Gilserberg is a municipality in the Schwalm-Eder district in Hesse,

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Geography

Location

Gilserberg lies at the foot of the

Kellerwald The Kellerwald is a low mountain range reaching heights of up to 675 m in the western part of northern Hesse, Germany. Its assets include Germany's largest contiguous beech woodland and it contains Hesse's only national park, the Kellerwald-Edersee ...

, a low mountain range, nestled in the

Kurhessen The Electorate of Hesse (german: Kurfürstentum Hessen), also known as Hesse-Kassel or Kurhessen, was a landgraviate whose prince was given the right to elect the Emperor by Napoleon. When the Holy Roman Empire was abolished in 1806, its prin ...

Highland on Federal Highway (''Bundesstraße'') B 3, 60 km from

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

and 30 km from

Marburg Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximate ...

Constituent communities

Together with the main centre, which also bears the same name as the whole municipality, the ten centres of Appenhain, Heimbach, Itzenhain, Lischeid, Moischeid, Sachsenhausen, Schönau, Schönstein, Sebbeterode and Winterscheid also belong to the community of Gilserberg.

History

Gilserberg had its first documentary mention in 1262.

Religion

Jewish community

There was a

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

ish community in Gilserberg from the 18th century through to sometime after 1933. The Jewish population peaked about 1900 at 70 or more persons. The first

synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...

was supposedly built about the beginning of the 19th century. A newer one was festively consecrated on 12 January 1898. However, it was destroyed on

Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from ...

(9 November 1938). At least four of the community's Jewish residents were murdered in

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

death camps Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...

. All that is left nowadays in Gilserberg of the former Jewish community is a small Jewish

graveyard A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...

Amalgamations

As part of Hesse's municipal reforms, the formerly independent communities of Gilserberg, Heimbach, Lischeid, Moischeid, Sachsenhausen, Schönau, Schönstein, Sebbeterode and Winterscheid voluntarily combined to form the community of Gilserberg on 1 January 1972. On 1 April of the same year, the communities of Appenhain and Itzenhain also joined, making the community complete.

Town partnership

Rocheservière Rocheservière () is a commune in the Vendée department in the Pays de la Loire region in western France. The Battle of Rocheservière was fought nearby in 1815. Geography Climate Rocheservière has a oceanic climate (Köppen climate classi ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

References

External links

Gilserberg's website

{{Authority control Schwalm-Eder-Kreis Holocaust locations in Germany