Meisenheim

This article is about the town in Rhineland-Palatinate. For the municipality in Baden-Württemberg, see Meißenheim.
Meisenheim

Coat of arms
Meisenheim

Coordinates: 49°43′N 07°40′E / 49.717°N 7.667°ECoordinates: 49°43′N 07°40′E / 49.717°N 7.667°E
Country Germany
State Rhineland-Palatinate
District Bad Kreuznach
Municipal assoc. Meisenheim
Government
 • Mayor Werner Keym
Area
 • Total 10.34 km2 (3.99 sq mi)
Population (2012-12-31)[1]
 • Total 2,833
 • Density 270/km2 (710/sq mi)
Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes 55590
Dialling codes 06753
Vehicle registration KH
Website www.meisenheim.de
Maÿsenheim in the 17th century (Matthäus Merian)

Meisenheim is a town in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the like-named Verbandsgemeinde, and is also its seat. Meisenheim is a state-recognized recreational resort (Erholungsort) and it is set out as a middle centre in state planning.

Geography

Location

Meisenheim lies in the valley of the River Glan at the northern edge of the North Palatine Uplands. The municipal area measures 1 324 ha.[2]

Neighbouring municipalities

Clockwise from the north, Meisenheim’s neighbours are Raumbach, Rehborn, Callbach, Reiffelbach, Odenbach, Breitenheim and Desloch, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district, except for Odenbach, which lies in the neighbouring Kusel district.

Constituent communities

Also belonging to Meisenheim are the outlying homesteads of Hof Wieseck, Keddarterhof and Röther Hof.[3]

History

Meisenheim is believed to have arisen in the 7th century AD, and its name is often derived from the town’s hypothetical founder “Meiso” (thus making the meaning “Meiso’s Home”). In 1154, Meisenheim had its first documentary mention. Sometimes cited as such, however, is a document dated 14 June 891 from the West Frankish king Odo (for example by K. Heintz in Die Schlosskirche zu Meisenheim a. Gl. u. ihre Denkmäler in Mitteilungen d. Histor. Vereins d. Pfalz 24 (1900) pp. 164–279, within which p. 164, and by W. Dotzauer in Geschichte des Nahe-Hunsrück-Raumes (2001), pp. 69 & 72), but this document is falsified (cf. H. Wibel: Die Urkundenfälschungen Georg Friedrich Schotts, in Neues Archiv d. Ges. f. Ältere Dt. Gesch.kunde Bd. 29 (1904), pp. 653–765, within which p. 688 & pp. 753– 757[4]). In the 12th century, Meisenheim was raised to the main seat of the Counts of Veldenz and in 1315 it was granted town rights by King Ludwig IV. On what is now known as Schlossplatz (“Palace Square”), the Counts of Veldenz built a castle, bearing witness to which today are only two buildings that were later built, the “Schloss Magdalenenbau” (nowadays called the Herzog-Wolfgang-Haus or “Duke Wolfgang House”) and above all the Schlosskirche (“Palace Church”), building work on which began in 1479. Both buildings were built only after the Counts of Veldenz had died out in 1444 and the county had been inherited by the Dukes of Palatinate-Zweibrücken. This noble house, too, at first kept their seat at Meisenheim, but soon moved it to Zweibrücken. From 1538 to 1571, Duke Wolfgang of Zweibrücken maintained in Meisenheim a mint, with one interruption, although this was then moved to Bergzabern. The Doppeltaler (double Thaler), Taler (Thaler) and Halbtaler (half Thaler) coins minted in the time when the mint was in Meisenheim remain among the highest-quality mintings from Palatinate-Zweibrücken. In 1799, Duke of Zweibrücken Maximilian IV inherited besides the land that he already held the long united lands of the Electorate of Bavaria and Electoral Palatinate. While these three countries were now de jure in personal union, this did not shift the power structures on the ground at all, for Palatinate-Zweibrücken had already been occupied by French Revolutionary troops. Because of the terms of the Congress of Vienna (1815), the part of Palatinate-Zweibrücken lying north of the Glan, and thus Meisenheim too, were assigned not to the Kingdom of Bavaria but rather to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg. From 1816 onwards, Meisenheim was the administrative seat of the Oberamt of Meisenheim and an Oberschultheißerei. In 1866, the Grand Duchy of Hesse inherited the whole territory, but after losing a war later that same year, the grand duchy had to cede Hesse-Homburg to the Kingdom of Prussia. The town of Meisenheim itself was not wholly reunited until after the Second World War when state of Rhineland-Palatinate was founded. Until then, the lands just across the Glan had been Bavarian (either as foreign territory or as another province within Imperial, Weimar or Nazi Germany) since the Congress of Vienna.

Jewish history

Meisenheim had a Jewish community possibly even as far back as the Middle Ages, after it was granted town rights in 1315. The first documentary mention of a Jew, however, did not come until 1551 when a “Jud Moses” cropped up in the record. He was selling a house on Schweinsgasse (a lane that still exists now). In 1569, the Jews were turned out of the town. After the Thirty Years' War, two Jewish families were allowed to live in the town. In 1740, the number of Jewish families was still supposed to be kept down to four, but this rule was often not upheld. The reasons given for these restrictions were mainly economic.

…Fourteenthly, no more than four Jewish families should live and be tolerated in the local town; this rose under High Prince Gustav’s state government to 7 such, …which has not only caused the local grocers through the constant hawking and the butchers through shechita great harm and loss of sustinence, but also has already put many citizens and peasants to ruination, and furthermore still means that the little protection money that Your High-Princely Serene Highness draws from these people by far does not offset this harm, whereby Your High-Princely Serene Highness harms his truest subjects. If a few provisions have been indulged-in as a result of the hawking and shechita, bizarrely the butchers’ guild article, then these Jews, as a dogged and naughty people, are not troubled by them, but rather begin their abuses anew after some time has gone by; we therefore ask, most humbly, that Your High-Princely Serene Highness most kindly deign to reduce the Jews here, to the citizenry’s greatest consolation, back to 4, by strengthening the provisions for the forbidden hawking and the butchers’ guild article for excessive shechita.

Following the 1740 decree, the Jews moved to nearby villages, still keeping themselves near the “market”, which to them was a matter of survival, and which was of course also necessary for economic growth. The “grocers” and above all the butchers could thus not be wholly free of their competition, especially as the government knew enough to prize good taxpayers. This shift also applied across borders, and thus not only to the villages belonging to the canton of Meisenheim, but also to the bordering Palatine villages such as Odenbach. A thorougher analysis of this shift of town and country Jews appears in W. Kemp’s review, and this work also contains a taxation roll of Jews in the canton of Meisenheim, showing the tax burdens borne by Jews living in the outlying villages of Medard, Breitenheim, Schweinschied, Löllbach, Merxheim, Bärweiler, Meddersheim, Staudernheim and Hundsbach. The modern Jewish community arose in the 18th century, According to a report from 1860, the oldest readable gravestone then at the Meisenheim graveyard bore the date 1725. Thus presumably Jews were then still allowed to live in the town. In the time of the French Revolution, there were fewer Jewish families, among whom was a butcher who was allowed to ply his trade in town. About 1800, it is clear that several families fled to the town to escape Johannes Bückler’s (Schinderhannes’s) crimewave. In the earlier half of the 19th century, the number of Jewish inhabitants grew sharply, mostly because of the arrival of newcomers from Jewish villages in the Hunsrück area. The number of Jewish inhabitants developed as follows: in 1808, there were 161; in 1860, 260; in 1864, 198 (12% of the population); in 1871, 160 (8.73% of 1,832 inhabitants); in 1885, 120 (7.05% of 1701); in 1895, 87 (5.01% of 1738); in 1902, 89 (5.01% of 1,777). Also belonging to the Breitenheim Jewish community were the Jews living in Breitenheim. In 1924 they numbered two. In the way of institutions, there were a synagogue (see Former synagogue below), a Jewish primary and religious school (present no later than 1826, and as of 1842 housed in the building at Wagnerstraße 13), a mikveh and a graveyard (see Jewish graveyard below). To provide for the community’s religious needs, a primary and religious schoolteacher, alongside the rabbi, was hired, who also busied himself as the hazzan and the shochet (preserved is a whole series of job advertisements for such a position in Meisenheim from such publications as the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums). For a time, the hazzan’s position was separate from the schoolteacher’s. In the 19th century, a man named Benjamin Unrich worked as primary schoolteacher from 1837 to 1887 – 50 years. In 1830, he taught 32 children, in 1845, 46 and in 1882, 21. At either Unrich’s retirement or his death in 1890, the Jewish primary school was closed, and thereafter Jewish schoolchildren attended the Evangelical school, while receiving religious instruction at the Jewish religious school. 1875 to 1909, the community’s hazzan and religion teacher was Heyman de Beer. The last religion teacher, from 1924 to 1928, was Julius Voos (b. 1904 in Kamen, Westphalia, d. 1944 at Auschwitz). In 1924, he taught 15 children, but by 1928, this had shrunk to 7. After he left, the few school-age Jewish children left were taught by the schoolteacher from Sobernheim (Julius Voos earned his doctorate in Bonn in 1933, and between 1936 and 1943 he was a rabbi in in Guben, Lusatia, then in Münster, whence he was deported to Auschwitz in 1943). Meisenheim was in the 19th century the seat of a rabbinate, with the rabbi bearing the title Landesrabbiner of the Oberamt of Meisenheim in Hesse-Homburg times and Kreisrabbiner (“District Rabbi”) in Prussian times. Serving as rabbi were the following:

Tenure Name Birth Death Education Remarks
????–1835 Isaac Hirsch Unrich ? ? ? Presumably Meisenheim’s first rabbi
1835–1845 – – – – Post vacant for lack of funds
1845–1861 Baruch Hirsch Flehinger 1809 in Flehingen 1890 after 1825 Mannheim Yeshiva, 1830–1833 University of Heidelberg 1845–1861 State Rabbi in Meisenheim, thereafter in Merchingen; also responsible from 1870 for Tauberbischofsheim rabbinical region
1861–1869 Lasar Latzar 1822 in Galicia 1869 in Meisenheim ? ~1856 regional rabbi in Kikinda, Vojvodina; lost job in 1860 to Magyarization of school and worship
1870–1879 Dr. Israel Mayer (Meyer) 1845 in Müllheim, Baden 1898 in Zweibrücken 1865–1871 Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau Quit after 1873 cut in rabbinical salary subsidy; office transferred in 1877 to hazzan; went to new rabbinical post in Zweibrücken in 1879
1879–1882 Dr. Salomon (Seligmann) Fried 1847 in Ó-Gyalla, Hungary 1906 in Ulm 1871–1879 University and Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau 1870 District Rabbi in Meisenheim, Rabbi in Bernburg (1883), Ratibor (1884) and Ulm (1888 until his death)
1882–1883 Dr. Moritz Janowitz 1850 in Eisenstadt, Hungary 1919 in Berlin 1871–1878 University and Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau Rabbi in Písek, Bohemia (1876), Meisenheim (1882), thereafter in Dirschau, West Prussia, rabbi and head of Ahawas Thora synagogue association’s religion school in Berlin (~1896)

One member of Meisenheim’s Jewish community fell in the First World War, Leo Sender (b. 12 July 1893 in Hennweiler, d. 20 October 1914). Also lost in the Great War was Alfred Moritz (b. 16 May 1890 in Meisenheim, d. 20 June 1916), but he had moved to Kirn by 1914. About 1924, when there were still 55 members of the Jewish community (3% of roughly 1,800 to 1,900 inhabitants), the community’s leaders were Moritz Rosenberg, Simon Schlachter, Albert Kaufmann and Hermann Levy. The representatives were Louis Strauß, Levi Bloch, Albert Cahn and Siegmund Cahn. Employed as schoolteacher was Julius Voos. He taught at the community’s religion school and taught Jewish religion at the public schools. In 1932, the community’s leaders were Moritz Rosenberg (first), Simon Schlachter (second) and Felix Kaufmann (third). The community had since found itself without a schoolteacher. Instruction was then being given the Jewish schoolchildren by Felix Moses from Sobernheim. Worthy of mention among the then still active Jewish clubs is the Jewish Women’s Club, which concerned itself with supporting the poor. In 1932 its chairwoman was Mrs. Schlachter. In 1933, the year when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seized power, there were still 38 Jews living in 13 families in Meisenheim. Thereafter, though, some of the Jews moved away or even emigrated in the face of the progressive stripping of their rights and repression, all brought about by the Nazis. Already by that year, intimidating measures were being undertaken: Shochet’s knives were being seized by Brownshirt and Stahlhelm thugs. Several well known Jewish businessmen (grain wholesaler Hugo Weil, wine dealer Julius Levy, other livestock and grain wholesalers) were taken into so-called “protective custody”. Jewish businesses were “Aryanized”, the last ones in June 1938. On Kristallnacht (9–10 November 1938), the synagogue sustained substantial damage, and worse, the Jewish men who were still in town were arrested. With the deportation of the last Jews living in Meisenheim to the South of France in October 1940, the Meisenheim Jewish community’s history came to an end. According to the Gedenkbuch – Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933-1945 (“Memorial Book – Victims of the Persecution of the Jews under National Socialist Tyranny”) and Yad Vashem, as compared against other data, critically examined and completed by Wolfgang Kemp, of all Jews who either were born in Meisenheim or lived there for a long time, 44 died in the time of the Third Reich (birthdates in brackets):

  1. Ferdinand Altschüler (1865)
  2. Thekla Bär née Fränkel (1862)
  3. Hedwig de Beer (1887)
  4. Klara de Beer (1889)
  5. Cäcilia (Zili) de Beer (1891)
  6. Sigmund Cahn (1874)
  7. Ida Cahn née Kaufmann, Sigmund’s wife (1885)
  8. Adolf David (1879)
  9. Julius David (1883)
  10. Leo Fränkel (1867)
  11. Julius Fränkel (1873)
  12. Karl Josef Fränkel (1902)
  13. Pauline Goldmann, née Fränkel (1864)
  14. Frieda Hamburger, née Schlachter (1885)
  15. Willy Hamburger, Sohn von Frieda (1911)
  16. Albert Löb (1870)
  17. Flora Löb née de Beer (1895)
  18. Julius Maas (1876)
  19. Martha Mayer née Fränkel (1866)
  20. Georg Meyer (1894)
  21. Selma Meyer, née Schlachter, Georg’s wife, Simon’s and Elise’s daughter (1894)
  22. Johanna Nathan née Strauss (1873)
  23. Moritz Rosenberg (1866)
  24. Auguste Rosenberg née Stern, Moritz’s wife (1863)
  25. Elsa (Else) Rosenberg, Moritz’s and Auguste’s daughter (1894)
  26. Flora Sandel née de Beer (1884)
  27. Justine Scheuer née Fränkel (1861)
  28. Simon Schlachter (1858)
  29. Schlachter, Elisabeth Elise, née Sonnheim, Simon’s wife (1867)
  30. Adele Silberberg née David (1871)
  31. Simon Schlachter (1877)
  32. Isidor (Juda, Justin) Stern (1893)
  33. Walter Stern (1899)
  34. Ida Strauss née Strauss (1862)
  35. Isaac Julius Strauss (1866)
  36. Isaac (called 'Louis/Ludwig') Strauss (1887)
  37. Laura Strauss née Michel, Louis’s wife (1883)
  38. Lilli Strauss, Louis’s and Laura’s daughter (1924)
  39. Rudolf Strauss, Louis’s and Laura’s son (1928)
  40. Isidor Weil, Jakob’s brother (1875)
  41. Friederike 'Rika' Weil née Stein, Jakob’s widow (1875)
  42. Dr. Otto Weil, Jakob’s and his first wife Therese née Schwartz’s son (1894)
  43. Hedwig Weil née Mayer, wife of Hugo Emanuel, Jakob’s and his second wife Friederike née Stein’s son (1911)
  44. Alfred Abraham Weil, Hedwig’s and Hugo’s son (1936)

After 1945, the only Jews who came back to Meisenheim were one married couple, Otto David and his wife. Listed in the table that follows are the fates of some of Meisenheim’s Jewish families:

Fate of Meisenheim’s Jewish Families
No.
Family or person
Fate
Remarks
1. Family Ludwig Bloch
Emigrated with 2 sons
Wife had already died
2. Family Sigmund Cahn
Parents murdered
–
3. Family Albert Cahn
Emigrated
–
4. Family Adolph David
Emigrated
Adolph murdered at Dachau
5. Family Albert Kaufmann
Emigrated
–
6. Family Felix Kaufmann
Emigrated
–
7. Family Hermann Levy
Emigrated
Only ones who could emigrate
after living through Kristallnacht
in Meisenheim
8. Albert Loeb
Murdered
–
9. Family Julius Loeb
Unknown
–
10. Family Moritz Rosenberg
Parents and a daughter murdered;
another daughter emigrated
One son died young
11. Family Simon Schlachter
Murdered
Jakob was only survivor
12. Family Isaak Strauß
Murdered
–
13. Friederike Unrich
Died
–
14. Family Jakob Weil Jakob’s widow Friederike (“Rika”)
was murdered at Sobibór; Hugo’s
wife Hedwig and their son Alfred
Abraham were murdered at
Auschwitz; Edith’s parents Isidor
and Sophie were murdered at
Sobibór 		Jakob died in 1937 after a fall
down some stairs; son Hugo
survived Auschwitz, fleeing a
death march; Dr. jur. Otto Weil’s
wife Edith “Settchen” née Meier
survived Bergen-Belsen with both
her sons Edwin and Ralf

In comparison with the list of victims, it comes to light that idyllic and introspective Meisenheim was gladly sought out by expectant mothers as a place to give birth. Those born in Meisenheim markedly outnumbered those who had moved there. Three persons, who indeed were also born in Meisenheim but whose lives did not centre around it, lived in Mannheim at a seniors’ home and thus were seized in the Saar/Pfalz/Baden-Aktion undertaken by the two Gauleiter Bürckel and Wagner and thereby sent to Gurs. They were Ferdinand Altschüler (76) and the sisters Ida and Johanna Strauss (79 and 68). Now standing in memory of many of those Jews who died or were driven out in the Shoa are so-called Stolpersteine, which were only laid in the town on 23 November 2007 after town council’s unanimous vote in response to the Meisenheim Synagogue Sponsorship and Promotional Association chairman Günter Lenhoff’s proposal.[5]

Criminal history

Like many places in the region, Meisenheim can claim to have had its dealings with the notorious outlaw Schinderhannes (or Johannes Bückler, to use his true name). In early 1797, the already well known robber committed one of his earliest burglaries in Meisenheim. One night, he climbed into a master tanner’s house and stole part of his leather stock, which he then apparently tried to sell back to the tanner the next day.[6] In the spring of 1798, Schinderhannes went dancing several times at inns in Meisenheim.

Religion

Meisenheim’s Evangelical Christians belong, as one of the church’s southernmost communities, to the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, while the Catholics belong to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Trier. As at 30 November 2013, there are 2,764 full-time residents in Meisenheim, and of those, 1,739 are Evangelical (62.916%), 591 are Catholic (21.382%), 8 are Lutheran (0.289%), 1 belongs to the New Apostolic Church (0.036%), 41 (1.483%) belong to other religious groups and 384 (13.893%) either have no religion or will not reveal their religious affiliation.[7]

Politics

Town council

The council is made up of 20 council members, who were elected by proportional representation at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman. The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results:[8]

  SPD CDU FDP GRÜNE FWG Total
2009 4 4 2 3 7 20 seats
2004 5 5 – 3 7 20 seats

Mayor

Meisenheim’s mayor is Werner Keym.[9]

Coat of arms

The town’s arms might be described thus: Per fess argent a demilion azure armed and langued gules and crowned Or, and gules a blue tit proper.

The charge in the upper field, the lion, is a reference to the town’s former allegiance to the Counts of Veldenz, while the one in the lower field, the blue tit, is a canting charge for the town’s name, Meise being the German word for “tit”. This, however, is not actually the name’s derivation. Meisenheim was raised to town in 1315 by King Ludwig IV. From the 12th century onwards, the town was held by the Counts of Veldenz. The arms are based on the town’s first seal from the 14th century. It already bore the two charges that the current arms bear. In the 18th century, there was another composition in the town’s seal showing a lion above a bendy lozengy field (slanted diamond shapes of alternating tinctures) while the tit appeared on an inescutcheon. This change reflected a change in the lordship after the Counts of Veldenz died out in 1444 and were succeeded by the House of Wittelsbach, who bore arms bendy lozengy argent and azure (silver and blue). This pattern can still be seen in Bavaria’s coat of arms and flag today. The former arms, however, were reintroduced in 1935.[10] The article and the website Heraldry of the World show three different versions of the arms. The oldest, seen at Heraldry of the World, comes from the Coffee Hag albums from about 1925. It shows the tit in different tinctures, namely argent and sable (silver and black). The arms with the Wittelsbach bendy lozengy pattern are not shown.

Culture and sightseeing

Buildings

The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:[11]

Old Town monumental zone
Former Powder Tower (Pulverturm also called Bürgerturm)
Am Untertor – Untertorbrücke (“Lower Gate Bridge”)
Bismarckplatz 1 – railway station
Klenkertor 7 – Saint Anthony of Padua Catholic Parish Church (Pfarrkirche St. Antonius von Padua), (inside view)
Schlossplatz 1 – Evangelical Schlosskirche (“Palace Church”)
Schlossplatz 1 – Evangelical Schlosskirche (“Palace Church”)
Saarstraße 3 – former synagogue
Untergasse 23 – former town hall
Untergasse 40 – three-floor Classicist house

More about buildings

Old Town

Meisenheim’s Old Town is the only one in the area that can boast of continuous development, uninterrupted by war, fire or other destruction, since the 14th century. It also has an in places well preserved girding wall with a still preserved town gate, the Untertor (“Lower Gate”), the 1517 town hall, many noble estates and townsmen’s buildings as well as a mediaeval scale for weighing freight carts. The town’s oldest noble estate, the Boos von Waldeckscher Hof, was built about 1400. The building is today livened up by an event venue and can be visited.

Palatial residence

Left over from the Schloss (palatial residence), formerly held by the Counts of Veldenz and later the Dukes of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, extensively renovated in the 15th century but beset with fire in the 18th century and a round of demolition in the 19th, is only one major building, the Magdalenenbau, which was built in 1614 as a residence for Magdalena, the Ducal Zweibrücken widow, and considerably remodelled in the 19th century by the Landgraves of Hesse-Homburg. It is nowadays used by the Evangelical Church and hence also bears the name Herzog-Wolfgang-Haus (“Duke Wolfgang House”) after the Duke who lent the Reformation considerable favour.

Palace Church

The Evangelical Schlosskirche (“Palace Church”), a three-naved hall church, was built between 1479 and 1504. At the time of building, it stood right next to the Schloss and was the estate church, the town parish church and the Knights Hospitaller commandry’s church. Its Late Gothic west tower is shaped by rich stonemasonry. In the grave chapel, the 44 mostly Renaissance-style tombs of the House of Palatinate-Zweibrücken and the rich Gothic rib vaulting bear witness to sculptors’ highly developed art; also often praised is the wooden Rococo pulpit. The organ restored in 1993/1994 on the west gallery with its Baroque console was completed in 1767 by the renowned Brothers Stumm, and was already at the time, with its 29 stops, 2 manuals and pedal, one of the most opulent works of organ building in the Middle Rhine region. Together with the organ at the Augustinian Church (Augustinerkirche) in Mainz, it is one of the biggest preserved instruments built by this Hunsrück organ-building family.

Catholic church

The Baroque Catholic parish church, Saint Anthony of Padua, has very lovely interior décor, parts of which were endowed by former Polish king Stanisław Leszczyński, who for a time during his exile lived in Meisenheim.

Former school

On Lindenallee, which was fully renovated amid great controversy in 2007, stands the stately old Volksschule (public school), which after serving 90 years as a school is now an “adventure hotel”.

Former synagogue

At first, there was a Jewish prayer room. In 1808, a synagogue was built on Lauergasse. After it grew too small to serve the burgeoning Jewish community in the 19th century, the community decided in 1860 to build a new synagogue at the town’s bleachfield on what is now called Saarstraße. From the earliest time during which donations were being gathered comes a report from the magazine Der Israelitische Volkslehrer published in October 1860:

Meisenheim. This time, the local community has celebrated a very nice matnat yad. After using considerable sums to expand and beautify the graveyard two years ago, and one year ago, for the rabbi’s maintenance, correspondingly voting for a payrise for him, it granted over the last few festive days the sum of 2,000 Rhenish guilders to build a new synagogue. The one used until now was at the time of its founding 52 years ago was reckoned on a much smaller membership and even about 12 years ago became bereft of light as its neighbouring properties on all sides were built up; so that, seen from the point of view of the demands for better taste, it lacked light, air and room. Anyone who knows the local community’s circumstances will not consider this willingness to make sacrifices slight and will not refuse the community’s goodwill the fullest approval. Of course, this sum is still not enough and it is hoped all the more that there will be outside help, as people here never stood idly by when a call for help came from outside.

The earlier synagogue was torn down a few years later. The new building was to become a representative building. The financing – costs reached 15,200 Rhenish guilders – could be ensured with a bit of effort. On 3 August 1866, the consecration of the new synagogue, designed by architect Heinrich Krausch, took place. It had seating for 160 worshippers. It was equipped with, among other things, six Torah scrolls, elaborate Torah ornamentation, silver candlesticks, an organ and a library. The prayer books were kept in six lecterns. Outwardly, it was a six-axis aisleless building with a three-floor façade with twin towers. On Kristallnacht (9–10 November 1938), the Meisenheim synagogue sustained considerable damage. All doors, windows and great parts of the galleries were reduced to rubble and a fire was set, although this was quickly quenched once the Brownshirt thugs realized that one of the neighbouring buildings was an SA house. The synagogue, however, was not torn down as so many others were, although the upper levels of the twin towers were removed in 1940. In the time of the Second World War, the building was mainly used as an industrial works, quite contrary to its originally intended purpose, and thereafter as a municipal storehouse. From 1951 on, it was a private storehouse for grain, fodder and fertilizer. In a conversion, the remnants of the women’s galleries were torn out, the windows were walled up and upper floors were built inside. In 1982, the building was placed under monumental protection. In 1985, the Meisenheim Synagogue Sponsorship and Promotional Association was founded, which acquired the former synagogue the following year and had it restored. On 9 November 1988 – fifty years to the day after Kristallnacht – the former synagogue building was opened to the public as the Haus der Begegnung (“House of Meeting”). This new name corresponds to the literal meaning of the Hebrew term for “synagogue”: בית כנסת (beyt knesset, literally “house of assembly”). On the upper floor, as a visible reminder of the former synagogue, a glass window by the Israeli artist Ruth van de Garde-Tichauer was installed. The window was created with technical assistance from Karl-Heinz Brust from Kirn. The window’s content is the return of the Twelve Tribes of Israel to Jerusalem based on the text from the Amidah (תפילת העמידה; Tefilat HaAmidah “The Standing Prayer”), also called the Shmoneh Esreh (שמנה עשרה; “The Eighteen”): “Sound the great shofar for our freedom; raise a banner to gather our exiles, and bring us together from the four corners of the earth into our land.”[12] In a decision taken on 21 May 1997, the synagogue building received the protection of the Hague Convention as a cultural property especially worthy of protection. Since 1999, above the entrance, has been a Star of David made of Jerusalem limestone, endowed by the Bad Kreuznach district’s partner town in Israel, Kiryat Motzkin. The former synagogue’s address in Meisenheim is Saarstraße 3.[13]

Jewish graveyard

The Jewish graveyard in Meisenheim was laid out no later than the early 18th century. The oldest preserved gravestone dates from 1725. In 1859, the graveyard was expanded with the addition of the “newer part”. The last burial that took place there was in 1938 (Felix Kaufmann). The graveyard has an area of 4 167 m². In the graveyard’s “older part”, gravestones are still standing at 105 of the graves, and in the “newer part”, this is so for a further 125 graves. The “newer part” is bordered on the east by a quarrystone wall. There is a great wrought-iron entrance gate. The graveyard lies outside the town to the east, east of the road from Meisenheim to Rehborn, in a wood called the “Bauwald”. It can be reached by walking about 200 m along a farm lane that branches off the highway.[14]

Regular events

Economy and infrastructure

Transport

Railway still in service in Meisenheim in 1986
Railway station

In 1896, Meisenheim was joined to the railway network with the opening of the Lauterecken–Odernheim stretch of the Lauter Valley Railway. This section was absorbed in 1904 into the Glantalbahn, which was fully opened that year. Meisenheim’s railway station was important to all resident industry. In 1986, though, passenger service between Lauterecken-Grumbach and Staudernheim was discontinued. Today, the station is only used as a stop on the adventure draisine journeys between Staudernheim and Kusel. Snaking through Meisenheim, mostly along the town’s outskirts, is Bundesstraße 420.

Schools

Meisenheim has three schools:

Healthcare

The Glantal-Klinik Meisenheim has two hospitals at its disposal. The Haus „Hinter der Hofstadt“ covers the demand for surgery, internal medicine and ambulant family medicine. The Glantal-Klinik is a centre for acute neurology, neurological rehabilitation, surgery and accident surgery, internal medicine and communication disorder therapy. Adjoining the clinic is a speech-language pathology centre.

Famous people

Sons and daughters of the town

Famous people associated with the town

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ "Bevölkerung der Gemeinden am 31.12.2012". Statistisches Bundesamt (in German). 2013.
  2. ↑ Area
  3. ↑ Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz – Amtliches Verzeichnis der Gemeinden und Gemeindeteile, Seite 16 (PDF; 2,2 MB)
  4. ↑ Falsified documents
  5. ↑ Jewish history
  6. ↑ Peter Bayerlein: Schinderhannes-Ortslexikon, S. 157, Mainz-Kostheim 2003
  7. ↑ Religion
  8. ↑ Der Landeswahlleiter Rheinland-Pfalz: Kommunalwahl 2009, Stadt- und Gemeinderatswahlen
  9. ↑ Meisenheim’s mayor
  10. ↑ Description and explanation of Meisenheim’s arms
  11. ↑ Directory of Cultural Monuments in Bad Kreuznach district
  12. ↑ English translation from Amidah
  13. ↑ Former synagogue
  14. ↑ Jewish graveyard
  15. ↑ Scheffler, Wolfgang. „Johann Christoph Beysiegel.“ Goldschmiede Rheinland-Westfalens: Daten, Werke, Zeichen. Vol. 2. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973. 740.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Meisenheim.
Wikisource has original text related to this article: