The history of the

Jews 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""The ...

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

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 ...

, dates back to the beginning of the 13th century. An early written reference to a Jewish presence in Munich is dated 1229, when Abraham de Munichen acted as a witness to the sale of a house in Ratisbon. In 1210, Ludwig I, Duke of Bavaria, permitted the Jews to build a

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 ...

and to acquire a cemetery in 1225. The Jews’ street soon developed into a ghetto, beyond which the Jews were not permitted to live until 1440; the ghetto contained, besides the synagogue, a communal house, a

ritual bath Ritual purification is the ritual prescribed by a religion by which a person is considered to be free of ''uncleanliness'', especially prior to the worship of a deity, and ritual purity is a state of ritual cleanliness. Ritual purification may ...

, a slaughter-house, and a hospital. By the second half of the thirteenth century, the community had increased to 200. Bavarian Jews had loaned money to

Otto I, Duke of Bavaria Otto I (1117 – 11 July 1183), called the Redhead (german: der Rotkopf), was Duke of Bavaria from 1180 until his death. He was also called Otto VI as Count Palatine of Bavaria from 1156 to 1180. He was the first Bavarian ruler from the House ...

, around 1180 to build Landshuth, and received in return special privileges, which were confirmed by Ludwig I, who in 1230 granted them the right to elect the so-called “Jews’ judge.” A pogrom after "a Christian child was found dead and many Jews were killed as revenge " in 1286 is commemorated by two memorial dirges (Kinnot) printed in "Gezerot Ashkenaz Vetzarfat," Haberman, 1956 and described in "Das Martyrologium des Nurnberger Memorbuches" Salfield, 1898 However, in 1442 Jews were excluded from Upper Bavaria, including Munich. Jews only settled back in Munich at the end of the 18th century (53 in 1781, 127 in 1790). The Jewish population is estimated at around 3,500-4,000 in 1875 and around 11,000 in 1910 after the immigration of Eastern Jews following the outbreak of pogroms in Russia. By 1910, 20% of Bavaria's Jews (approximately 11,000 people) lived in the Bavarian capital. By the time the Nazis rose to national power in 1933, there were about 9,000-10,000 Jews in Munich. By May 1938, about 3,500 Jews had emigrated, ca. 3,100 of them moving abroad. By May 1939, the number of Jews in the city had further declined to 5,000. In 1944, only 7 Jews remained in Munich. During the war, about 3,000 Jews were deported, with only about 300 returning after the war. A new community was founded in 1945, which had grown to about 3,500 by 1970. Following the emigration of Jews from the former

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

after 1990, the Jewish population in Munich numbered 5,000 in 1995 and is estimated today to around 9,000, making it the second largest Jewish community in Germany after Berlin.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource
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References

Shoah Resource Center
* Jewish Life in Munich (in German)
Chronology of Jews in Munich

Jews in Munich
* WWII persecution of Jews in Munich
Jewish Munich

German Jewry

External links

* Jewish Population by Cities
The Jewish Community of Munich

The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot ANU - Museum of the Jewish People, formerly the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, is located in Tel Aviv, Israel, at the center of the Tel Aviv University campus in Ramat Aviv. ANU - Museum of the Jewish People is an institution ...

Walther Weiss Collection
at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, contains materials on the Jewish community of Munich from 1894-1941

References

External links

Further reading