Old cemetery (Frankfurt am Main)

Old Jewish Cemetery  

The first burials in the Jewish Cemetery  Battonnstraße can be dated by a few gravestones to the year 1272. This makes it one of the oldest of its kind in Europe. In Judaism, the cemetery is considered an eternal resting place, and for this reason the graves may neither be dissolved nor the gravestones removed. When the capacities there are exhausted, he must be closed in 1828 with almost 7000 graves.

In 1942, the Nazis smashed approximately 4666 gravestones  to rubble and piled them up for removal to cairns, some of which can still be seen today. 175 gravestones had already been removed, but not yet destroyed. Among them is the tomb of the founder of the banking dynasty Mayer Amschel Rothschild. In the 1950s, the gravestones were returned to their place of origin, but due to the lack of information about their location, they can only be placed along the cemetery wall. An exception are the stones of important religious and secular personalities, these are grouped together on a field of honor.

Interesting are the  motifs on numerous tombstones, these are the house coats of arms of the deceased. The pictorial representations show the names of the houses, which were named after animals, mythical creatures and objects. This is a special feature of the Frankfurt Friefhof. A testimony of Jewish faith are the small stones on the gravestones as a sign of remembrance, as well as the slips of paper with petitions in the cracks of some gravestones of especially revered rabbis such as the important Talmud scholar Pinchas haLevi Horowitz. The burial ground can be entered from Battonnstrasse through a gate; visitors can obtain the key by depositing an identification document at the Museum Judengasse, except on Jewish holidays. Male visitors are expected to wear headgear (e.g., a kippah).