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Germany: 18 Medieval Jewish gravestones have been discovered in Mainz. They were used in construction along the Rhine, 500 years or more ago

Medieval Gravestones discovered in Mainz. Photo ©MWWK/Piel

Eighteen medieval Jewish gravestones have been discovered during construction work in the old town of Mainz. They were built into a wall  along the Rhine river following 15th century pogroms that saw the expulsion of Jews from the city and destruction of the Jewish cemetery, which had dated from the 11th century. 

“After 1438, large numbers of the medieval tombstones from the ‘Old Jewish Cemetery in Mainz’ were misused as building material,”  Konrad Wolf, Minister for Culture of Rhineland-Palatinate state said in a statement earlier this month announcing the find.

This also applies to the gravestones that have now been rediscovered. They are centuries-old evidence of Jewish roots and tradition in Mainz. We will now clarify together with the Jewish community how we will deal with the finds. 

The announcement said that experts from the Mainz State Archaeology Department, called to the site by construction workers, had uncovered the stones in November, 2020. According to a photograph supplied by the Ministry, the stones are massive slabs whose Hebrew inscriptions are their only decoration, similar to the oldest stones in the Jewish cemetery in Worms, which also dates from the 11th century and is the oldest Jewish cemetery surviving in situ in Europe.

The Mainz stones are now stored in a facility of the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage (GDKE) in Mainz-Bretzenheim. They will undergo scientific processing, including deciphering and analysis of their inscriptions.

Mainz, together with Speyer and Worms, formed an important center of Jewish life  in the Middle Ages, known collectively as “ShUM,” an acronym of first letters of the medieval Hebrew names for the cities. Local authorities have nominated the ShUM cities to become a UNESCO site of world heritage.

In 1926 180 medieval tombstones and fragments from the destroyed Mainz cemetery that had rediscovered in the course of construction work over the years, were re-erected in a Memorial Cemetery. They date from the 11th to the early 15th century — the oldest stone, dating from 1049 — that of Jehuda ben Schneor —  is currently in the Mainz State Museum.

In addition to the old Jewish cemetery in Worms, the stones from the Mainz cemetery comprise the most important testimony to the centuries-old burial tradition of Jews in the ShUM communities. 

“The excavation on Rheinstrasse gives us another look at the important historical legacy of Mainz’s Jewish past,” Marion Witteyer, Head of State Archeology Mainz, said in the announcement.

At the same time, it is also a testimony to one of the dark phases in Jewish history when Jewish graves were desecrated here and in many other cities in Germany and Europe and gravestones were reused as building material. […] it is certain that the tombstones were built into the bank of the Rhine in the 15th century, at the latest in the 1st half of the 16th century. 

Read the announcement of the find

See the Mainz page of the the ShUM cities web site

ShUM cities web site

 

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7 comments on “Germany: 18 Medieval Jewish gravestones have been discovered in Mainz. They were used in construction along the Rhine, 500 years or more ago”

  1. Horrible German genetic antisemitism illness that continues to thrive in Germany. That gravestone spin is only to calm some German consciences and promote nice PR. They really don’t mean it They have strong and dominant anti-Semitic genes, they are just hiding it and you all are buying it…

    Reply

    • Nobody has anti-Semitic or racist GENES. In the words of Oscar Hammerstein, “to hate all the people your relatives hate, you’ve got to be carefully taught.”

      Reply

    • All throughout Europe. Either Israel or some organization should demand and even fund the countries to refurbish and preserve the cemeteries –for tourists and religious commemoration.

      Reply

  2. You may find our provisional reading and translation of four inscriptions, that could be read from the photos published by the local media on our website: http://www.steinheim-institut.de
    These headstones are dated, (the years given here in C.E.):
    1316: Mrs. Brunlin b. Moshe
    1328: Mrs. Adelheit b. Hillel
    1401: Mordechai b. El’azar
    1405: hana’ar Shlomo b. El’azar
    Salomon L. Steinheim-Institut fuer deutsch-juedische Geschichte
    an der Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, North-Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

    Reply

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