Meisenheim


Meisenheim is a town in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the like-named Verbandsgemeinde, and is also its seat. Meisenheim is a state-recognized recreational resort and it is set out as a middle centre in state planning.

Geography

Location

Meisenheim lies in the valley of the River Glan at the northern edge of the North Palatine Uplands. The municipal area measures 1,324 ha.

Neighbouring municipalities

Clockwise from the north, Meisenheim's neighbours are Raumbach, Rehborn, Callbach, Reiffelbach, Odenbach, Breitenheim and Desloch, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district, except for Odenbach, which lies in the neighbouring Kusel district.

Constituent communities

Also belonging to Meisenheim are the outlying homesteads of Hof Wieseck, Keddarterhof and Röther Hof.

History

Meisenheim is believed to have arisen in the 7th century AD, and its name is often derived from the town's hypothetical founder "Meiso". In 1154, Meisenheim had its first documentary mention. Sometimes cited as such, however, is a document dated 14 June 891 from the West Frankish king Odo pp. 164–279, within which p. 164, and by W. Dotzauer in Geschichte des Nahe-Hunsrück-Raumes, but this document is falsified. In the 12th century, Meisenheim was raised to the main seat of the Counts of Veldenz and in 1315 it was granted town rights by King Ludwig IV. On what is now known as Schlossplatz, the Counts of Veldenz built a castle, bearing witness to which today are only two buildings that were later built, the Schloss Magdalenenbau and above all the Schlosskirche, building work on which began in 1479. Both buildings were built only after the Counts of Veldenz had died out in 1444 and the county had been inherited by the Dukes of Palatine Zweibrücken. This noble house, too, at first kept their seat at Meisenheim, but soon moved it to Zweibrücken. From 1538 to 1571, Duke Wolfgang of Zweibrücken maintained in Meisenheim a mint, with one interruption, although this was then moved to Bergzabern. The Doppeltaler, Taler and Halbtaler coins minted in the time when the mint was in Meisenheim remain among the highest-quality mintings from Palatinate-Zweibrücken.
In 1799, Duke of Zweibrücken Maximilian IV inherited the long united lands of the Electorate of Bavaria and the Electorate of the Palatinate. While these three states were now de jure in personal union, this did not shift the power structures on the ground at all, for Palatinate-Zweibrücken had already been occupied by French Revolutionary troops along with the other left-bank territories. After the end of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in 1815, the Congress of Vienna assigned the part of Palatinate-Zweibrücken lying north of the Glan, including Meisenheim, to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg rather than Maximilian's Kingdom of Bavaria. From 1816 onwards, Meisenheim was the administrative seat of the Amt of Meisenheim and an Schultheiß. In 1866 the Grand Duchy of Hesse inherited Hesse-Homburg but had to cede its territory to the Kingdom of Prussia later that same year following its defeat in the Austro-Prussian War. The town of Meisenheim itself was not wholly reunited until after the Second World War when state of Rhineland-Palatinate was founded. Until then, the lands just across the Glan had been Bavarian since the Congress of Vienna.

Jewish history

Meisenheim had a Jewish community possibly even as far back as the Middle Ages, after it was granted town rights in 1315. The first documentary mention of a Jew, however, did not come until 1551 when a "Jud Moses" cropped up in the record. He was selling a house on Schweinsgasse. In 1569, the Jews were turned out of the town. After the Thirty Years' War, two Jewish families were allowed to live in the town. In 1740, the number of Jewish families was still supposed to be kept down to four, but this rule was often not upheld. The reasons given for these restrictions were mainly economic.
...Fourteenthly, no more than four Jewish families should live and be tolerated in the local town; this rose under High Prince Gustav's state government to 7 such,...which has not only caused the local grocers through the constant hawking and the butchers through shechita great harm and loss of sustinence, but also has already put many citizens and peasants to ruination, and furthermore still means that the little protection money that Your High-Princely Serene Highness draws from these people by far does not offset this harm, whereby Your High-Princely Serene Highness harms his truest subjects. If a few provisions have been indulged-in as a result of the hawking and shechita, bizarrely the butchers' guild article, then these Jews, as a dogged and naughty people, are not troubled by them, but rather begin their abuses anew after some time has gone by; we therefore ask, most humbly, that Your High-Princely Serene Highness most kindly deign to reduce the Jews here, to the citizenry's greatest consolation, back to 4, by strengthening the provisions for the forbidden hawking and the butchers' guild article for excessive shechita.
Following the 1740 decree, the Jews moved to nearby villages, still keeping themselves near the "market", which to them was a matter of survival, and which was of course also necessary for economic growth. The "grocers" and above all the butchers could thus not be wholly free of their competition, especially as the government knew enough to prize good taxpayers. This shift also applied across borders, and thus not only to the villages belonging to the canton of Meisenheim, but also to the bordering Palatine villages such as Odenbach. A more thorough analysis of this shift of town and country Jews appears in W. Kemp's review, and this work also contains a taxation roll of Jews in the canton of Meisenheim, showing the tax burdens borne by Jews living in the outlying villages of Medard, Breitenheim, Schweinschied, Löllbach, Merxheim, Bärweiler, Meddersheim, Staudernheim and Hundsbach. The modern Jewish community arose in the 18th century, According to a report from 1860, the oldest readable gravestone then at the Meisenheim graveyard bore the date 1725. Thus presumably Jews were then still allowed to live in the town. In the time of the French Revolution, there were fewer Jewish families, among whom was a butcher who was allowed to ply his trade in town. About 1800, it is clear that several families fled to the town to escape Johannes Bückler's crime wave. In the earlier half of the 19th century, the number of Jewish inhabitants grew sharply, mostly because of the arrival of newcomers from Jewish villages in the Hunsrück area. The number of Jewish inhabitants developed as follows: in 1808, there were 161; in 1860, 260; in 1864, 198 ; in 1871, 160 ; in 1885, 120 ; in 1895, 87 ; in 1902, 89. Also belonging to the Breitenheim Jewish community were the Jews living in Breitenheim. In 1924 they numbered two. In the way of institutions, there were a synagogue, a Jewish primary and religious school, a mikveh and a graveyard. To provide for the community's religious needs, a primary and religious schoolteacher, alongside the rabbi, was hired, who also busied himself as the hazzan and the shochet. For a time, the hazzan's position was separate from the schoolteacher's. In the 19th century, a man named Benjamin Unrich worked as primary schoolteacher from 1837 to 1887 – 50 years. In 1830, he taught 32 children, in 1845, 46 and in 1882, 21. At either Unrich's retirement or his death in 1890, the Jewish primary school was closed, and thereafter Jewish schoolchildren attended the Evangelical school, while receiving religious instruction at the Jewish religious school. 1875 to 1909, the community's hazzan and religion teacher was Heyman de Beer. The last religion teacher, from 1924 to 1928, was Julius Voos. In 1924, he taught 15 children, but by 1928, this had shrunk to 7. After he left, the few school-age Jewish children left were taught by the schoolteacher from Sobernheim. Meisenheim was in the 19th century the seat of a rabbinate, with the rabbi bearing the title Landesrabbiner of the Amt of Meisenheim in Hesse-Homburg times and Kreisrabbiner in Prussian times. Serving as rabbi were the following:
TenureNameBirthDeathEducationRemarks
????–1835Isaac Hirsch Unrich???Presumably Meisenheim's first rabbi
1835–1845––––Post vacant for lack of funds
1845–1861Baruch Hirsch Flehinger1809 in Flehingen1890after 1825 Mannheim Yeshiva, 1830–1833 University of Heidelberg1845–1861 State Rabbi in Meisenheim, thereafter in Merchingen; also responsible from 1870 for Tauberbischofsheim rabbinical region
1861–1869Lasar Latzar1822 in Galicia1869 in Meisenheim?~1856 regional rabbi in Kikinda, Vojvodina; lost job in 1860 to Magyarization of school and worship
1870–1879Dr. Israel Mayer 1845 in Müllheim, Baden1898 in Zweibrücken1865–1871 Jewish Theological Seminary in BreslauQuit after 1873 cut in rabbinical salary subsidy; office transferred in 1877 to hazzan; went to new rabbinical post in Zweibrücken in 1879
1879–1882Dr. Salomon Fried1847 in Ó-Gyalla, Hungary1906 in Ulm1871–1879 University and Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau1870 District Rabbi in Meisenheim, Rabbi in Bernburg, Ratibor and Ulm
1882–1883Dr. Moritz Janowitz1850 in Eisenstadt, Hungary1919 in Berlin1871–1878 University and Jewish Theological Seminary in BreslauRabbi in Písek, Bohemia, Meisenheim, thereafter in Dirschau, West Prussia, rabbi and head of Ahawas Thora synagogue association's religion school in Berlin

One member of Meisenheim's Jewish community fell in the First World War, Leo Sender. Also lost in the Great War was Alfred Moritz, but he had moved to Kirn by 1914. About 1924, when there were still 55 members of the Jewish community, the community's leaders were Moritz Rosenberg, Simon Schlachter, Albert Kaufmann and Hermann Levy. The representatives were Louis Strauß, Levi Bloch, Albert Cahn and Siegmund Cahn. Employed as schoolteacher was Julius Voos. He taught at the community's religion school and taught Jewish religion at the public schools. In 1932, the community's leaders were Moritz Rosenberg, Simon Schlachter and Felix Kaufmann. The community had since found itself without a schoolteacher. Instruction was then being given the Jewish schoolchildren by Felix Moses from Sobernheim. Worthy of mention among the then still active Jewish clubs is the Jewish Women's Club, which concerned itself with supporting the poor. In 1932 its chairwoman was Mrs. Schlachter.
In 1933, the year when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seized power, there were still 38 Jews living in 13 families in Meisenheim. Thereafter, though, some of the Jews moved away or even emigrated in the face of the progressive stripping of their rights and repression, all brought about by the Nazis. Already by that year, intimidating measures were being undertaken: Shochet's knives were being seized by Brownshirt and Der Stahlhelm thugs. Several well known Jewish businessmen were taken into so-called "protective custody". Jewish businesses were "Aryanized", the last ones in June 1938. On Kristallnacht, the synagogue sustained substantial damage, and worse, the Jewish men who were still in town were arrested. With the deportation of the last Jews living in Meisenheim to the South of France in October 1940, the Meisenheim Jewish community's history came to an end. According to the Gedenkbuch – Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933-1945 and Yad Vashem, as compared against other data, critically examined and completed by Wolfgang Kemp, of all Jews who either were born in Meisenheim or lived there for a long time, 44 were killed during Nazi persecution :
  1. Ferdinand Altschüler
  2. Thekla Bär née Fränkel
  3. Hedwig de Beer
  4. Klara de Beer
  5. Cäcilia de Beer
  6. Sigmund Cahn
  7. Ida Cahn née Kaufmann, Sigmund's wife
  8. Adolf David
  9. Julius David
  10. Leo Fränkel
  11. Julius Fränkel
  12. Karl Josef Fränkel
  13. Pauline Goldmann, née Fränkel
  14. Frieda Hamburger, née Schlachter
  15. Willy Hamburger, Sohn von Frieda
  16. Albert Löb
  17. Flora Löb née de Beer
  18. Julius Maas
  19. Martha Mayer née Fränkel
  20. Georg Meyer
  21. Selma Meyer, née Schlachter, Georg's wife, Simon's and Elise's daughter
  22. Johanna Nathan née Strauss
  23. Moritz Rosenberg
  24. Auguste Rosenberg née Stern, Moritz's wife
  25. Elsa Rosenberg, Moritz's and Auguste's daughter
  26. Flora Sandel née de Beer
  27. Justine Scheuer née Fränkel
  28. Simon Schlachter
  29. Schlachter, Elisabeth Elise, née Sonnheim, Simon's wife
  30. Adele Silberberg née David
  31. Simon Schlachter
  32. Isidor Stern
  33. Walter Stern
  34. Ida Strauss née Strauss
  35. Isaac Julius Strauss
  36. Isaac Strauss
  37. Laura Strauss née Michel, Louis's wife
  38. Lilli Strauss, Louis's and Laura's daughter
  39. Rudolf Strauss, Louis's and Laura's son
  40. Isidor Weil, Jakob's brother
  41. Friederike 'Rika' Weil née Stein, Jakob's widow
  42. Dr. Otto Weil, Jakob's and his first wife Therese née Schwartz's son
  43. Hedwig Weil née Mayer, wife of Hugo Emanuel, Jakob's and his second wife Friederike née Stein's son
  44. Alfred Abraham Weil, Hedwig's and Hugo's son
After 1945, the only Jews who came back to Meisenheim were one married couple, Otto David and his wife. Listed in the table that follows are the fates of some of Meisenheim's Jewish families:
In comparison with the list of victims, it comes to light that idyllic and introspective Meisenheim was gladly sought out by expectant mothers as a place to give birth. Those born in Meisenheim markedly outnumbered those who had moved there. Three persons, who indeed were also born in Meisenheim but whose lives did not centre around it, lived in Mannheim at a seniors' home and thus were seized in the Saar/Pfalz/Baden-Aktion undertaken by the two Gauleiter Bürckel and Wagner and thereby sent to Gurs. They were Ferdinand Altschüler and the sisters Ida and Johanna Strauss. Now standing in memory of many of those Jews who died or were driven out in the Shoa are so-called Stolpersteine, which were only laid in the town on 23 November 2007 after town council's unanimous vote in response to the Meisenheim Synagogue Sponsorship and Promotional Association chairman Günter Lenhoff's proposal.