of Jews were murdered in these rampages, and many others were injured, robbed and raped.
Several dirges written in memory of the destroyed Jewish congregations, known as the “Shum” congregations (Shpira, Wormeysa and Magenza, or in German Speyer, Worms and Mainz) have survived to this day.
Despite the massacres and the worsened treatment of the Jews, the Jewish population of Germany flourished and grew to become one of the centers of Jewish spiritual endeavor in Europe and the cradle of the Yiddish language.

1196 | A State within a State

Over the years, a community structure took shape in the Jewish population centers in Germany that would come to characterize Jewish communities throughout Europe. The community served as the legislative, executive and judicial authorities, and the synagogue served its members as a cultural, social and religious center.
In the second half of the 12th century, despite the crusades, the small Jewish community in Germany flourished. This was the period in which the Ashkenaz Hasidim formed, and made a crucial impact on the spiritual-religious world of Jews for generations to come, laying down rules regarding penitence, prayer, religious laws and mystical conduct.
The Ashkenaz Hasidim movement (not to be confused with what is now known as Hasidism) was led by Rabbi Judah ben Samuel of Regensburg, known in Judaism as “Rabbi Yehudah Hasid”, author of “Sefer Hasidim” and one of the first kabbalists. Hasid was a scion of the glorious lineage of the Kalonymus family, which came to the lands of Ashkenaz in the year 917, and whose members – scholars, poets, rabbis and kabbalists – made a deep and lasting impression on the world of Jewish thought.
Another religious circle was that of the Tosafists (“Ba'alei Tosafot” in Hebrew) who enriched the volumes of the Talmud with their innovations. The Tosafists, who viewed themselves as continuing the Talmudic tradition of the Amoraim of Babylon, founded batei midrash and traveled from yeshiva to yeshiva to impart their innovations. In 1209 some 300 scholars left these batei midrash, made aliyah to the Land of Israel and settled in Acre and in Jerusalem. Researchers believe that this migration of these scholars was a reaction to the crusades.
The aliyah of the Tosafists took place concurrent with blood libels against the Jews, who were accused of using the blood of Christian children and with desecrating the Eucharist at churches.
In 1298, armed with a Eucharist “desecrated” by Jews, a German nobleman named Rindfleisch embarked on a rampage of mass extermination against the Jews. According to various estimates, these pogroms took the lives of some 20,000 Jews and destroyed 146 communities.

1348 | The Black Death

In 1348 the Black Death plague began, which would wipe out an estimated one third of the population of Europe, including entire Jewish communities. The people of the time believed the plague to come from the water, and from there to declaring the Jews “well poisoners” was but a short distance.
These accusations led to the destruction of 300 Jewish communities in Germany. Many Jews were burned at the stake and many of the survivors fled to the Kingdom of Poland, establishing what was to become the great Jewish community of Poland.
In the 15th and 16th centuries the Jews remaining in the German lands suffered from the cruelty and superstition of the masses, fell victim to the avarice of princes and were forced to deal with ever-increasing intolerance by the Church. Most of the Jews of Germany at this time made their living as textile merchants, pawn brokers, money exchangers, street vendors and itinerant workers. They were allowed to reside only in the big cities, where they were pushed into crowded, poverty-stricken quarters. Many of them wandered the roads all week long, carrying their wares from village to village, only to be met with contempt and degradation from the locals.
This image of the “Wandering Jew” was later expressed in German poetry: “Miserable Jew, doomed to wander, a famished vendor through town and vale, his bones rattle, his teeth chatter, forever crying: Knick-knacks for sale!”

1529 | Josel The Lobbyist

In the 16th century Europe was showing signs of enlightenment. Renaissance culture, humanist ideas, the Reformation movement and more were the clearest signs. Two major German figures who represented these trends were philosopher Johann Reuchlin and theologian monk Martin Luther. The two were in agreement regarding the just cause of the religious reformation in Christianity, but regarding the Jews they took opposite views.
Reuchlin, who specialized in the study of Hebrew, was fond of Jewish culture. Proof of this can be found in the public debate he held with Johannes Pfefferkorn, a Catholic theologian who had converted from Judaism and called to destroy all copies of the Talmud. Reuchlin also gained fame when he published a defense of the Jews titled “Augenspiegel” (“Visible Evidence”) which called for equality and argued that all human beings shared a common source.
Martin Luther, in contrast, published a treatise in 1543 titled “On the Jews and Their Lies”, in which he proposed to burn down synagogues and expel the Jews from Germany. Four hundred years later the Nazis republished the tract and added it to their canon, alongside Hitler's “Mein Kampf” and “The Jew Suess” by Goebbels.
In 1529 a Jew named Josel of Rossheim was appointed to the lengthy title of “Custodian of the Jews in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation”. Josel was among the first to fill the role of “shtadlan” - a new figure in the Jewish landscape, serving as a lobbyist of sorts for the Jews in the halls of power. Among Josel's achievements was the procurement of a charter of protection stating that any soldier harming a Jew would be executed, as well as saving 200 Jews who were sentenced to burn at the stake.

1669 | First We Take Vienna, Then We Take Berlin

By the end of the 18th century the German lands consisted of over 100 independent political units under absolute rulers small and large: kings, dukes, counts, bishops and more. Theoretically, they were all subject to the “Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation” who sat in Vienna, but in practice these were autonomous states with borders, laws and currencies of their own. Prussia, which included the city of Berlin, which would eventually become its own capital and that of all Germany, was one of the largest such duchies, and by the second half of the 18th century it became the fifth most powerful country in Europe.
Until 1699 Jews were prohibited from living in or near Berlin, but following the Thirty Year War and the deficits it created in the duchy's budget, things changed. In order to jump-start the Prussian economy, Duke Frederick I (soon to crown himself King) decided to welcome the fifty richest of the Viennese Jews expelled by Austria. These Jews were declared “Protected Jews” (“Schutzjuden”) and signed a contract promising to pay the King 2,000 tallers (approximately $90,000 in today's currency), to establish certain industries and to refrain from building synagogues.
When the Jewish population grew, the King called it “a plague of locusts” and decreed that only 120 families, the “richest and finest”, would be allowed to remain in the city. The rest were cast out. King Frederick's hatred did not extend to “useful” Jews such as Levin Gomperz, who obtained credit from the banks for his excessive expenses, or Jeremiah Hirz, the royal goldsmith. Unlike other Jews, those two were exempt, for instance, of the abhorrent requirement to pay a tax each time they passed through Rosenthaler Gate, one of the Berlin's famous portals.

1734 | The Jewish Socrates

In the fall of 1743 a 14 year-old boy passed through the gates of the city of Berlin. He was small for his age, and suffered from a slightly hunched back and a speech impediment. It was said that “even the cruelest of hearts would soften at the sight of him”, and yet he was blessed with handsome features and his eyes revealed depth, wisdom and brilliance. The records of the Rosenthaler Gate, through which he entered, document the passage of “six oxen, seven swine and one Jew”. When the guard at the gate asked the boy what he was selling, the youngster replied with a stammer but surprising confidence: “W...W...Wisdom”.
Even the most imaginative of writers couldn't imagine that the stammering hunchback, Moses Mendelssohn, would one day become such a central figure in the annals of the Enlightenment movement in general, and of Judaism in particular.
Less than two decades after entering Berlin, and being self-taught, the boy became one of the most important philosophers in Germany, one so important that a 1986 tour guide states that “The history of literature in Berlin begins on that autumn day in 1743, when a 14 year-old yeshiva student named Moses Mendelssohn entered through the gate reserved for livestock and Jews only.”
Mendelssohn, who became known as “The Jewish Socrates”, was an admired example for all German Jews. His “Golden Path” ideology, the mixture he created in his thought between religion and rationality, and the religious lifestyle he adhered to despite the attempts of Christian clerics to talk him into converting in return for tempting favors – all these turned him into the guiding light of the Jews of Germany.
But Mendelssohn – the man who more than anyone symbolized the trend Jewish integration in Germany – recognized the hypocrisy of the German elite. Despite his reputation as an intellectual giant, he never received an academic position and was forced to make his living as a simple factory worker. “My life is so beset on all sides by tolerance,” he wrote sarcastically to one of his friends, “that for the sake of my children I must imprison myself all day in a silk factory.”

1780 | Signs of Enlightenment

By the end of the 18th century it seemed that the Jews of Germany were integrating admirably into German society. Austrian Emperor Joseph II gave them the “Edict of Tolerance” and in 1781 a senior Prussian official, Christian von Dohm, called for the political and civic emancipation of all German Jews, which set off a widespread public debate.
Two years later, in 1783, Berlin's main theater staged the play Nathan the Wise by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, one of Germany's leading playwrights of the time. Lessing's protagonist was an enlightened, wise, tolerant Jew who believed in universal brotherhood – a complete opposite to the greedy, corrupt, nefarious Jewish character which was a staple of European culture at the time.
Jewish reaction to these expressions of enlightenment were mixed. Many responded with enthusiasm and euphoria, expressed among other in the book “Divrei Shalom Ve'emet” by German-Jewish poet Naftali Hirz Wessely. Others expressed concern that the same old toxic hatred was hiding behind the smokescreen of tolerance, and that the true aim of the “tolerance” was to wipe out the Jews' religious identity.

1790 | The Literary Salons

Among the most fascinating expressions of the pluralistic spirit that characterized the upper class of Berlin at the end of the 18th century were the literary salons held by Henrietta Herz and Rachel Levi. Anyone holding themselves to be erudite wished to be invited to these salons, where intellectuals and artists, writers and musicians, entrepreneurs and thinkers – Jews and Gentiles alike.
Since in those days no university had yet been established in Berlin, and the court life of Prussian King Frederick II was boring and limited, the literary salons offered an outlet for young people who hungered for intellectual nourishment. They spoke of art, literature and poetry, enjoyed drinks and hors d'oeuvres, and exchanged forbidden kisses in secluded rooms.
Berlin of those days was home to many rich Jewish families (as mentioned above, the poor ones were expelled from the city), and the fact that Jews took such an interest in art, and Jewish women no less, was exceptional. The daring of these women was doubled, as they were both Jews and women. For the Jewish guests the salons were “a small slice of utopia”, as Jewish writer Deborah Hertz. French writer Madame de-Stael said upon visiting Berlin that Henrietta and Rachel's salons were the only places in all of Germany where aristocrats and Jews could meet freely.
The war between Prussia and France ended the phenomenon of the literary salons. “Everything sank in 1806,” wrote Rachel Levi, the most fascinating of the salon hostesses, “went down like a ship carrying the finest gifts, the choicest of life's pleasures.”

1806 | Romance In The Air

While famous German philosopher Frederick Hegel watched from his home balcony as the conqueror Napoleon entered the city of Jena and felt that he was witnessing “the end of history”, a Jewish boy of nine named Heinrich Heine looked at his father proudly wearing his blue-and-red uniform in his new position as a patrolman securing the streets of Dusseldorf. Unlike Hegel, this boy, destined to become one of the most important poets in Germany, felt that he was witnessing the beginning of a new history.
The Franco-Prussian war, which ended with the Prussians defeated, heralded a new age for the Jews. In the territories annexed to France, among them Dusseldorf, Jews were accorded full political rights, and for the first time in the history of Germany Jews like Heine's father were allowed to serve in public capacities. Even in the territories left to Prussia, whose size shrunk by half, reforms took place. The liberal Prussians who came to power abolished the medieval guilds, banned corporal punishment and gave the Jews – albeit only the rich ones – a municipal status, if not a country-wide political one.
But unlike in the United States and France, where liberation was the product of a popular revolution, in Germany the ideas of equality and enlightenment were handed down from above, by the regime. In those days, the Romantic movement spread in Germany, replacing the universal ideals of the Enlightenment with that of nationalism, and called for a sacred bond between people, church, and state.
One of the principles of the Romantic movement was to define nations in organic terms and the German nation as an ideal, homogenous and most importantly Jews-free specimen thereof. A new kind of Jew-hatred began to appear, one that combined religious sentiment and racial arguments with a disdain for the rationality of the Enlightenment, which was identified with the “Jewish mind”. The main proponent of this view was German philosopher Johann Fichte, who said that “We should cut off their (the Jews') heads in one night and replace them with others, in which there is not a single Jewish idea.”

1819 | Hep Hep Hep

In 1819 riots broke out in the city of Wurzburg, as a result of the rise of the nationalist Romantic movement, the cancellation of Napoleon's emancipation edicts and the increased anti-Semitism of the German aristocracy. The rioters broke into Jewish homes and shops, looted them and laid them to waste while shouting the “Hep Hep Hep” cry (a Latin acronym for “Hierosolyma est perdita”, or “Jerusalem is lost”) which, unfounded tradition has it, served to recruit fighters for the crusades in the Middle Ages. Another theory is that the cry was a traditional one for shepherds in German.
Three years earlier Germany suffered a severe economic crisis, which also led to these riots. The fact that 90% of German Jews were desperately poor mattered not one bit to the marauders, who stayed away from the areas in which wealthy Jews lived (mostly in Prussia).
The Jews reacted to the riots with restraint. Those of the upper-middle class, most of whom lived in Berlin and were not exposed to the riots, felt little shared fate with their brethren. The rate of conversion in these communities grew and many, among them the poet Heinrich Heine, hoped that if they shed their home-given language and dress, the historical hatred towards them would vanish. But many discovered that nothing had changed even when they “crawled to the cross”, as Heine put it.
A few weeks after the riots three extraordinary young Jews – Edward Gans, Leopold Zunz, and Moses Moser – met in Berlin and decided to found a “culture and science association”, in order to bring the Jews closer to German society and thus to crumble the walls of hatred. The founders of the association applied the principles of modern research to the study of Judaism, hoping that if European society became acquainted with Judaism and its contribution to world culture, antisemitism would cease to exist. Carried on the waves of optimism he shared with his friends, Gans applied for a position at the University of Berlin. He was rejected out of hand.

1848 | The Spring Of Nations

“I should have been either healthy or dead,” said the poet Heinrich Heine, semi-paralyzed and bed-ridden in exile in Paris, when he received the news of the revolution in Germany. And indeed, although the “Spring of Nations” revolution has been called a parody of the French Revolution, Heine was excited by the possibility that Germany would lose the confinements of nationalism and royalty and adopt the values of freedom and equality.
Despite its failure, the revolution was a turning point in the lives of Germany's Jews. The fact that many Jewish liberals took an active part in it heralded a deep change in the mind. For the first time in the history of Germany the traditional Jewish passivity began to give way to active political involvement. After several decades in which the Jewish elite almost disappeared in the first wave of conversions, a new generation rose: A generation of Jewish leaders proud of their Jewishness.
The revolutionary Ludwig Bamberger, Orientalist Moritz Steinschneider, the charismatic physician Johann Jacoby and writer Berthold Auerbach were but a few of the Jews who were determined to make the ideals of the revolution a reality. This was the first time, writes historian Amos Eilon, that the representatives of the Jews were so scathing, firm, and aware of their rights.
Another person who stood our during this time of tumult was the scion of a long line of rabbis – the revolutionary Karl Marx. A few weeks after publishing his “Communist Manifesto” Marx quickly joined his revolutionary friends in Cologne and Dusseldorf, and spread his ideas from there. Marx had no sympathy for Judaism. He saw emancipation, for instance, not as the liberation of Jews in Germany, but “the liberation of humanity from the Jews”. His aversion to religion and his famous quote that religion is the opium of the masses would turn out to be ironic as he founded a new world religion, Communism, whose results were written in blood. The irony is doubled when one learns that this famous quote was not penned by Marx but by his Jewish comrade Moses Hess (who later reconciled with his Jewish identity and was an early herald of Zionism).

1870 | Indeed?

In the mid-19th century, some 1,000 small Jewish communities flourished in the towns and villages of Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Hessen, Westphalia, and the Rhine Valley. Most Jews were observant, spoke Yiddish in a western dialect and worked mostly in the cattle and horse trade.
The Franco-Prussian War, which broke out in 1870 and ended in a crushing Prussian victory, gave the Jews an excellent opportunity to display their loyalty. Between 7,000 and 12,000 Jewish fighters took part in the battles. “It was,” wrote author Theodore Fontane, “as if they had vowed to themselves to put an end to the old notion of their aversion to and incompetence at war.”
Jews were also active in high places. The Jew Ludwig Bamberger, a veteran of the 1848 Revolution, followed the advances of the Prussian forces into Paris from his exile in that city. Upon the occupation of the city, he joined the personal staff of the “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck and served him as a senior adviser, dues to his experience as a revolutionary.
At the German headquarters in Paris he met another Jew, Gerson Bleichroder, who was Bismarck's all-powerful banker. Bleichroder, who seemed cast in the mold of the “Court Jew”, was in charge of the secret funds with which Bismarck bribed the kings and dukes of the principalities of southern Germany, in order to persuade them to unite all the independent countries in Germany under a single rule – a mission eventually crowned with success.
In 1871 the Emancipation Law was passed and applied to all of Germany. As equal citizens the Jews began to reap success in all walks of life. Over 60% of them belonged to the settled middle-class. They achieved remarkable prominence in the worlds of publishing and journalism, and more and more young Jews, the sons of shopkeepers, innkeepers, cattle traders and street vendors enrolled in the universities.
The Jews began to slowly assimilate into the general population and adopt the German identity. Organs were introduced into the synagogues, and traditional prayer was abandoned. Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen declared that serving Germany was as holy a deed as serving God, whereas the successful Jewish-German author Berthold Auerbach, who was styled “The German Dickens”, stated that the process of integration had been successfully completed.
But had it, indeed?

1880 | The New Antisemitism

On November 22nd, 1880 writer Berthold Auerbach sat in the visitors' gallery of the Prussian parliament. The delegates discussed a proposal to revoke the civil rights of the Jews. Auerbach returned to his home morose and depressed, opened his notebook and wrote: “I have lived and toiled in vain.”
Like many other Jewish activists, Auerbach too devoted his life to the cause of Jewish integration in Germany. A few years before that parliamentary debate he had even declared that upon the granting of Jewish emancipation, their integration into German society had been completed. Now he was broken and despondent.
The 1873 German stock exchange crash is viewed by many historians as the watershed moment. The rage and frustration of the masses found a new target: “The nouveau-riche” (which is to say, the Jew) who exploited the naiveté of the honest Christian and profiteered off his hard-earned money. To the old anti-Semitism a new fear was added. If in the past the Jews were accused of being beggars, immoral and of low hygiene, now they were described as devious and endlessly powerful. Major Jewish figures, among them railroad magnate Henry Strasburg and banker Gerson Bleichroder were depicted as having corrupted the German economy and the main culprits in the suffering of the Germans.
In the German climate, where strong ties to the feudal system still lingered, the Jews – bearing the flags of liberalism, democracy and the free market – were considered to be responsible not only for the crisis, but for the founding of capitalism itself, which was equated with materialism, exploitation and degeneracy. Prominent German figures, such as Protestant chaplain Adolph Stoecker and historian Heinrich von Treitschke, gave the new anti-Semitism the veneer of the Church and Academia. Bismarck and his noble friends, who had themselves become rich at the public's expense, gave it the imprimatur of aristocracy.

1900 | Progress, Secularism and Religion

The 25 years preceding the outbreak of WW1 were described by Jewish-German writer Stephan Zweig as “the golden age of security”. The “years of anxiety”, as the 1880s later came to be known, had passed. The expressions of anti-Jewish discrimination were marginal, and the wave of anti-Semitism that characterized the previous decade had died down. Future Zionist Richard Lichtheim went so far as to state that prior to 1914 he had never felt anti-Semitism. Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin noted that he had grown up “completely certain of himself and his resilience”; the feeling imbued by his grandmother's villa, which stood in a well-to-do suburb of Berlin, he described as “unforgettable sensations of an almost eternal bourgeoisie security”.
Against a backdrop of economic prosperity, technological progress and stable law and order, the number of Jewish entrepreneurs rose steadily, and they founded some of the new industries in Germany. Among the most famous ones must note banker Max Warburg, coal magnate Edward Arnhold, cotton magnate Jason Frank and “The Bismarck of the German electric industry”, Emil Rathenau, whose son, Walter, would one day serve as Foreign Minister in the Weimar regime.
At the same time, Jews were becoming increasingly detached from their traditions, which were replaced by modern patterns – whether the “Experiential Judaism” advocated by philosopher Martin Buber, or the Reform Judaism model founded in the mid-19th century. Jewish linguist Victor Klemperer told how right after his father was awarded the position of “deputy preacher” at the new Reform congregation in Berlin, his mother entered a non-kosher butcher's shop and bought “mixed sausages, a bit of each”. When they returned home the mother said, beaming: “This is what others eat. Now we can eat it too.”
Many Jews stopped circumcising their children or holding bar-mitzva ceremonies. More and more Jews became secular, and others chose to convert to improve their social standing. In 1918, for example, some 21% of the Jewish men in Germany converted to Christianity.

1914 | WW1 – More Catholic Than The Pope

The significant integration of the Jews in German life manifested in many ways, from admiration of German music and theater to joining in the patriotic wave that washed over Germany upon the outbreak of WW1 in 1914. Many of the Jews abandoned their cosmopolitan views and their traditional support of the socialist parties who stood for the brotherhood of nations, and exchanged them for a sentimental festival of nationalism.
Among the most zealous advocates for war, the Jewish intellectuals were most prominent. Hermann Cohen, the author of “Religion of Reason from the Sources of Judaism”, believed that the most sublime ideals would be realized as a result of this war. Stefan Zweig, an avowed pacifist who claimed that he would never touch a gun, not even at an entertainment booth at a country fair, waxed enthusiastic of “having the privilege of being alive at such a wonderful moment”. Felix Klemperer, a renowned brain surgeon, was surprised at his own excitement over “the splendor of war”, and Martin Buber extolled war, claiming it was a liberating cultural experience. These are but a few of the Jewish intellectuals who were swept away by German nationalist patriotism.
The only one who saw through the stupidity of war was Jewish industrialist Walter Rathenau. When he heard of the outbreak of WW1, “a terrible paleness spread over his face”. But despite his opposition to the war Rathenau enlisted in the patriotic effort and took the management of the national emergency economy upon himself.
Later on various historians would note that if not for Rathenau and the skilled officials working under him, Germany would have collapsed within a few months. 12,000 Jews fell in battle during the war, and over 7,000 were decorated for bravery – far beyond their share of the population.

1933 | The Weimar Illusion

The success of the 1918 revolution, which overthrew the corrupt monarchical regime in Germany, disproved Lenin's claim that German revolutionaries would never conquer a train station without first buying tickets.
Weimar, the city of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schiller, was chosen as the home of the new German republic, and the patriotic war slogans were replaced with fiery speeches calling for the establishment of a constitution based on the principles of human rights.
In the new republic the Jews finally won full equality not only in theory, but in practice as well. In a single moment the dam was broken, and a tidal wave of Jewish intellectuals flooded the fields of learning. The philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Ernst Cassirer, Max Reinhardt's theater and more are but a fraction of the immense Jewish contribution to European culture in those years.
But under the surface there were seething currents, drenched in anti-Semitic filth. The skyrocketing inflation, increased unemployment and the German pride, trampled underfoot by the Versailles peace agreements that ended WW1 were just as powerful, if not more so, than the illusion of Weimar enlightenment.
The last straw was the severe economic crisis that broke out in 1929, which caused many of the middle-class to join extreme right-wing parties. The Jews were accused of “stabbing the nation in the back” and one fine day they found themselves assigned to one of two groups – the “capitalist swine” or the “Bolshevik swine”.
In time historians would come to believe that the seeds of disaster from which the Nazi Party bloomed were planted back in the failed revolution of 1848. The culture of militarism, the racism, the defeat in WW1 and the dire economic crisis watered and fertilized it up to January 30th, 1933, when Adolph Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.

1939 | Twilight of Civilization

In 1933 the Nazi Party came to power and antisemitism took center stage. Hate had a sovereign, and he was determined and monstrous. The anti-Semitic snowball gathered more and more supporters and believers. Books written by Jews were burned at the university square in Berlin. In 1935 the racist Nuremberg Laws were passed and in 1938 the Night of Broken Glass, or Krystallnacht, took place – an organized pogrom against the Jews. The Holocaust was at the doorstep.
The old technology of the pogrom was updated to state of the art means of murder: The extermination camps. The town square calls to massacre the Jews were replaced by respectable committees whose members drafted official documents with a glass of fine wine at dessert. The old myths were replaced by sophisticated propaganda that equated Jews with insects, rodents, and other pests.
Many Jews believed that this was but another wave of anti-Semitism, soon to pass, but many others realized that this time it was something different, methodical, organized and massive, and began to pack in order to emigrate (see table of data on Jewish emigration from Germany between 1933-1939).
On May 19th, 1943, Germany was declared to be “Judenrein” (German for “Clean of Jews"). Most of those who survived were Jews with Gentile spouses and a handful of Jews who survived underground with the help of those Gentiles whose courage and moral rectitude earned them the title of “Righteous Among the Nations”.
The rise of the Nazis in Germany and the Holocaust of Europe's Jews spelled an end for one of the most fascinating and creative communities in the history of the Jewish People. From a persecuted tribe of shopkeepers, cattle traders and itinerant vendors the Jews became a flourishing community of writers, entrepreneurs, poets, musicians, scientists, publishers and political activists, who were in many regards the leaders of modern Europe. WW2 put an end to all that.

Emigration of Jews from Germany in the years 1933-1939

Destination No. of Immigrants
United States 63,000
Palestine 55,000
Great Britain 40,000
France 30,000
Argentina 25,000
Brazil 13,000
South Africa 5,500
Italy 5,000
Other countries in Europe 25,000
Other countries in South America 20,000
Far East countries 15,000
Other 8,000
Total 304,500


Early 21st Century

At the end of WW2 only a few dozen thousand Jews remained in Germany, some of them displaced Jews from other places and some German Jews who survived the war. Many insisted that their stay in the “cursed country” was but temporary, but in the early 1950's calls were heard for reconciliation with German society. The Jewish communities, headed by that of Berlin, were rebuilt, and in 1967 the number of registered members of the community stood at some 26,000 people.
Upon the disintegration of the Soviet Union the German government opened its gates to the Jews, and some 104,000 immigrated into it, mostly from Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic countries. As of the early 21st century, Germany is home to the third-largest Jewish community in Europe, with some 115,000 live there, of these some 10,000 are Israelis. The Jewish community of Germany consists of approximately 90 renewed Jewish congregations. Berlin is the largest, followed by Frankfurt and Munich.

Emden

A city in Lower Saxony, Germany. 

Emden is a seaport, and located on the Ems River.

HISTORY

Legend has it that Jews arrived in Emden during antiquity, both as exiles after the destruction of the First Temple, and as slaves accompanying the Roman legions after the destruction of the Second Temple. The first historical reference to Jews in Emden dates from the second half of the 16th century; David b. Shlomoh Gans mentions the Jews of Emden in his book Tzemach David.

In 1590 the non-Jewish citizens of Emden complained to the emperor’s local representative that the Jews were permitted to follow their religious precepts openly and were exempt from wearing the Jewish badge.

Marranos from Portugal passed through Emden on their way to Amsterdam; a few settled in Emden and returned to practicing Judaism. Moses Uri HaLevy (1594-1620), a rabbi in Emden, ultimately left to settle in Amsterdam along with the Spanish-Portuguese Marranos, where he served as the first chakham of the Portuguese community. Emden’s city council distinguished between the local Jews and the Portuguese, encouraging the latter to settle in the city, while attempting to expel the former. Their attempts, however, were unsuccessful, after the intervention of the duke in their favor. The judicial rights of the Portuguese Jews were defined in a grant of privilege issued by the city council in 1649,
and renewed in 1703.

In 1744, when Emden was annexed to Prussia, the Jews came under Prussian law. After this point, the Jews of Emden would go through cycles of gaining and losing rights. In 1762 anti-Jewish riots broke out in Emden. Then, in 1808, during the rule of Louis Bonaparte, the Jews in Emden were granted equal civil rights. However, these rights were abolished under Hanoverian rule in 1815, and the Jews of Emden were not emancipated until 1842.

A new synagogue was built in 1836; it was later expanded in 1910 to include a mikvah (ritual bath) and additional seating. A Jewish school was established in 1845, and a Talmud Torah was founded in 1896.

Noted rabbis of Emden included Jacob Emden (1728-1733), and Samson Raphael Hirsch (1841-1847).

In 1808 there were 500 Jews living in Emden. The community numbered 900 in 1905, and 1,000 in 1930.

 

THE HOLOCAUST

Many of Emden’s Jews left after the Nazi rise to power. In 1933 the community numbered 581, which decreased to 298 in 1939.

The synagogue was burned down during the Kristallnacht pogrom (November 9-10. 1938).

During World War II (1939-1945) most of the Jews remaining in Emden were deported. 110 Jews were deported from Emden to Lodz.

 

POSTWAR

There were six Jews living in Emden in 1967.

Seesen

Yiddish: סייסן (Seesen)

Town¹ and municipality in Lower Saxony, Germany.

21ST CENTURY

A liberal Jewish community was founded in 1997 in the town of Seesen. In 2005 it numbered 43 Jews. All the members were immigrants from the former Soviet Union. For communal purposes they use a room in the original Israel Jacobson school. The community is a member of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany.

A memorial stone commemorating the former Jewish community and its leader was unveiled in the town of Seesen.

This is where Israel Jacobson established a mixed school in 1801 with 40 Jewish and 20 Christian children which were educated together. The Jacobson school gained a “reputation far and wide and was in existence for 100 years. To this day you will still find the Jacobson school standing in the heart of little Seesen…the Nazis either did not know who Jacobson was or did not dare wipe his existence completely away… Today Seesen celebrates the history of the Jacobson school and attempts to celebrate the Jewish lives that once thrived there.”

“Reform Judaism was launched on… [17 July] in 1810 with the opening of the first Reform “temple” in Seesen, Germany.” This was a further activity of Israel Jacobson from Seesen, a philanthropist and learned Jew. He wanted to ensure Judaism would survive on the backdrop of the French Revolution (1789-1799) and the Enlightenment (17th and 18th centuries), at a time when conversion to Christianity swept Western Europe’s Jewish life. Half a century later Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise brought Reform Judaism to the USA and in time it became the dominant stream in the country.

The Reform movement born in Seesen is also discussed in Gender, Judaism, and Bourgeois Culture in Germany, 1800–1870 by Benjamin Maria Baader, published by Indiana University Press, 2006 (pg. 44). The July 1810 inauguration of Germany’s first Jewish Reform temple in Seesen catered only to men, as well as the adjacent school, which was only for boys. The dedication ceremony was set on a political background of great symbolic value rather than as a communal festivity. “The purpose of the dedication ceremony of the Seesen temple was to evince the dignity of the country’s Jewish citizens and the worthiness of the Jewish religion in light of the emancipation that the Jews of Westphalia had gained in the Napoleonic kingdom”.

“Three years earlier in the newly established Kingdom of Westphalia, the French ruler Jerome Bonaparte had granted his Jewish subjects full civil equality and religious freedom… Jacobson was deeply committed to the politial and cultural integration of German Jewry and wished to adapt the Jewish religion to contemporary sensibilities. As president of the [Jewish] consistory, he was able to play a leading role in the Jewish Reform movement that had begun to take shape. After the demise of the Kingdom of Westphalia Jacobson relocated to Berlin and spearheaded the reform of Jewish worship in the Prussian capital… The construction of the Reform temple in Seesen…was in itself a statement of how emancipated Jews worshiped.”

“What may strike us at first is the proximity of the seventeenth to the fourteenth of July, the day commemorated for the storming of the Bastille. And indeed the dedication ceremony of the Seesen Temple bore the imprint of the ideals of the Enlightenment and the political changes that had occurred in the wake of the French Revolution.” thus in the words of Klaus Herrmann “Translating Cultures and Texts in Reform Judaism: The Philippson Bible” in Jewish Studies Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2007), p. 164

Israel Jacobson was a follower of Moses Mendelsohn (1729-1786) and his philosophy of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). This is described in Jews and the Renaissance of Synagogue Architecture, 1450-1730 by Barry L. Stiefel, published by Taylor & Francis in 2016

The Savannah Jewish News (2010) writes about the two centenial (July 17, 1810) unfolding milestone in Seesen: in the presence of the mayors of Berlin and Seesen, a plaque was dedicated on the site of Israel Jacobson’s Berlin residence, the first location where Berlin’s Reform services were held. The two politicians eloquently paid tribute. Historic pride was too expressed in Seesen itself proclaimed on billboards and banners. While the original 1810 Temple was destroyed on Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), at the location of the 1810 Temple the Mayor, other civic and religious men and women along with Seesen citizens came together and partook in a deeply moving ceremony. Newspaper passages from the year 1810 were read out sharing the events that had taken place 200 years earlier at that exact location.

Israel Jacobson the nominal Reform Judaism father is also credited with the creation of the Confirmation ceremony. “Confirmation is a Reform-originated ceremony for boys and girls that is tied to the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. It constitutes an individual and group affirmation of commitment to the Jewish people… In 1831, Rabbi Samuel Egers of Brunswick, Germany, determined to hold confirmation on Shavuot, the festival of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, also the widely accepted practice today…”.

An entry about Jewish Seesen features in the book Platforms and Prayer Books: Theological and Liturgical Perspectives on Reform Judaism by Dana Evan Rabbi Kaplan (Author), Ellen Umansky (Foreword), Judith Z. Abrams (Contributor), published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers in 2002 (p. 237).

The Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art has several items about Jewish Seesen in their catalogue. The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem also has documents refering to Jewish Seesen.

 

HISTORY   

The first Jewish presence in Seesen was in the 15th century CE. Throughout its history, the Jewish community of Seesen was small, its numbers barely topping 200. In 1801, the financier and Court Jew Israel Jacobson founded and richly endowed the Jacobson Schule in Seesen as a means of implementing his humanistic and reform ideals. Modern subjects and vocational instruction were emphasized. The school began to accept Christian pupils in 1805 and later in the 19th century, lost its Jewish character.

In 1810, the Seesen synagogue (the controversial Jacobsontempel), featuring for the first time in Germany an organ, choir, and sermons in German, was consecrated as an offshoot of the school.

The Jewish community established a cemetery on Dehnestrasse in 1805; a mikveh in 1827; and a separate school for religious studies — the teacher also served as the shochet and chazzan — in 1819. Several Jewish associations (including a branch of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith) were active in the community.

In 1852, a nonsectarian orphanage was founded by Jacobson's son, Mayer. It was closed in 1923 and reopened in 1929 as a Jewish youth sanatorium.

There were 54 Jews in Seesen in 1819; and 178 in 1871. In 1895, when this Jewish community recorded its peak population figure (209), most Seesen Jews were cattle traders, textile merchants and butchers.

In 1933, when Jewish teachers and pupils were expelled from the school and its foundation funds confiscated, only 44 Jews lived in Seesen, of whom 60% subsequently left the town.

The orphanage and, later, the cemetery were sold.

 

HOLOCAUST

During the Pogrom Night (Nov 9, 1938 – Nov 10, 1938), the synagogue and a Jewish-owned department store were burned down; Jewish homes were searched by members of the SS. Male Jews were arrested, and the head of the community was killed.

In 1944, the state appropriated the synagogue site. At least ten Jews from Seesen died in the Holocaust (1939-1945).

 

POST-WAR

Between 60 and 80 Jewish displaced persons lived in Seesen after the war, and the re-established Jewish community was compensated for the loss of the synagogue. However, by 1952, only nine Jews remained in the town.

 

¹ Population numbers refer to the town and not the district of Seesen

Wolfenbuettel

Wolfenbüttel 

A town and capital of Wolfenbüttel District in lower Saxony, Germany.

Between the world wars it was in Freistaat Braunschweig, and in the years 1954-1990 in Western Germany.

There was a small Jewish community in Wolfenbuettel during the 18th century. It became known in the Jewish world thanks to the educational institution that has existed for 140 years or more. In 1781 a synagogue was erected to replace the prayer room that had previously been in use. After a new synagogue was dedicated in 1893 the old one was used as a private dwelling. A cemetery was acquired by the community in 1724 (it was desecrated in 1938). The small community is mainly known for the Jewish school that was established in the town. In 1786 Philip Samson and his brother Herz, landrabbiner and court Jew of the Duke of Brunswick, founded a Bet-Midrash for poor boys, under the directorship of Philip, where four to five hours a week were set aside for secular studies (German, arithmetic, etc.). Ten years later another school was founded, endowed by Herz's widow. In 1806-1807, under the influence of Israel Jacobson, the schools amalgamated, and revolutionized their curriculum. Less emphasis was given to Talmudic studies, which were eventually replaced by catechism. The innovations were carried out by one of the first pupils, S.M. Ehrenburg, who conducted the earliest confirmation ceremony in 1807.

The first to be confirmed was Leopold Zunz, who taught in the school for five years; his contemporary at school was the historian I.M. Jost. Attendance at the Samsonsche Freischule grew from about a dozen pupils in the late 18th century to 150-200 a century later, when it had become a recognized Real Gynmasium (high school). It included a hostel. French and English were taught, and Jewish studies included bible with Mendelssohn's translation, Jewish laws and customs, and a little Jewish history. The trend was that of liberal Judaism. The school was closed on Sabbaths and open on Sundays. In 1928 it was closed following the post-World War I inflation.

The following Jewish organizations were active in Wolfenbuettel in 1933: a sisterhood, a chevra kadisha, a welfare organization, a branch of the German Zionist organization and a branch of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith. During the years 1933 to 1939, more than half the Jewish population left Wolfenbuettel. According to sources, eight local Jews immigrated to South America, five to Palestine, five to the United States, four to England and four to the Netherlands. On Pogrom Night (Nov. 9, 1938), rioters burned down Wolfenbuettel’s new synagogue. Sixty Jews lived in Wolfenbuettel in 1939, a number that had dropped to 48 by August of that year. Later, in February of 1941, 52 Jews lived in the town, many of whom were deported, via Braunschweig, to Warsaw on March 31, 1942. The remaining Jews were deported to Auschwitz on July 11, 1942 or on March 16, 1943. At least 52 Wolfenbuettel Jews perished in the Shoah. In 1986, the citizens of Wolfenbuettel prevented the new owner of the older synagogue from renovating the building for his own purposes.

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This entry contains materials that were originally published on Beit Ashkenaz - Destroyed German Synagogues and Communities website and contributed to the Database of the Museum of the Jewish People courtesy of Beit Ashkenaz. 

Esens

A town  in the district of Wittmund, in Lower Saxony, Germany.

The first letter of safe conduct, which guaranteed the Jews of Esens the rights of settlement and trade, was issued in 1645. The Jewish community grew steadily from eight families in 1690 to 70 persons in 1708 and 117 in 1828. Until 1871 the community of Esens also included the Jews from Westeraccumersiel among its members. When they left the community, the number decreased to 89 and remained quite stable over the following years. A synagogue was first mentioned in 1680. A new synagogue and school was built in 1827. The school had to close down in 1927 because there were not sufficient pupils among the 76 Jews living in Esens.

The majority of the Jews in Esens made their living in livestock trade, retail trading, and as merchants of textiles or as butchers.

In 1939 the Jewish community numbered 30 people.

The Holocaust Period

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, local members of SS started to discriminate against their Jewish neighbors. On P:ogrom Night (November 9, 1938) the SA burned down the synagogue and deported all the Jewish men to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Some of them returned and succeeded to leave to other countries. When in 1940 the entire east Frisia's Jewish population was deported, the Jewish community of Esens ceased to exist.

Celle

A town and capital of the district of Celle, in Lower Saxony, Germany.

First Jewish presence: late 17th century; peak Jewish population: approximately 100 in the late 19th century; Jewish population in 1933: approximately

Members of the Jewish community of Celle included court Jews, merchants, manufacturers, physicians, lawyers, bankers and department store owners. The Jewish community consecrated a cemetery on Am Berge in 1692. In 1740, prayer rooms were replaced by a synagogue on Im Kreise (enlarged in 1883). The community maintained a Jewish school— established in 1832 and presided over by teachers who at times served as cantors and ritual slaughterers—a choir, a charitable association and a sick fund.

On Pogrom Night (Nov. 9, 1938), Jewish-owned homes and businesses were vandalized, Jews were publicly abused and Jewish men were deported to Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp. The synagogue’s interior was destroyed, and ritual objects and Torah scrolls were thrown onto the street. By October 1939, only 15 Jews lived in Celle. Beginning in 1942, the remaining Jews were forced to live in the school house, awaiting their deportation to the concentration camps. In 1945, an Allied attack on Celle’s railroad allowed concentration camp prisoners to escape. Hunted down by the SS and local residents, thousands were killed. At least 12 Celle Jews died during the Shoah.

The synagogue, one of the oldest frame houses in Lower Saxony, was renovated by the town in 1974. It not only bears a memorial plaque, but has, since 1997, been used by Celle’s new Jewish community.

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This entry was originally published on Beit Ashkenaz - Destroyed German Synagogues and Communities website and contributed to the Database of the Museum of the Jewish People courtesy of Beit Ashkenaz.

Bremke

A village in the Gemeinde Gleichen in Lower Saxony, Germany.

First Jewish presence: 1727; peak Jewish population: 159 in 1852 (16.7% of the total population); Jewish population in 1933: 26

The Jews of Gelliehausen and Woellmarshausen were affiliated with the Jewish community of Bremke in 1853 and 1877, respectively. In 1828, a Gentile resident of Bremke built a synagogue on his property (42 Heiligenstaedterstrasse); the Jewish community financed the construction and afterwards paid monthly rent. A mikveh was built in another rented building in 1845, by which point Bremke was home to a Jewish elementary school whose teacher performed the duties of chazzan and shochet. After the school closed in 1914, children studied religion with a teacher from Heiligenstadt and later with one from Goettingen. The Jews of Bremke established two cemeteries—one in the 18th century (enlarged in 1800), the other in 1844. (There was also a cemetery in Woellmarshausen.) Eleven schoolchildren received religious instruction in 1933. Nazis repeatedly attacked the synagogue, in response to which, in 1934, services were moved to a private residence. Jewish-owned businesses were plundered in 1937. On Pogrom Night (Nov. 9, 1938), Jewish-owned stores were looted and destroyed; the synagogue and its ritual objects were burned. Later, in the fall of 1939, Bremke’s last six Jews left the area, as did the remaining four Jews in Gelliehausen. At least 22 Bremke Jews and seven from Gelliehausen perished in the Shoah. The old cemetery was sold in 1941, the new one in 1944.

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This entry was originally published on Beit Ashkenaz - Destroyed German Synagogues and Communities website and contributed to the Database of the Museum of the Jewish People courtesy of Beit Ashkenaz.

Einbeck

Town in Lower Saxony (formerly in Hanover), Germany.

Several Jews were burned there at the stake about the year 1298. A Jewish street and synagogue in Einbeck are first mentioned in 1355. An "old" Jewish cemetery is referred to in 1454. The Jews were expelled from Einbeck around 1579 at the instance of a pastor, Johann Velius. They made several attempts to return, and are again mentioned in Einbeck in 1667. They were granted letters of protection in 1673 and 1678, and although these were opposed by the local inhabitants the duke refused to withdraw them. In 1718 the elector of Hanover, George I of England, restricted further Jewish settlement in Einbeck and few Jews were authorized to reside there in the 18th century.

The number of Jewish families increased from nine in 1806-1813 to 16 in 1816, and 139 persons in 1880 (2.04% of the total population). A new synagogue was dedicated in 1896. It was destroyed by the Nazis in 1938. Only 58 Jews remained in Einbeck in 1932, and nine in 1939. Only one survived the war. In 1968 there were two Jewish residents.

Göttingen 

City in Niedersachsen, Germany.

Jews are first mentioned there in the 13th century. The community, composed of a dozen families, had a synagogue and paid 4 1/2% of the city's taxes. It was destroyed in 1350 during the Black Death persecutions, but in 1370 a charter giving protection to the Jews of the city was re-endorsed. In 1591 the Jews were expelled from Goettingen. Several resettled in the city at the end of the 17th century, and in 1718 Jews were given permission to acquire real property. In the university quarter their numbers were limited to three families. Some Hebrew printing took place in Goettingen. Abraham Jagel's "Lekach Tov" was published there in 1742, and Hebrew type was also used in a. G. Wachner's "Antiquitates Hebraeorum" (1742-1743). The community numbered 43 in 1833, 265 in 1871, 661 (1.75% of the total population) in 1910, 411 in 1932, and 173 in 1939.

In 1859 there was appointed at Goettingen University the first Jew to become a professor in a German university, the mathematician Moritz Abraham Stern. The university was noted for its biblical scholars, most of whom were champions of the documentary hypothesis, from J. G. Eichhorn and g. H. A. Ewald to Paul de Lagarde and Julius Wellhausen. When James Franck, the Nobel prizewinner, resigned his chair in 1933, a number of professors demanded that he be tried for sabotage; six other Jewish professors were put on compulsory leave, among them the mathematicians Otto Neugebauer and Richard Courant, as well as Nikolaus Pevsner, and Eugen Caspary.

Most of the Jews remaining in Goettingen after the outbreak of World War II were deported to Theresienstadt in 1942. Another 150 were deported, including those who have sought refuge in other localities, but Jews of East-European origin (ostjuden) were deported to the ghetto of Warsaw. By October 20 of that year only nine remained. The synagogue burned down on Kristallnacht. 267 local Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust

There were 26 Jews living in Goettingen in 1965, bolstered in the 1990s by immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Hannover

A city and the capital and largest city of the state of Lower Saxony, Germany.

21^ST CENTURY

Hanover is home to three synagogues, two Reform, Synagogue Etz Chaim and Liberale Judische Gemeinde; and one traditional, Hanover Synagogue. The European Center for Jewish Music is also located in Hanover.

The Jewish community has approximately 3,000 members and has continued to grow through the 21^st century.

HISTORY

Sources dating from 1292 note the presence of Jews in Hanover's old city (Altstadt). Because this period was one in which the city expanded significantly, Jewish moneylenders were welcomed and promised protection by the city council; indeed, a municipal law from 1303 prohibited anyone from mistreating the city’s Jews "by word or deed.” By 1340 the Jewish community was also granted permission to practice kosher butchery.

Nonetheless, during the period of anti-Jewish violence that broke out against Jews throughout Europe in the wake of the Black Death (1348-1349), the Jews were expelled from the city. Between 1369 and 1371 only one Jew lived in Hanover until he, too, was expelled by the council. It was only in 1375 that the dukes who were in charge of the city granted the city the ability to readmit Jews and levy taxes on them. By 1540 there were three Jewish families living in the old city, and five in the new. The growing community also maintained a synagogue and a rabbi.

Although the Jews were permitted to resettle in Hanover, they were still, however, subject to a number of discriminatory rules. Since 1451 they were required to wear a badge that signified that they were Jewish. Additionally, beginning in 1553 the Jews were forced to listed to the court minister Urbanus Rhegius preach in their synagogue.  In fact, between 1553 and 1601 the city’s dukes issued six orders of expulsion against the Jews, but they were either revoked or not carried out; for a long time the Jews were also not allowed to live in the old city. In addition, in 1588 the council forbade all business connections with Jews. The process of community growth alongside persecution continued during the 17^th century. In 1608 the six Jewish families living in the new city opened a synagogue. That synagogue was destroyed, however, in 1613 by the city’s residents.

There was progress however, and community growth, particularly during the 18^th century. The dukes allowed several wealthy Jews to live in the new city. The court Jew, Leffmann Behrens, established a synagogue in his home in 1704, and advocated for a rabbinate to be founded in the Duchy of Hanover. In 1710 there were seven Jewish families living in the city, but as the century went on, through the 19^th century, the Jewish population increased considerably, reaching 537 in 1833.

Hanover became an important center of Jewish learning, as well as the home of several important Jewish figures from the world of finance. The community built a larger synagogue in 1870, which was subsequently expanded in 1900. Hanover became a center for Hebrew printing; among the significant works published in Hanover’s Hebrew press was Jacob B. Asher’s (also known as the Ba’al HaTurim) commentary on the Torha. The Hebraist Solomon Frensdorff led a teacher’s seminary between 1848 and 1880. Another school that functioned in the city between 1893 and 1942 focused on teaching gardening, in particular growing fruits and vegetables.

Prominent rabbis who were active in Hanover included Nathan Adler (1831-1845) and Selig Gronemann (1844-1918).

The Jewish population grew significantly between the 19^th and 20^th centuries. In 1861 Hanover’s Jews numbered 1,120 (1.9% of the total population). By 1880 that number had grown to 3,450 (2.8% of the total). In 1910 the number of Jews living in Hanover was 5,130 (1.7%). During the interwar period, however, the population began to decline, mostly due to immigration; the rate of immigration increased significantly, however, after the Nazi rise to power in 1933. In 1933 Hanover’s Jewish population was 4,839 (1.1%). By 1939 it had dropped to 2,271 (0.5%). Nonetheless, on the eve of World War II (1939-1945) Hanover was home to one of the ten largest Jewish communities in Germany, with over 20 active cultural and welfare institutions.

THE HOLOCAUST

Hanover’s Jewish community, like Jewish communities throughout Germany, were targeted for persecution after the Nazi’s took power. In response, the community intensified its Jewish educational programming, with a particular focus on the youth organizations, and prepared residents for immigration.

The destruction of the community began in earnest in 1938 when the synagogues were destroyed and Jews terrorized. Later, between 1941 and 1945 approximately 2,900 Jews were deported from Hanover to concentration camps.

POSTWAR

After the war 66 survivors from the prewar community returned to the city. Together with survivors from other areas who decided to settle in Hanover, they helped reestablish Hanover’s Jewish community. By 1966 there were 450 Jews living in the city (0.03% of the total population). A new synagogue opened in 1963.