Lübeck, Germany

Lübeck, Free Hanseatic city, Germany No Jews were admitted to Lübeck while it was a bastion of the Hanseatic League (1230-1535) and for over 100 years thereafter. Polish Jews fleeing the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-49 settled in the neighboring Danish-ruled village of Moisling in 1650. Here they were allowed to open a synagogue in 1686 and acquire a burial ground. Grossing from 12 to 38 families in less than three decades (1709-35), the community was placed under the jurisdiction of Altona's chief rabbinate. After the French occupation in 1806, Jews obtained full citizenship and the community opened a new synagogue in Lübeck in 1812. The Jewish population in Lübeck grew to 308 while that of Moisling declined from 381 to 140 (1811-1815). Following the Vienna Congress, Lübeck senators used every kind of pressure to remove Jews from their city (1814-24). Later, taking its cue from legislation passed by the Frankfurt National Assembly, the Lübeck senate abolished all discriminatory laws and granted Jews full and equal citizenship on 19 October 1848. The community was now able to establish its permanent center in Lübeck. Only 198 of the 493 members lived in Lübeck when a temporary synagogue was opened there in 1851. The following 20 years brought a dramatic change, with 529 Jews residing in Lübeck and 36 in Moisling. To satisfy the demand for a place of worship clearly distinguishable from a church (in return for a municipal loan), the community built in 1880 its new synagogue in the fashionable Moorish style. R. Salomon Carlebach (1870-1919) was an admired scholar and writer, a member of the city parliament, and founder of a rabbinical dynasty. He also impressed Lübeck patricians such as the great novelist Thomas Mann, who immortalized Carlebach in his Doktor Faustus, published in 1947. Numbering 670 in 1900, the community had a solid membership of businessmen and professionals. From 629 in 1925, the Jewish population declined to 497 when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Dr. Fritz Solmitz, who edited the Social Democratic Luebecker Volksbote, became one of their first victims when he was murdered at the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp in September 1933. Nazi boycott measures, from the dismissal of Jewish lawyers and physicians to the burning of proscribed books, also resulted in the collapse and "Aryanization" of leading business firms. Foreseeing the worst, Lübeck Zionists moved to Palestine and in 1934-40 the community operated an elementary school with vocational and agricultural training programs. Since negotiations for the municipality's purchase of the synagogue had already begun, SA units contented themselves with destroying its interior on Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938). Altogether, 359 Jews left Lübeck. Many emigrated between 1933 and 1940; 90 were deported to the Riga ghetto in December 1941 and over 50 were sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1942. Eleven of those who remained in Europe survived the Holocaust. Numbering 400 in 1946, the postwar community virtually disappeared by 1970. It was revived by Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and in 1999 there was a Jewish population of 560.