Jewish cemetery Aschenhausen

The cemetery is located at the edge of the forest about 150 m west of the village exit below the Leichelberg (reachable via Kirchstraße, signposted). The Jewish cemetery was established at the beginning of the 18th century. The plot was given to the Jewish families as a fiefdom by the local lords for 20 thalers each for 30 years. According to the original regulations, annual fees for the use of the cemetery were 1/4 pound of pepper, 1/4 pound of ground ginger and two nutmegs. For each buried person the relatives had to pay one thaler (for an old person), three head pieces (for a person under 30) or half a thaler (for a child). The first burial took place in 1707. The dead of the Jewish communities/families of Aschenhausen, Kaltennordheim, Kaltensundheim and Opfershausen were buried in the cemetery. The oldest preserved gravestone is from about 1720. The last burials were probably in February 1936 (Rosalie Richheimer and Babette Richheimer). There are two large grave fields with a total of about 150 gravestones. The cemetery area covers about 50 ares. After 1945 the cemetery came into the possession of the State Association of Jewish Communities of Thuringia with its headquarters in Erfurt (1948). After some gravestones had fallen down in 1959 due to the slope of the cemetery, first restoration measures were taken and some of the gravestones were set in concrete. In 1994 the entire cemetery was restored as part of a job creation scheme.