Residential house Gideon / Rescher

In 1760, the cattle trader Abraham Gideon (1727-1796) from Nordstetten came to Hochberg as the first Schutzjude. In 1772 the Jewish community of Hochberg was founded and Abraham became the first head of the Jewish community. In 1777 he bought the former official house at Hauptstr. 13 from the cooper Wartinger, which Wartinger had in turn purchased in 1759. This marked the beginning of the determined acquisition of real estate by Jewish families in the former Vordere Gasse (today Hauptstraße). His son Seligmann Gideon (1771-1834) inherited the house in 1796 and continued his father's business very successfully. The childless Seligmann Gideon founded the "Abraham and Seligmann Gideon Foundation" with a capital of 5200 guilders, the largest of 15 Jewish foundations in Hochberg in the 19th century. After his death, Salomon Rescher (1795-1873) acquired the house, demolished it and erected the present building on the same site. His son Isak Rescher occupied the house from 1873, marrying the Lutheran Katharina Hemminger from Poppenweiler in 1878. Possibly this was the first Jewish-Christian mixed marriage in Hochberg. Since 1869 the de facto intermarriage ban in Württemberg had been lifted by the legislation of the North German Confederation. In 1894 Isak Rescher sold the house to the blacksmith Karl Lächele and moved with his family to Waiblingen. A descendant of the Hochberg Rescher family is the us philosopher Nicholas Rescher, who in his autobiography gives a detailed account of his Jewish Hochberg ancestors.