City walk Oldenburg

Trade and money lending

Oldenburg's Jewish history begins at the Rathausmarkt - it is documented in the medieval town records of 1334 and 1345.

The market square with Old Town Hall and St. Lamberti Church once formed, as it does today, the center of the medieval city. This is also where our walk through Oldenburg's Jewish history begins. The first town hall, in which the town court met, is documented for the year 1355 - ten years after the granting of the town charter. In the document of January 6, 1345, the Counts of Oldenburg had secured the right to settle "Schutzjuden" in the city. However, these were only to be active in money trading and money lending. The fact that there had been fierce disputes with the local councillors in the preceding decades is shown by their decision of December 13, 1334, not to accept any more Jewish merchants in the future and not to renew existing letters of protection. It is not known when the first Jewish families arrived in the town. Presumably they were expelled with the first wave of plague in 1350 - for almost 350 years. Only under Danish rule - after Oldenburg's heyday under Count Anton Günther (1603-67), after the plague (1667) and after the town fire (1676) - were two Jewish merchants from Copenhagen and Altona respectively granted the right of settlement again in 1692. They were not particularly successful in Oldenburg either...

"There is much caste spirit in Oldenburg..." (Correspondence in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums of January 1, 1846)
In the house Mühlenstraße 5 was from 1829 to 1855 the first Oldenburg synagogue - including school and rabbi's apartment. Since 2011, the entrance to the new Schlosshöfe parking garage leads here.

The more recent Jewish history of Oldenburg begins in 1692, when the merchants Joseph and Jacob Abraham - against the will of the magistrate - first received a letter of protection from the Danish king. They were followed in 1703 by Meyer Goldschmidt from Emden. His grandson, Baruch Joseph Goldschmidt, enjoyed great prestige at the ducal court even after 1774, but further immigration to Oldenburg remained limited to a few families. Only under French rule (1810-13), with the granting of full civil rights including freedom of trade, did the now independent Jewish community grow rapidly. From 1812 a teacher and precentor could be employed, and in 1814 the cemetery was established on today's Dedestraße. The congregation continued to meet for services in private or rented rooms. The office of a state rabbi was not introduced until the regressive "Judenordnung" of 1827, but the first incumbents did much to enhance Jewish life in Oldenburg. Thus, on June 6, 1829, Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler was finally able to inaugurate a synagogue room in the rear building at Mühlenstraße 5. The front building housed a school and a rabbi's apartment until the synagogue was built on Peterstraße in 1855, after which a tavern moved in. In 1959, the half-timbered building fell victim to urban redevelopment.

New beginning and end 
In the Cäcilienstrasse 9, a small Oldenburg post-war congregation came together again from October 1946 - but there were no new members. In 1971 it was dissolved.

On the way to Gerichtsstraße it is worth taking a detour to the Wilhelminian Dobbenviertel: the first domicile of the post-war Jewish community, including an office and prayer room, was located in the house at Cäcilienstraße 9 from 1946-55. After the liberation of Oldenburg on May 3, 1945, only about 20 survivors had returned to their hometown. On the initiative of Adolf de Beer, once the owner of the "Reingold" steam laundry, and Ernst Löwenstein, a lawyer and notary, the "Jewish Community for the City and Country of Oldenburg" was formed in the same year - initially in provisional rooms. It soon renamed itself the "Jewish Religious Association of Oldenburg". After de Beer's death (1955), Frieda Meiners, née Willner, took over the leadership. The congregation's personnel and financial situation increasingly deteriorated: in 1948 it still had 23 mostly older members, by the end of the 1960s only four. From the proceeds of the synagogue property, which was restituted in 1951, the house at Lambertistraße 48 was purchased in 1955. There was also a small home for the elderly. After the sale in 1969, the congregation officially dissolved on January 28, 1971. The care of the cemetery was taken over by the regional association.

"Their Royal Highnesses the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess honored the celebration with their presence." (Correspondence in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums of September 17, 1855) 
In 1855, the first public synagogue was inaugurated at Peterstraße 6, along with a school and community hall. Today, the Catholic Caritas social center can be found there.

Through the Julius-Mosen-Platz one reaches the Peterstraße. It is named after Grand Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig, who had the old ramparts removed around 1800. In 1854, the Jewish community found a building site for its new synagogue at Peterstraße 6 - including a school and community center. It was not until 1849, with the Oldenburg State Basic Law, that the Jewish population was given equal legal status, and so on August 24, 1855, Land Rabbi Bernhard Wechsler consecrated the two representative buildings with some pride. After his death (1874), the community changed: Accompanied by growing anti-Semitism, cattle dealers from the surrounding area and a small group of "Eastern Jews" moved in. After the Orthodox Land Rabbi Dr. David Mannheimer took office (1891), the old, mostly liberal, merchant families became a minority. In 1904/05 the synagogue with mikvah was rebuilt in oriental style. Under Landrabbiner Dr. Philipp de Haas (1920-35) Jewish life in the town experienced a last blossom, but came to an abrupt end at the latest with the Pogrom Night. On the night of November 9/10, 1938, the synagogue and school at Peterstraße 6 burned down completely. The ruins were demolished and the area was handed over to the city. The main perpetrators could not be convicted in the trial of 1949/50. In 1951 the property went to the small post-war community, but the community sold it in 1954. At the suggestion of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation, a memorial stone was set in 1967, in the park next to it, in memory of the synagogue.

"It's really incredible that I'm the second one." (Rabbi Alina Treiger, 2010)
In Leo-Trepp-Strasse 17 beats since 1995 the heart of the new "Jewish Community of Oldenburg". Today, Alina Treiger, the second female rabbi ordained in Germany - the first after 1945.

Parallel to Peterstrasse runs Wilhelmstrasse. The southern end was renamed Leo Trepp Street in March 2013 - in honor of the last regional rabbi of Oldenburg. Leo Trepp was released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at the end of 1938 and emigrated to the USA. Throughout his life he worked for understanding and reconciliation, also in Oldenburg. In 1990, he was made an honorary citizen. Since August 2017, his bronze bust has stood in front of the building at Leo-Trepp-Strasse 17 - and it is precisely here that the heart of the young "Jewish Community of Oldenburg" beats today. It currently has over 300 members again, the majority of them families from the former Soviet Union. A small "Jewish Group of Oldenburg" had already come together in the mid-1980s. On August 6, 1992, the congregation was officially founded under the chairmanship of Sara-Ruth Schumann. In 1995, the former Baptist chapel in Wilhelmstraße was occupied as the synagogue, and in 2002 the community and cultural center including the mikvah next door. In 1995-2004, the appointment of the Swiss Rabbi Bea Wyler had still caused a sensation. In 2010/11, Alina Treiger continued this egalitarian tradition. (Regina Jonas was the first woman in the world to be ordained as a rabbi, in Berlin in 1935.)

"Open for new ways. Cosmopolitan universities against xenophobia." (motto of the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg)
. Born in Hamburg in a Christian home, he made a name for himself as a pacifist author and from 1927 - with the collaboration of Kurt Tucholsky - as editor of the Berlin weekly "Die Weltbühne". At the Theaterwall in the old town, a bust commemorates the Nobel Peace Prize winner Carl von Ossietzky(1889-1938) since 1996. Opposite the Chamber of Crafts there is a bronze monument to him created by Manfred Sihle-Wissel.

Ossietzky died in Berlin on May 4, 1938. His estate is now administered by the University of Oldenburg. It has also borne Ossietzky's name since 1991 - after years of resistance from the state government. In 1995, Faculty IV "Human and Social Sciences" established the "Intercultural Jewish Studies" department. An annual lecture series enabled the cooperation with the Leo Trepp Lehrhaus of the Jewish Community Oldenburg, which has existed since 2011. Students as well as guest students can attend events within the framework of the professionalization program "Jewish Studies", which are realized through cooperation with the Institute for Religious Studies as well as the MMZ of the University of Potsdam and the Joseph Carlebach Institute of the Bar-Ilan University Tel Aviv. The Center focuses on "making the contribution of Judaism to European culture [...] understandable". Thus, it deals with Christian-Jewish history from antiquity to the present, but beyond that also with intercultural relations with Islam.

"Here alone was still community, the community no longer existed." (Leo Trepp in Oldenburg, 1970) 
On Dedestraße in the Osternburg district, the old Jewish cemetery of 1814 has survived. From 1992 to 2000, it also served the new "Jewish Community of Oldenburg" again as a burial ground.

Who has desire and time, still a detour to the Jewish cemetery in Osternburg is recommended, a good two kilometers southeast of the old town (stop "Kampstraße/Jüdischer Friedhof"). Until 1814, the small Oldenburg community had to bury their dead in Hohenberge near Varel, then, at the request of the Goldschmidt family, they were able to establish their own burial ground "on Sandstraße west". The plot was enlarged in 1862 and surrounded by a wall in 1866. From 1876 the charity association "Gemilus Chassodim" took over the care. The construction of a cemetery hall had been suggested by Landrabbiner Mannheimer, and in 1921 it was solemnly consecrated. The first desecration in May 1935 was still being investigated by the police. On the night of the pogroms in 1938, the hall was set on fire, but it withstood the flames. After that the cemetery fell into disrepair until it was temporarily restored in September 1945. A small bunker was removed, the hall could be restored only in 1974/75. Since 1950 a memorial stone also commemorates a mass grave for "54 Russian war victims". In 1992, the cemetery was transferred to the "Jewish Community of Oldenburg", which continued to use it until the inauguration of a new area on the park cemetery Kreyenbrück on November 9, 2000.