The Photographic Documentation of the Epitaphs in the Jewish Cemetery in
Königstraße, Altona (1942-1944) within its Historical Context.
Due to its age and relatively intact condition the Jewish cemetery in Königstraße, Altona is regarded as the most significant monument of Jewish history in north Germany. In addition, the remaining gravestones are historic examples of local stonemasonry. The origin of the cemetery can be traced back to 1611 when the Portuguese Jewish community in Hamburg (Portugiesisch-Jüdische Gemeinde Hamburg) acquired a plot of land in Altona from Count Ernst von Schauenburg. In 1616 the Altona High German Jewish community (Altonaer Hochdeutsche-Israelitische Gemeinde) carried out their first burials in a neighbouring plot of land. There is no remaining documentary evidence of the acquisition of the latter cemetery but the acquisition was confirmed by King Christian IV in 1641. The Ashkenazi community enlarged their cemetery in 1668, 1710, 1745 and 1806 by buying further plots of land. The Altona tutelary Jews resident in Hamburg also buried their dead in this Ashkenazi cemetery. When the Königstraße cemetery was closed in 1869 there were 6,668 graves in the Ashkenazi section and 1,806 graves in the Portuguese section. The last burial in the Ashkenazi section took place in 1871 when Chief Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger was buried there.
Over the following decades construction work was carried out around the edges of the cemetery, for example the straightening of roads. This work took place in consultation with representatives of the Altona Jewish community, as owners of the land, so as not to violate the regulations regarding the peace of the cemetery. The first extensive destruction to the cemetery was threatened in 1928 when the Altona authorities planned to construct a through-road directly through the centre of the cemetery. Dr Joseph Carlebach, Chief Rabbi of the Altona High German Jewish community from 1925 to 1936, successfully convinced the authorities of the historical and cultural significance of the cemetery and the cemetery remained untouched.
Following the "seizure of power" by the Nazis both sections of the cemetery were
again placed under threat. In November 1935 the Altona planning department began
a correspondence with Wallroth, the chairman of the regional council, whose office
was in Schleswig. The planning department proposed examining the possibility of the
expropriation of the Jewish cemeteries in Bismarckstraße and Königstraße so as to
ensure the "continuation of urban development". However, Berlage, senior official of
the planning department, did not specify what use was envisaged for the land the two
cemeteries occupied. In a further letter Berlage referred to the "contemporary sense
of justice" and the "general interest" that had preference over the interests of "a small
group". More emphatically than in the first letter he wrote:
"Obviously, the position of the Jews cannot result in a permanent prevention of
building and other urban development in these important areas".
Berlage's persistence was met with hesitation by Wallroth. The latter requested
detailed reports regarding ownership and the general legal position as well as the
historical construction of the two cemeteries. Thereby curbed, Berlage consulted the
legal department, the public health department and the state archives in Altona, the
Hamburg state archives, and the Prussian state archives in Kiel in order to procure
the requested information.
In September 1936, the Altona legal department informed the planning department that the result of its clarification of ownership was that, under civil law, the Portuguese Jewish community and the High German Jewish community were owners of the two sections of the cemetery in Königstraße. The legal department made reference to the relevant entries in the land register and also argued that ownership was valid through prescriptive right. And that it was also impossible, under civil law, to make any kind of restriction such as a revocation of the granting of ownership of the cemetery. The public health department in its reply had no "misgivings regarding hygiene" in connection with the continued existence of the cemetery situated in the midst of a densely populated residential area. In the meantime, Wallroth had contacted the Reich minister for church affairs (Reichsminister für kirchliche Angelegenheiten), Hans Kerrl, regarding the problem. The latter requested a detailed report about planned dispossession of the cemetery and its reconcilability with legal maxims - a request that Wallroth forwarded to Berlage in December 1936.
Obviously unhappy with the way things had developed Berlage requested the legal department for further clarification and was informed that expropriation of the cemetery was in principle possible, but that the fact that the expropriated land was a cemetery would create special difficulties. An expropriation of the land would establish a new ownership but not the right of disposal which was determined by the characteristics of the cemetery. These restrictions as to use were founded upon "traditional views" regarding the immutability of cemeteries as well as ritual aspects that would have to be violated. The legal department sensibly suggested that the application of the planning department would act as an imputus for the application for the establishment of a new legal position.
Thereupon, Berlage attempted to convince Wallroth of the "urgency" of a conclusive
decision regarding the expropriation of the land. With this end in view he sent
Wallroth development plans for the Jewish cemeteries in Bismarckstraße and
Königstraße. In actuality, the areas of the two cemeteries were only filled with the
sketched in outlines of houses. Finally Berlage admitted that there were no
definite plans for the development of the Königstraße cemetery. It was possible that
the planned building of flatlets would be changed to the building of large garages and
car parks. The plans were supplemented with the following remark:
"It opposes the most significant interests of the population when, within a built-up
area, within a densely developed district with serious road problems, essential
measures are confronted with insurmountable difficulties because old, long unused
cemeteries prevent coherent urban development without the possibility of breaching
taditional views of the perpetual immutability of every cemetery".
This latest attempt of the planning department to transfer the Altona Jewish cemeteries to the ownership of the city via legal means was unsucessful - Wallroth did not reply to Berlage's letter.
At the time of the Berlage initiative there were no valid nationwide ways and means of dispossessing Jewish individuals or corporate bodies. The prevailing interpretation of the law was the compulsory regulation of the Reich minister of justice (from 21st April 1936) binding for all state governments which, as estreat, Wallroth brought to the attention of the planning department. The Nuremberg laws of 1935 had settled the "Jewish question" in terms of marriage and constitutional law but not the "commercial law for the Jews". Moreover, the Reich minister of justice reminded the state authorities that the regulation was the reserve of the Reich leadership and individual authorities were not to anticipate such proceedings. Such laws referring to the proprietory rights and the rights of ownership of Jews were not appropriate at this time. Wallroth's hestitant reaction to Berlage's initiative must be seen within this context.
Three years later, in 1939, the situation was different. The "3rd regulation regarding the restructuring of the Reich capital Berlin" ("3. Verordnung über die Neugestaltung der Reichshauptstadt Berlin") and its application to Hamburg in paragraph 12 of the "regulation regarding the restructuring of the Hansa city of Hamburg" ("Verordnung über die Neugestaltung der Hansestadt Hamburg") made it legally possible to expropriate cemetery land which was required as part of the urban planning for the new structuring of Hamburg, or to revoke the status of cemetery and thereby make the land available. Altona had become an administrative district of Hamburg under the Greater Hamburg Act (Großhamburg-Gesetz) that came into force on 1.1.1938. The reasoning behind this was the plan to develop the bank of the Elbe within the framework of converting Hamburg into a "Führer city" ("Führerstadt")- a colossal development project within which Altona, among other areas, was to be completely restructured. The planner-architect was the later Hamburg city planner Konstanty Gutschow.
It was not until 1941 that this regulation was utilized, in an announcement by the local government of Hamburg, with reference to its universal application, in revoking the use of the land on which the Jewish cemeteries in Bismarckstraße and Königstraße stood. This was the first step to a possible expropriation of the land.
At the same time, with the enactment of the anti-Semitic laws from 1938 onward, Jews were excluded from all aspects of life, including economic life. Within this context negotiations began, in 1942, in Hamburg for the purchase of around 40 properties and buildings, some of which belonged to the Hamburg Jewish Religious Association (Jüdische Religionsverband Hamburg). The prospective buyer was the Hansa city Hamburg but the "offer" of purchase came as an instruction from the SS- Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt der SS - RSHA), which functioned as supervisory authority to the Reich Organization of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland - RVJD) of which the north-west German regional office of the Jewish Religious Association (Jüdischer Religionsverband Bezirksstelle Nordwest), was a member. Dr Leo Lippmann, board member of the Hamburg Jewish community, represented the RVJD regional office and Hans Joachim Rechter, senior official (Stadtoberinspector) from the land registry office (Liegenschaftsamt) represented the Hansa city Hamburg. Unexpectedly the negotiations of compulsory purchase included the two cemeteries which constituted the Jewish cemetery in Königstraße - the enactment of paragraph 12 of the "regulation regarding the restructuring of the Hansa city of Hamburg" permitted the legal expropriation of the land.
Rechter urgently sought contact with the department responsible for "Jewish Affairs" ("Judenangelegenheiten") in the RSHA (department IV B 4) and the RVJD whose consent was required for the completion of the bill of sale. He spent from the 7th to the 9th December 1942 in talks with representatives of the RSHA and RVJD in Berlin over which he wrote a "report of the journey" ("Reisebericht"). The principal point of negotiation was the purchase price of the individual properties and buildings. Although Rechter also negotiated with representatives of the RVJD it was obvious that the actual Hamburg contact was not the RVJD but the Reich ministry of the interior (Reichsministerium des Inneren), represented by the RSHA. Its representative, SS-Obersturmführer Pachow, specified that the authorization of sale would be granted by the Reich only when the purchase price reflected the current market value of the property.
"The purchase price will be credited to the account of the RVJD over which the RSHA has exclusive disposal. Reich money is in question and so it is essential that in each case it is confirmed that the purchase price corresponds to the current market value."
The negotiations undertaken by Rechter on behalf of the RSHA explain why, at this particular time, the Hansa city Hamburg, when already the majority of its Jewish population had been deported to concentration and extermination camps, could not resort to dispossession but saw it necessary to conclude a bill of sale of what was the compulsory sale of the property and buildings: the RSHA wished also to be involved in the decision regarding the amount of de facto subvention by the Hansa city.
Rechter returned to Hamburg, having spent three days in Berlin, with the RSHA authorized power of attorney for Dr Lippmann. The intention of sale was authenticated on the 18th December 1942. The contract was finally signed on the 9th January 1943. Dr Max Plaut, head of the north-west German regional office of the RVJD, as well as Dr Lippmann, who as board member of the Religious Association (Jüdische Religionsverband) was responsible for finance, had power of attorney for the Religious Association.
The over 2 million Reichsmark - the two sections of the Königstraße cemetery were
assessed at RM 379,800 - was credited to the special "property proceeds"
("Grundstückserlöse") account of the RVJD. However, the money did not in any
manner contribute to the betterment of the Jewish population; on the contrary it was
used by the RSHA to finance the deportations of the Jews from Hamburg to the
various concentration and extermination camps. Both the stipulated 20 year period of
repose following the last burial (in 1871!) and reburial were in opposition to Jewish
religious law which stipulates that Jewish cemeteries are established for eternity. And
so the contract contained a number of assurances which, seen within the period,
were devoid of any reality:
"Should it be necessary at a later date to remove gravestones and graves in
connection with urban planning then the purchaser will proceed with the requisit
reverence and also preserve gravestones of family or historical significance.
Should at a later date the use of the cemetery land require the removal of bodily
remains the latter will be collected in sacks or bags and re-buried in another Jewish
cemetery. The costs are to be born by the purchaser. When possible representatives
of the purchaser will assist in this process.
Should it be necessary, due to unforseen circumstances at a later date, to rebury bodily
remains for which the period of repose has not expired the purchaser will bear the
costs of re-employing and re-erecting the gravestones belonging to the said
graves."
The planned destruction of the Jewish cemeteries in Hamburg following the completion of the contract had been foreseen by Dr Leo Lippmann, Dr Max Plaut and Hans W. Hertz as early as 1938/39. They had then decided to document the epitaphs of all the Jewish cemeteries in Hamburg following the example of the photographic documentation of the 1937 exhumed Grindel cemetery. This work was carried out by Hertz who, although not being Jewish, had committed himself to the preservation of the cultural and archival heritage of the Jewish community. The project was financed from donations from both Jewish and non-Jewish firms.
The photographic documentation of the cemeteries in Bismarckstraße/Ottensen, Königsreihe/Wandsbek, Am Schwarzenberg/Harburg and No. 75 Neuer Steinweg/Neustadt had been completed by October 1941. The only cemetery remaining to be documented was the Jewish cemetery in Königstraße/Altona which had the greatest number of graves. When Hans W. Hertz, the women photographers O. Schwartz and A. Vinzelberg, and the photographer from the planning department H. Lindenhoven began their work in the autumn of 1942, the negotiations over the bill of sale of the properties and buildings of the Jewish community were already under way and the first survey for an alternative use of the cemetery had been carried out.
Concerned about these developments the Jewish Religious Association wrote to the land registry office requesting permission to complete the proceeding photographic documentation. Dr Lippmann's letter refers to the "valuable genealogical material that would also be continually required by the authorities for verification of Jewish extraction". Hertz also lodged a complaint with Rechter in this regard and was informed that the cemetery was to be put to "imminent" use, that storage sheds for a neighbouring factory were to be constructed on the site; additionally a National Socialist People's Welfare (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt - NSV) children's home, as well as three barracks for foreign slave workers were planned. Hertz thereby attempted to obtain a prolongation of the period of photographic documentation and the transfer of those gravestones most siginifance to Jewish culure and history to the Jewish cemetery in Ohlsdorf.
Hertz's proposal received support from an unexpected source. After concluding the
negotiations of sale in the RSHA, Berlin Rechter was informed that the Berlin based
"Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany" ("Reichinstitut für Geschichte
des neuen Deutschlands" - RIGND) was interested in the Jewish cemeteries included
among the negotiated properties. In accordance with the RSHA's wish Rechter
visited the RIGND and was informed that "assessments" were planned before the
dissolving of the Jewish cemeteries. This not only involved genealogical knowledge
gathered from the gravestones:
"but also the establishment of ethnogeny for which exhumation was necessary.
Especially measurements of the skull and other bones were to be carried out and
principally on those bodily remains dating from the earliest of times."
The project was established as a research project of the RIGND in the summer of 1942 under the title "Securing of the Historical and Anthropological Material from the Jewish Cemeteries in Germany" ("Sicherstellung des historischen und anthropologischen Materials der Judenfriedhöfe in Deutschland"). Supplementary to a register of Jews, a register of births, marriages and deaths, the photographic documentation of epitaphs as genealogical material was seen as a kind of "securing measure" ("Sicherungsmaßnahme") providing information regarding the "migration of the Jews" ("Wanderungsbewegungen der Juden").
The staff of the RIGND expressly ephasized that, besides "state and party departments", the project had the support of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. The suggested documentary project made to Richter during his visit to the RSHA in Berlin can be seen as an example of such support. However, Himmler's support did not necessarily guarantee the "success" of the RIGND project. This was demonstrated by certain Reich authorities in their refusal of the additional work involved in securing this cultural monument. For example, the Reich ministry of science (Reichswissenschaftsministerium), stressed "that the care of our German monuments are more important than Jewish gravestones". If the RIGND regarded such work as essential then they should carry out this work independently and without assistence. However, the authorities in Hamburg were prepared to support Prof. Erich Botzenhart, deputy head of the RIGND, with this research project. With Botzenhart's help Hertz again successfully obtained a "period of grace" for the cemetery enabling him to continue his photographic documentation of the epitaphs.
In 1944 gravestones located in a part of the eastern section of the Jewish cemetery, that is the Ashkenazi section, were cleared to one side so as to make place for barracks, however, the building project was never implemented. Also in the Portuguese Jewish section of the cemetery some sarcophagus superstructures with memorial slabs were removed so that sheds could be built over the horizontal slabs; again this action did not proceed further than preparatory work. It never became possible for representatives of the RIGND to carry out the intended exhumation for the purpose of "ethnological measurement" ("rassenkundlicher Vermessungen") before the end of the war in 1945. However, the photographic documentation of the cemetery continued, with interruptions, until October 1944 when, with a few exceptions, it was completed despite the war.
Today:
After extensive research and restoration of the graves the cemetery was reopened on 29 November 2007 when Mayor Ole von Beust inaugurated the new reception building, the
Eduard Duckesz House.
Eduard Jecheskel Duckesz was born on 3 August 1868 in Szelepszeny, Hungary. He was rabbi, historian and genealogist: After studying at the Pressburger Yeshiva in 1891 he became rabbi and teacher for the Altona Klaus synagogue. As well as serving as a judge on Jewish Law, Mohel, hospital pastoral worker, garrison chaplain and representative of the highest rabbinical court he also researched into the Jewish grave inscriptions and the genealogy of Jewish families from the Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek (AHU) tri community.
In 1939 he immigrated to Holland from Nazi Germany. In 1943 he was deported from the Westerbork internment camp to Auschwitz where he was murdered on 6 March 1944.
Opening Hours:
October to March: Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday: 14:00 hrs to 17:00 hrs
April to September: Tuesday and Thursday: 15:00 hrs to 18:00 hrs; Sunday: 14:00 to 17:00 hrs
Closed on public holidays and Jewish holidays.
German text:
Gaby Zürn: Die Fotografische Dokumentation von Grabinschriften auf dem Jüdischen
Friedhof Königstraße/Altona (1942-1944) und Ihr Historischer Kontext. in
Peter Freimark, Alice Jankowski, Ina S. Lorenz (eds.), Juden in Deutschland.
Emanzipation, Integration, Verfolgung und Vernichtung. 25 Jahre Institut für die
Geschichte der deutschen Juden Hamburg. Hamburg 1991.
Literature:
Renata Klée Gobert (ed.), Die Bau- und Kulturdenkmale der Freien und
Hansestadt Hamburg. Vol II: Altona, Elbvororte, Hamburg 1970, pp. 105-107.
Naphtali Carlebach: Joseph Carlebach and his Generation. Biography of the late
Chief Rabbi of Altona and Hamburg. New York 1959.
Dirk Schubert: Führerstadtplanung in Hamburg, in
"Vertrag über den Ohlsdorfer Friedhof zwischen dem Senat und den Vorständen der
Deutsch-Israelitischen und der Portugiesisch-Jüdischen Gemeinde vom 1[9.] Juni
1882, genehmigt durch Senatsbeschluß vom 26. Juli 1882" in
Ina Lorenz: Die Juden in Hamburg zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik. Vol I.
Hamburg 1987, pp. 520-522.
Michael Bose, et al: " ... ein neues Hamburg entsteht ... ". Planen und Bauen von
1933-1945. Hamburg 1986, pp. 16-45.
H.G. Adler: Der verwaltete Mensch. Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus
Deutschland. Tübingen 1974, p. 563.
Joseph Walk: Kurzbiographien zur Geschichte der Juden 1918-1945. Munich 1988,
p. 239, p. 298.
Leo Lippmann: Der Jüdische Religionsverband Hamburg im Jahre 1942. Die
Liquidation der jüdischen Stiftungen und Vereine in Hamburg. Hamburg 1943, pp.
23-26.
Hans W. Hertz: Memorandum betr. Photographische Aufnahmen der Inschriften auf
den alten jüdischen Friedhöfen und teilweise Aufhebung derselben. IGDJ, Archiv 30-
003, p. 2
Helmut Heiber: Walter Frank und sein Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen
Deutschland. Stuttgart 1966, p. 474.
Michael Studemund-Halévy: Biographisches Lexikon der Hamburger Sefarden.
Hamburg 2000.
Michael Studemund-Halévy/Gabriele Zürn: Zerstört die Erinnerung nicht. Der jüdische Friedhof Königstraße in Hamburg.
Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 2002.