Jewish Traces in Franconia

Since the end of the 30 Years War Jewish communities in Franconia could exist - with exceptions - in relatively peace. The 17th and 18th Centuries saw a spread and blooming of rural Jewish Communities with all characteristics of Jewish life: Beadhouses, Synagogues, Talmud Schools, Kosher Butchers, Jewish Graveyards and Tahara Houses. The Age of Enlightment, the reforms of Bavarian Minister Count Montgelas and later the German Union under Bismarck brought the Franconian Jews gradually equality. At the end of the 19th Century there was hardly a city without a Jewish community. They thanked their homeland for their equality in sacrificing their own youth on the battlefields of World War One with the other Germans. The long and fruitful history of Franconia's Jews ended in the Third Reich with it's racial laws, deprivation of rights, pogroms and mass-extermination. Those who weren't killed imigrated to the Americas or Palestine. Only a few returned to build up and democratisize a ruined country.
Now, almost 70 years after World War Two and the Shoa, urban Jewish Communities recovered, also with Jewish imigrants from former USSR, while only graveyards and secularized buildings remained of the rural ones.

I had to select what pictures and places to use for this video since there is an unbelieveable abundance of Jewish places and traces. It is enough material for two or three videos about Jews in Franconia.

Those who are interested in further informations about this subject can klick on the link below which was my main source. It is part English and part German.

http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/index.htm

Other sources were the books "Judenfrei" by Jim G. Tobias and "Juden in Nürnberg" by Liane Zettl.

Music: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra E-Minor Op. 64, first movement by Felix Mendelssohn
Maestro: Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Jewish
• Traces
• in
• Franconia
• Erlangen
• Bruck
• Ansbach
• Synagogue
• synagoge
• aschbach
• aufsess
• schnaittach
• schwabach
• roth
• buttenheim
• fürth
• furht
• tahara
• haus
• house
• israelite
• school
• talmud
• torah
• shoa
• holocaust
• nürnberg
• nuremberg
• race
• law
• rabbi
• kosher
• butcher
• koscherer
• metzger
• ellingen
• bamberg
• jew
• judentum
• judaismus
• judaism
• hitler
• nazi
• israel
• palestine

[72Yonatan]

Beautifully made and crafted with much effort and collected materials. Did you take most of these photos yourself? I approve of the musical score used here.

Thank you for your kindness in allowing those of us who do not live in Europe to have an eye into the Jewish past inside Germany.

[DrGull1888]

@72Yonatan Thanks a lot for your gentle comment.

No, I didn't take these pictures, I pinched them from the link at my videos description. I found the music suitable, too. There goes nothing about early German Romanticism.

Franconia had indeed a rich Jewish past. I myself couldn't believe the abundance of Jewish places and buildings. Even Fürth, the city where I work, was called "Franconia's Jerusalem".

[DeutscherFilmer3]

Super Video!

Echt traurig wie viel von den Nazis zerstört wurde. :-(

In Hof gibt es noch eine jüdische Gemeinde und einen jüdischen Friedhof, allerdings weiß ich nicht ob es beides schon vor dem Krieg gab. Den Friedhof meines Wissens schon; wenn ich mich recht an meine FA-Recherche erinnere wurden dort auch Opfer des Todesmarsches von Helmbrechts nach Volary bestattet.

Bin schon gespannt auf dein Video über jüdische Deutsche zur Kaiserzeit. ;-)

[DrGull1888]

@DeutscherFilmer3 Vielen Dank für das Lob. Jaja, es ist schon eine Schande, vor allem nachdem deutsche Juden auch im Ersten Weltkrieg für Kaiser und Vaterland gestorben sind.

Der Jüdische Friedhof in Hof wurde glaube ich vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg angelegt.

Das mit den prominenten Juden zur Kaiserzeit dauert noch ein wenig, da ich momentan zwei andere Videos in Arbeit habe.

[matamuelas]

Very good one Dr. It's amazing how many buldings and specially graveyards escaped from destruction and even any harm during the Nazism years.

When watching the memorial plates for WWI german-jewish soldiers fallen for Germany and the Kaiser makes my wonder the status of Jews in the XIX and early XX centuries under Kaiser Wilhem. And how had been they not destroyed during Hitler's regime, specially when being a good argument against racism?

[DrGull1888]

@matamuelas But on the other hand Wilhelm was deeply disgusted by the pogrom of 1938 and demanded the army to end the Nazi haunting.

And thanks for the compliments.

[Lagolop]

@72Yonatan

Told you, you'd enjoy this one : )

Well done eh?

[DrGull1888]

@matamuelas Wilhelm personally had a mutual relationship to German Jews. He kept an antisemitic court chaplain but he also cultivated friendship to prominent Jews like shipowner Albert Ballin. When conservative circles wanted to count all Jewish soldiers in order to defame the Jews as quitters Wilhelm personally objected against this task. In exile of course he scapegoated the Jews for his demise. There are very bitter and inhuman quotes by him.

[DrGull1888]

@matamuelas The Jews under Wilhelm II. are indeed an interesting subject. One day I want to make a video about three popular German Jews of this period. In Wilhelminian Germany was as much envy and antisemitism towards Jewish fast climbers as in France (think of Dreyfus affair) or England (think of D'Israeli carricatures) but also as much tolerance as in the surrounding countries. Hence the German Jews sacrificed their youth in World War One.

[DrGull1888]

@matamuelas As for the graveyards, yes there are many left. I don't know why the Nazis didn't degrade them completely but they certainly tried to with some. You certainly recognized the damage. The graves you see at 00:40 stand alone on a meadow, the graves around were removed. Or look at the few gravestones around 06:26.

[DrGull1888]

@matamuelas Many buildings survived because they were given a secular purpose like being a barn, bewery or garage. The synagogue in Ansbach was abased but not nurned down because they feared the fire might spread to the neighbbourhoods. Nuremberg had two synagoges, one in our medieval downtown and one close to our opera and both were burned down and the ruins degraded.