Presumably towards the end of the 16th century, the site on the Laudenbacher Schlossberg is purchased by various Jewish communities from the region around Laudenbach and used as a cemetery. On the occasion of a Jewish census  in 1623 a gravedigger is mentioned for the first time, 30 years later a document mentions an own administrator (Gabbai) for the cemetery, the synagogue and the mikvah (1655). The enclosure wall of the cemetery was built in 1873/74. A Bavarian-wide collection is started to finance the construction project. In 1930 the area is extended to its present size.

Since the mid-1870s, the Jewish community had been collecting funds for the construction of a new synagogue. Head Hirsch Stern established a synagogue building fund. In 1879, the assets of the fund already consisted of 3,550 marks, raised through donations. In 1881 the plans became concrete. At a congregational meeting in 1881, various proposals for the acquisition of a suitable site for the synagogue were discussed.

Already in the Middle Ages there was a Jewish community with a synagogue in Karlstadt. The city was planned and founded around 1200 by the Würzburg bishop Konrad von Querfurt on the drawing board. Hans Leopold Müller assumes that Jews were directly involved in the financing and construction of the town. However, this assumption is only supported by circumstantial evidence. There are no written records of the first Jewish community in Karlstadt. It is only known that it was wiped out by the pogrom in the course of the "Rindfleisch-Verfolgung" in 1298.