La historia de Rothenburg ob der Tauber Synagogue at the Judenkirchhof
Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a free imperial city in Middle Franconia, had a Jewish community from the late twelfth century and, in the thirteenth, one of the most famous yeshivot in Germany under Rabbi Meir ben Baruch. That community worshipped in a large Romanesque synagogue on the Milchmarkt, today's Kapellenplatz. In 1404 the Jews sold that building, the dance house and a neighbouring plot to the councillor Peter Kreglinger the elder, who turned the synagogue into a Marian chapel. A new, smaller synagogue was then built directly beside the Jewish cemetery, the Judenkirchhof, north of the old town; the Bavarian House of History dates it to 1406/07, Oliver Gußmann to 1404, and alemannia-judaica to 1407.
This second synagogue served the community of the new Jewish quarter around the Judengasse for more than a century. It ended with the community itself. At the end of 1519 the city council ordered the Jews to leave by Candlemas, 2 February 1520. On 8 January 1520, before the last six families had gone, a mob stirred up by the city preacher Johannes Teuschlein plundered the synagogue. It was given an east choir and consecrated on 10 April 1520 as the pilgrimage chapel 'zur reinen Maria'. The chapel was damaged in the Peasants' War of 1525, and its walls were pulled down in 1560 or 1561 to build the new cemetery church outside the Rödertor. Its exact site at today's Schrannenplatz is unknown.
Where it stood for nearly 120 years
Historic: beside the Jewish cemetery (Judenkirchhof), north of the inner town, Rothenburg ob der Tauber; exact plot unknown. Today: Schrannenplatz, 91541 Rothenburg ob der Tauber (car and bus park); approximate.
Abrir mapa ampliado →La comunidad judía
Jews are recorded in Rothenburg from 1180, and the community is first documented in 1241. It was almost wiped out in the Rindfleisch massacres of 1298 and destroyed again in the Black Death persecutions of 1349. Charles IV pardoned the townspeople in 1352 and allowed Jews to be admitted again. From about 1371 a new settlement grew north of the inner city moat; the street was called Judengasse by about 1377, and twelve half-timbered houses were built there before 1500, the oldest around 1399. Jews and Christians lived side by side in it. The community suffered from the royal debt annulments of 1385 and 1390 and a partial banishment in 1397, and in 1414 Emperor Sigismund demanded 2,000 gulden in tax, enforced by arrests. The town's Judenbuch III (1432-1458) names the offices of rabbi, cantors, a 'Schulklopfer' who summoned people to prayer and a schoolmaster, and 90 students attended a Talmud school in 1457. Gußmann names Rabbi Mendel and Rabbi Israel ben Isaak from around 1400. By 1520 only six families were left.
Arquitectura y diseño
Very little is known about the building. The Bavarian House of History describes it as smaller than the old synagogue on the Kapellenplatz, with a pair of round-arched windows in each of the north and south walls and oval oculi in the west wall that lit the vestibule and the women's section. Dormer windows suggest a storage room or a similar use in the roof. Nothing is known of its interior, its seating, its builder or its exact dimensions. A pen drawing in the chronicle of Michael Eisenhard, inscribed with the year 1520 and the words 'Synagog zu Rottenburg vff der Tauber', shows a plain rendered stone hall with dressed corner stones, a steep tiled roof with a small dormer, a round-arched doorway with a cross above it, a row of small low slit windows and a lower annex with a small spire on one end. The annex may be the east choir added when the building was made a chapel in 1520, but no source read says so. Nothing of the structure survives above ground, and no excavation of its site has been reported.
La vida dentro de la sinagoga
No direct description of worship in this building has been found. What is known comes from the records of the community it served. The Judenbuch III of 1432 to 1458 lists the paid officers of the congregation: a rabbi, cantors, a 'Schulklopfer' who went from house to house calling the men to the synagogue, and a schoolmaster. In 1457 a Talmud school in the town had 90 students, which shows that Rothenburg was still a place of Jewish learning in the fifteenth century, though on a much smaller scale than in Meir ben Baruch's day. The women's section lay at the west end of the building behind the vestibule, lit by oval windows. The synagogue stood next to the community's cemetery, where gravestones dating from 1266 to 1395 were later found. Ritual baths of the period also served the community; one of the early fifteenth century survives in the house at Judengasse 10, built in 1409. The names of the rabbis who taught in this synagogue are unknown.
Destrucción
Pressure on the last Jews of Rothenburg grew after 1500. The city preacher Johannes Teuschlein of St Jakob had been preaching against the Jews and stirred up the Christian population. In 1517 the community asked Emperor Maximilian I for protection against the robber knight Claus Wolgemut, who was pressing the city to extort money from or expel its Jews. Maximilian had blocked an expulsion in 1494, but he died in January 1519, and at the end of that year the city council decided that the Jews must leave Rothenburg by Candlemas, 2 February 1520. Officials called this a 'leave of absence' rather than an expulsion and made the Jews sign that they were leaving voluntarily. On 8 January 1520, before the last six families had left, a mob plundered the synagogue; Teuschlein is reported to have instigated the attack and to have wanted the building torn down and replaced. Instead it was given an east choir and consecrated on 10 April 1520 as the pilgrimage chapel 'zur reinen Maria'. It was damaged in the Peasants' War of 1525, and in 1560 or 1561 its walls were demolished and the stones reused for the cemetery church outside the Rödertor.
El destino de la comunidad
The last six Jewish families had left Rothenburg by 2 February 1520. Where they went is not recorded in the sources read. Attempts by refugees to return failed, and no Jews were allowed to live in the city for about 350 years; from 1659 they could attend the fairs but not display their goods openly. The Jewish cemetery beside the synagogue was taken over as a Christian burial ground after 1520. When it was enlarged in 1532 and 1533, workmen removed the bones from the Jewish graves and took them to an unknown place. Thirty-three medieval gravestones, dated 1266 to 1395, were found on the site in 1914; they are now in the Reichsstadtmuseum, the wall of the Rabbi-Meir-Gärtchen on the Kapellenplatz and the Jewish Museum of Franconia in Fürth. Teuschlein sided with the rebels in the Peasants' War and was executed on the Rothenburg market square in 1525. A new Jewish community formed in the town from 1875.
El lugar hoy
The synagogue stood at the edge of the medieval Jewish cemetery, the Judenkirchhof, which kept that name until it was renamed Schrannenplatz in 1958. Its exact position on the square is unknown, and no excavation of the site has been reported; the area is now used as a car and bus park. Nothing of the building survives in place, though some of its stones are thought to be in the walls of the cemetery church outside the Rödertor, which was built with them after 1560. A barn at Schrannenplatz 16, of about 1783, still bears a faded 'Judenkirchhof' inscription. The site of the older synagogue on the Kapellenplatz, a short walk to the south, is laid out as the Rabbi-Meir-Gärtchen.
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Fotografías, documentos, historias familiares o recuerdos de esta sinagoga y su comunidad ayudan a mantener viva su historia.
- Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Synagoge, Mittelalter)
- Rothenburg ob der Tauber (place entry)
- Das jüdische Rothenburg im Mittelalter (Frankenland 3/2016, pp. 165-175)
- Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Mittelfranken): Jüdische Geschichte / Synagogen
- Rothenburg ob der Tauber
- Theologe, Reformator, Antisemit: Tagung zu Rothenburger Prediger Teuschlein (26 August 2024)
- Rothenburg ob der Tauber: Jewish history since 1180 AD/CE
- Unter dem Pflaster (23 March 2026)
- Schrannenplatz, Rothenburg ob der Tauber (OpenStreetMap way 229640837)
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