After a long break over the summer, we are delighted to post a new Have Your Say personal essay, “Marburg and Its Jewish Stories,” by Dr. Susanne Urban.
In December 2021, Susanne moved to the university town of Marburg to take up the position as Head of the Reporting and Documentation Center on Antisemitism in Germany’s Federal State of Hessen. Previously, she had successfully accompanied the campaign to have the ShUM-Sites Speyer, Worms, and Mainz listed on the UNESCO world heritage roster because of their medieval Jewish tangible heritage.
Eager to see the traces of Jewish history in Marburg, she took “Jewish Walks,” following an eight-stop itinerary promoted through a (downloadable) leaflet from the city’s Tourist Information sector.
The Jewish presence in Marburg dates back to the 13th century. The community flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but in the interwar period Marburg was also a center of the antisemitic movement. Many Jews fled the city after 1933. Those who remained, along with the Sinti, were deported to Riga, Sobibor, Theresienstadt, and Auschwitz. After 1945, Jewish survivors, mainly Displaced Persons (DPs), attempted to re-establish a Jewish community in the city. But only in the 1980s and 1990s, thanks to immigration from the former Soviet Union, did the community really revive; around 300 Jews live in Marburg today.
In her personal essay, Susanne recounts what she saw (and what she didn’t see) on “Jewish walks” around the city.
This is Susanne’s second Have Your Say for Jewish Heritage Europe. Click HERE to read her 2016 essay, “Jewish spaces, German obligation, World Heritage?“
1 comment on “New Have Your Say Personal Essay: Marburg and Its Jewish Stories, by Dr. Susanne Urban, Head of the Reporting and Documentation Center on Antisemitism in Germany’s Federal State of Hessen”
Dear Susanne Urban,
I have heard a lot about you and your amazing work for ShUM! My friend and colleague is Francoise Elkouby,
You may like to visit our website and see and listen to our audio walk in Breisach:
http://www.blaueshausbreisach.de.
There is a long lasting and strong connection to our Alsatian friends. The third Jewish community in Breisach was created when the French ended the long Habsburg Herrschaft and included Breisach into Alsace for just a couple of decades.
Then a new Jewish community was founded which lived here in better and not so good times until the deportation 1940.
We keep the memory alive and keep in touch with many families worldwide and try to add some research …
Warm regards,
Christiane Walesch-Schneller