Meisenheim

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.Area

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.Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz – Amtliches Verzeichnis der Gemeinden und Gemeindeteile , Seite 16 (PDF; 2,2 MB)

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– 757Falsified documents). 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 ("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 Palatine 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 the long united lands of the Electorate of Bavaria and the Electorate of the Palatinate. While these three states 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 along with the other left-bank territories. After the end of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in 1815, the Congress of Vienna assigned the part of Palatinate-Zweibrücken lying north of the Glan, including Meisenheim, to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg rather than Maximilian's Kingdom of Bavaria. From 1816 onwards, Meisenheim was the administrative seat of the of Meisenheim and an . In 1866 the Grand Duchy of Hesse inherited Hesse-Homburg but had to cede its territory to the Kingdom of Prussia later that same year following its defeat in the Austro-Prussian War. 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 more thorough 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) crime wave. 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 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 of the of Meisenheim in Hesse-Homburg times and ("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)