Medieval Synagogue of Ulm (Judenhof)

The Jewish community

The earliest record of Jews in Ulm is a tax payment of six silver marks in 1241, and the cemetery, first mentioned in 1281, produced gravestones in an unbroken series from 1243 to 1491. The Jewish Encyclopedia notes a tombstone of 1243 for Huknah, daughter of Rabbi Solomon ha-Levi. An Ulm merchant, Yosef bar Moshe, commissioned a richly decorated Bible in Würzburg around 1241, now in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. In 1274 the council described the community as a privileged loan society. A Judengasse is mentioned in 1331, but Jews were not confined to one street. In 1348 Emperor Charles IV allowed the city to keep the Jews' imperial taxes for its fortifications. The community was nearly wiped out on 30 January 1349, but Jews soon returned; in 1366 some received a partial form of citizenship. Restrictions followed: King Wenceslaus regulated Jewish taxes in 1392, the city's Red Book of 1395 limited Jewish trade and movement, and further laws of 1421 and 1422 narrowed their occupations. Jews who were not citizens were expelled in 1457, and the whole community in 1499.

Architecture and design

No description, plan, drawing or excavation report of the medieval synagogue was found in this research, so its size, plan, style and builder are unknown. The written sources establish only a few physical facts. The building stood in or beside the Judenhof, a small square of old houses on the north side of the Ulm Minster. It had a courtyard: a city ordinance of 30 September 1421 allowed Jews to slaughter animals only in the courtyard of the synagogue. It formed part of a set of communal buildings that the expulsion decree of 1499 lists together, the synagogue, the cemetery, a hospital, a bath and the houses, and the Jewish Encyclopedia and the Encyclopaedia Judaica also mention a dance hall that the city confiscated in 1349 and returned by 1357. Whether the synagogue standing in 1499 was the same building as the one seized in 1349, or a rebuilding of it, is unknown. The exact plot within the Judenhof has not been identified in the sources read.

Life inside the synagogue

Very little is recorded about worship in the building itself. In the fifteenth century Ulm was a centre of learning: the Jewish Encyclopedia names four rabbis active there at one time, Simelin, who presided over the yeshiva, Seligmann, Lafen and Gershon. Simelin broke a regulation laid down by the Jews of Nuremberg, and the quarrel divided the congregation until Rabbi Jacob Weil was asked to judge it; he ordered Simelin to retract publicly in three communities or face excommunication. The date of this dispute is not given in the source read. The synagogue precinct also served everyday needs: from 1421 the city required that animals be slaughtered only in the synagogue courtyard, which made the courtyard the community's place of ritual slaughter. The community maintained its own cemetery, a hospital, a bath and a dance hall. No inscription, furnishing or liturgical object known to have come from the synagogue was found in the sources read, and the names of its cantors and wardens are unknown.

Destruction

The synagogue suffered two blows. On 30 January 1349, during the Black Death persecutions, a mob of townspeople stormed the Jewish quarter and the community was almost destroyed; the city council later said it could not restrain the rabble. The city then took over the synagogue, cemetery and dance hall, returning the synagogue in 1354. The final loss came through the city council. After it complained repeatedly about Jewish residence, King Maximilian I issued a charter authorising the expulsion, and the manifesto was published on 6 August 1499. It annulled the Jews' privileges and gave them about five months to leave, outlawing anyone who stayed. Four days after publication the imperial treasury sold the Jews' real estate to the city for 5,000 gulden, and the decree assigned the proceeds of the synagogue, cemetery, hospital, bath and houses to Wolf of Asch, the imperial prefect of Geislingen. Use as a synagogue ended with the expulsion. Whether the city converted, sold or pulled down the building, and when, is not recorded in any source read.

The community’s fate

Where the expelled Jews of Ulm went is not traced in the sources read. The city enforced a policy of Judenfreiheit, keeping Jews out, for about two centuries; the Jewish Encyclopedia records that no Jew settled again even in the Ulm district until 1526, when one was admitted at Albeck, and a further imperial privilege of 1541 restricting Jewish lending made residence almost impossible. A new community grew up much later and consecrated a synagogue at the Weinhof in 1873, designed by Adolf Wolff, and opened a cemetery in 1885. On the night of 9 to 10 November 1938 an Ulm SA unit of the Nazis broke into and set fire to that synagogue; the fire brigade put it out, mainly to protect neighbouring houses, and the building was then demolished. The 1938 synagogue is a separate building from the medieval one described here. A new synagogue was consecrated at the Weinhof in 2012.

The site today

The Judenhof is today a small car-free square of old town houses north of Ulm Minster, between the Münsterplatz and the Weinhof. No standing remains of the medieval synagogue are known, and the sources read do not say which house plot it occupied, so it is not possible to say what stands exactly on its site. One building on the square, a former Baptist community centre, has been used by the Russian Orthodox parish of Ulm since 2007; nothing read links it to the synagogue. An information panel on the square describes the history of the quarter. The map pin marks the middle of the Judenhof and is approximate.

Notable names