cometoweb

German immigration to America began around 1840. By the end of the century, more than 8 million people had left their homeland. Jews too saw their opportunities, whether because of crop disasters or the failed 1848 revolution, but mainly because of the still unfulfilled equal rights in the states of the German Bund. Not everyone stayed on the East Coast; many moved on to the young states of the Midwest. The example of three native Lorschers shows entrepreneurial and social success that was not possible for Jews in their homeland to this extent. Jacob Rohrheimer came to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1847. He founded a cigar factory and became involved in the community. The old people’s home he helped start still exists today. Simon Mainzer emigrated in 1868. He started a textile business with his brother-in-law Julius Houseman. Houseman later became a congressman for Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives. Julius Krakauer came to New York as a child in 1853 and became a musician and composer. He, his father, and his Heppenheim-born brother David established a piano factory. Under Julius‘ leadership, Krakauer Pianos became a leader in the industry.

Ferdinand Oppenheimer: from Kleinhausen to Strasbourg.
With the onset of industrialization, the children of rural Jews sought their fortunes in cities, especially those with strong Jewish communities. In 1872, after the Franco-Prussian War, Ferdinand (Feist) Oppenheimer, born in Kleinhausen in 1846, went to Strasbourg with his brother-in-law Isaac Adler. The two had married two sisters from the Goldschmidt family in Worms. In Strasbourg, they founded a leather factory that was to grow into the largest in Europe. In 1905, at the death of their co-founder Ferdinand Oppenheimer, A&O already had over 1,000 employees.

Babette Mainzer and family: Lorsch, Frankfurt, London.
Babette Mainzer (1831 – 1896) was one of 14 children of Mei’r ben Baruch (Maier Mainzer, 1803 – 1850). Only three of her brothers remained in Lorsch, she herself married the banker Jacob Löwenstein from Frankfurt. Before her husband founded his own business, he was an authorized signatory in the Schwarzschild banking house on Frankfurt’s Rossmarkt. Babette’s son Leopold became a banker like his father. In 1893, Leopold Löwenstein went to London. There he changed the family name to Layton. Lepold was married to Caroline Hirsch, a granddaughter of the Frankfurt founder of Neo-Orthodoxy, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. Caroline’s sister Rahel (1870-1953) was the first woman to hold a professorial title in medicine in Germany (Prussia). Rahel Hirsch lived with the Laytons in London after their emigration in 1938. The Laytons were friends with the Frankfurt Rothschilds. This relationship proved helpful in the evacuation of 28 German Jewish boys and girls who were rescued from the Rothschilds‘ estate in Frankfurt and brought to England with the help of Ralph and Julian Layton. It was not the only rescue operation carried out by the two brothers, the grandsons of Babette Mainzer-Löwenstein.

Unlike in the cities, where Jews were confined for centuries to their own neighborhoods and alleys on the edges of the city walls, rural Jews enjoyed relative freedom of settlement in the villages. Because of their professions – most were merchants – they took up residence directly in the center of the communities. In Lorsch, this was initially in Stiftstrasse and Römerstrasse in the 18th century. At the latest with the connection to the railroad (1869) they bought houses in Bahnhofstraße, which developed into the local commercial center. With 3,300 inhabitants, the Jewish population share reached its high point in Lorsch at that time with 2.8%. Twelve Jewish families lived in Bahnhofstrasse and in the adjacent Kirchstrasse and Rheinstrasse. Words from the Jewish market language were adopted into the Lorsch dialect. Jewish traditions and customs were familiar to the neighbors and a sukkah in the courtyard of the rural property was a natural sight.

Besides the executive board, the teacher, preacher or cantor (and in former times also the kosher shepherd) was the most important person for the religious community. Salomon Abraham is the first teacher of the Lorsch community that is known by name, which had already existed for more than 100 years. The community paid a salary and provided an apartment with a garden. Many children were born here. In the second half of the 19th century it became increasingly difficult for the small Jewish rural communities to find teachers and preachers. Often only applicants from Eastern Europe, from Russia or from Habsburg Galicia applied for the small salary. Frequently, they brought family members with them, who settled here and married into the German communities. The Jaffés came from what is now Lithuania. Mendel Jaffé was the uncle of his two Lorsch-born successors, Abraham and Josef Jaffé. Pogroms in the Czarist empire and better opportunities for career advancement increased migration from East to West until after the First World War. One consequence was the deportation of repatriates by the Nazi state.

The diaries are unique. They prove the close cooperation between Catholics and Jews since the introduction of the Rentenmark. With the Nazi seizure of power, the decline of the Jewish community becomes comprehensible here. The books reveal individuals of whom there is no record in other sources. The receipts and expenditures of both communities can be traced, from church collections to the purchase of palm branches for the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. Three journals have been preserved. They had to be submitted annually to the tax office. There is no evidence of a state-imposed abandonment of this practice under Nazism. The crises of the 1920s show the declining financial strength of the Lorsch Jews. In 1931 and 1932, some of them fell behind with their payments to their own community. After 1933 and with the boycott, only the most necessary expenditures were made. These included the teacher’s salary and running costs such as electricity. Precentor and reader services were no longer taken on from outside, but were done by the congregation’s own members – for a small fee. Bills can now only be paid in installments. The balance of a savings bank account for current expenses melted down to zero. The dissolution of the community after 1938 must have been reflected in a fourth volume for which there is a carryover. This volume is lost.

Court factors were the financiers of the princely houses. They occupied a special position, enjoyed freedom of establishment and were at the top of the Jewish society. In the 17th and 18th centuries, some of them gained enormous importance. The most famous and historically most negatively portrayed court factor (especially by the National Socialists) was Joseph Süß Oppenheimer („Jud Süß“), born in Heidelberg in 1698, who fell victim to judicial murder in Stuttgart in 1738. As early as 1384, wealthy merchant Jews had enjoyed tax privileges in the Starkenburg Oberamt. Moses Löb Isaak zur Kann (born around 1690 -1761) was the richest resident of Frankfurt’s Judengasse in the 18th century. His family owned the „Stone House“ of the alley. He had pushed through the construction of the city palace against the Frankfurt City Council and after the intervention of his father-in-law Samson Wertheimer (court factor at the imperial court in Vienna). Moses Kann’s family had become wealthy by leasing the salt mines of Orb and Soden in the Electorate of Mainz and the tobacco monopoly in Hesse-Darmstadt. He himself was court factor appointed by both courts and at the same time chief rabbi in Darmstadt, as well as Klaus rabbi and head of the Talmud school in Frankfurt. From 1728 to 1739, Moses Kann leased the Seehof manor near Lorsch from the Electorate of Mainz for 2,700 gulden a year. Mainz had drained the former Lorsch Lake at the beginning of the century and relied on the agricultural development of the area. Kann and his subtenants planted special crops such as hops and tobacco, and operated an oil mill, a brewery and a distillery. Fourage, i.e. hay, grain and oats were delivered to the court in Mainz via the Rhine. These beginnings later developed into the Lorsch filial village of Seehof, which would cease to exist already in 1856.

By the middle of the 19th century, rural Jewry had passed its developmental zenith. Industrialization and new freedoms attracted not only Jews to the cities and overseas. Sometimes the step into the New Era succeeded also in the countryside. Lazarus Morgenthau moved from the Bavarian Palatinate to Mannheim in Baden and founded a factory for a new kind of product: the cigar. His brother Zacharias (1818-1898) even returned from America and moved to Lorsch. Here and in Heppenheim, the brothers founded more cigar factories. The most important market was California. Gold prospectors were supplied with whole shiploads, at good prices against Cuban and American competition. This went well for a few years until Abraham Lincoln had high import duties imposed in favor of American farmers.Lazarus invested in a new product: a de-nicotinized cigar with spruce-needle aroma, which he promoted as being beneficial to health. He was a hundred years ahead of his time and the realization of the harmfulness of smoking. It did not become big business. In 1866, he liquidated all his businesses, sold the real estate, auctioned off his household goods, and left for New York with his wife and children and a capital of 60,000 guilders. His later best-known son Heinrich (Henry) founded the Morgenthau dynasty of politicians in the USA. Zacharias Morgenthau remained in Lorsch. He had married here a second time. With him and his brother, industrial cigar manufacturing had come to Lorsch, a trade that would flourish in the town for a hundred years. The people of Mannheim looked on with amusement as the Morgenthaus‘ luggage was lined up for departure, and the local folk quickly had a mocking verse ready:

„Spruce needles, pine cones,
worthless things, and nothing useful.
And the patent with our emblem,
Morgenthau will make you sick!“
(Heinrich Unger, quoted from: Mannheimer Gesch. Bl. No. 17, 1916)

Die Abbildung zeigt die Lithografie der Innenseite einer Zigarettendose, im Original 9 x 8 cm, aus dem Jahr 1913 / 1914

Hermann Lorch (1871 — 1951) war alles andere als ein Mann der Tabakbranche, aber er war geschäftlich sehr vielseitig veranlagt und in Lorsch als Tabak- und Zigarrenstadt waren die Voraussetzungen für die Partizipation an diesem Markt bestens gegeben. Von seinem Onkel Simon (dem Erbauer der Steinsynagoge in Lorsch) hatte er einen gut eingeführten Eisenwaren – und Baumaterialhandel übernommen. Seine drei Söhne halfen im Geschäft.

1914 wurde er an die Front gerufen, da war seine jüngste Unternehmung, Herlo, die erste Zigarettenmarke am Ort, gerade ein Jahr alt. Viel älter wurde sie nicht. Doch davon musste er nach dem Krieg auch das Finanzamt überzeugen. Für jüdische Steuerakten interessierten sich die Nationalsozialisten später sehr. Auf Anfrage des Finanzamtes an die Bürgermeisterei Lorsch am 20.1.1921 teilte diese mit: „Die Cigarettenfabrikation des Herm. Lorch wurde am 19. Februar 1913 angmeldet, ist aber bereits schon lange Zeit wieder aufgegeben. Die Fabrikation von Cigarren und Cigarillos wurde am 11. September 1919 von dem Sohn Jacob Lorch angemeldet.“

Hermann Lorch floh mit seiner Frau Frieda und dem jüngsten seiner drei Söhne im August 1939 gerade noch rechtzeitig nach Baltimore. Die beiden älteren Söhne und seine einzige Tochter waren bereits vorher in die USA ausgewandert. Die Herlo Tabakdose im Jugendstil Design ist sehr selten. Ein Exemplar erzielte einen deutlich vierstelligen Betrag bei einer Auktion im Jahre 2020.

When Hannchen Rohrheimer of Lorsch married Isaac Oppenheimer in Fränkisch-Crumbach, she brought a new trade to the Odenwald with her knowledge of cigar making. The tobacco was supplied from Lorsch. Hannchen Oppenheimer was the grandmother of Ruth David (1929 – 2020), a Holocaust survivor and unforgotten contemporary witness in our region. Hermann Lorch (1871-1951) launched „Herlo“, the first Lorsch cigarette brand, in 1913. Because of the war, it did not enjoy lasting success. Emanuel Herzberger (1850 – 1914) came to Lorsch from Crefeld in 1880. With various partners he produced cigars, since 1892 in a factory directly next to the monastery. His sons Alfred (1875 – 1951) and Joseph (1875 – 1942) ran the company until it was sold in 1931. Of Herzberger’s seven children, three of his four daughters were born in Lorsch. All three married Christian partners. Amalie’s husband Franz Haagner came from the Sektkellerei (sparkling wine) Schloss Wachenheim family. When he died in 1943, she lost her privileged protection as a Jew. She and other members of the family became victims of the Shoa.

Das Lorscher Gericht – die damalige Bezeichnung für den Gemeinderat – bestand mit seinem Schreiben von 1656 an den neuen Burggrafen Philipp von Hoheneck auf dem 27 Jahre zuvor – 1629 – abgeschlosenen Grundstücksgeschäft von Waldenburgs. Dieser hatte nun von den Lorschern gefordert, sie sollten den Juden „klaglos“ stellen, also den Schuldschein bezahlen. Offenbar wollten Waldenburg – der eine neue Verwendung in der Mainzer Regierung hatte – bzw. sein Nachfolger von dem Kauf nichts mehr wissen. Die Lorscher hatten nach dem Ursprung des Scheins geforscht und konnten das Papier deshalb auf Waldenburg zurückführen. Als letzter in der Kette hatte, so stellte es das Lorscher Gericht fest, Isaacs Vater während des Krieges einem Bauern in Groß-Rohrheim ein Anrecht auf ein Pferd besorgt, das dieser zum Kriegsdienst stellen musste. Diese Art von „Praetenßion“ war handelbar und erlaubte es dem Bauern, sein eigenes Pferd, wenn er denn eines hatte, für die wichtige Feldarbeit zu behalten. Dafür war Isaacs Vater mit dem Lorscher Schuldschein bezahlt worden, der nun von seinem Sohn vorgelegt wurde.
Das Original des Scheines war gar nicht mehr vorhanden. Das Wechselpapier war, so stellten es die Lorscher fest, verloren gegangen und von einem anderen Gericht, mit Bezug auf das Waldenburgische Original erneuert worden.

Die Nachforschung des Lorscher Gerichts, Umschrift des Schreibens an den Burggrafen vom 27.10.1656 (Seite 1 von 5 / vgl. Abbildung 2)

Act[um] denn 27. [Octo]ber A[nn]o [etc.] 1656
[etc.] Gnädiger Herr Burggraff
Welcher gestalte[n] wür denn Isaac Iudte[n] alhier
wegen desßen, crafft vorgelegter Handtschrifft
oder attestation, vnnd ceſsion ahn vnnß
forderenter 100 f. clagloß stellen, oder ihme
ein anderwerte aſsignation gebe[n] sollen,
daß ist vnß, E[uer] G[naden] g[nä]digem Befellich gemees,
gebührendt aufgetrage[n] word[en].
Sollen darauf gehorsamlich ohnuerhalten,
So viel die disfals original Schuld Ver-
schreibung betrifft, rühret dieselbe vf vnß
von Wilhelm Grünling von Zwingenberg
hero, welche ahnn Hannß Beckher[n] zue Groß-
Rohrheim khom[m]e[n], vnnd weill[n] dießer, so
noch im Leben, solch original Schuldt Ver-
schreibung verlohren, hatt Er deren eine
Gerichtliche Attestation von vnß zue weege
gebracht, die Er hernacher dießes clagende[n]
Iudtens Vatter, durch eine ceſsion, für
ein pferdts Praetenßion eingeraumbt, welche […]

We meet the first Lorsch Jew in a document of the year 1656. „Isaac Judt“ had presented an old promissory bill for 100 gulden to the community for payment, which he had from his father. The community investigated and found clarification in a wartime account book about a long ago land transaction. The Baron of Waldenburg, since 1623 Burgrave of the Oberamt Starkenburg after the expulsion of the Palatines, had bought the 60-acre Lorsch community farmland „Im Kirschenflecken“ in 1629. He paid the purchase price of 4,000 gulden not in cash but by redeeming promissory bills. Two years after the purchase, the Swedes occupied the land and the Burgrave of the Mainz government had to flee. Waldenburg had no more use of the land. To his successor, von Hoheneck, the people of Lorsch wrote after the war, when their old bill was presented to them for redemption. They would in no case compensate „Isaac Judt“ as demanded by the Mainz authorities, because the legal transaction at that time was valid, no matter who had been the occupying power in the meantime. The Lorsch community had followed the path of the paper. It had passed through many hands during the war, to Zwingenberg and Groß-Rohrheim, until Isaac’s father had finally been paid for a horse business with it. The trade in promissory notes (bills of exchange) was a common method of payment because of the shortage of money, and the participation of the Jews in the war economy becomes visible with this example.

Die Privilegien des Erzbischofs Johann II. (von Nassau) vom 24. Juli 1404 in den neun Städten legen nahe, dass es keine weiteren dauerhaften Wohnplätze von Juden im Mainzer Obererzstift gab. Am 12. Oktober 1456 waren die von Johann II. getroffenen Regelungen immer noch in Kraft. Der neue Erzbischof Dietrich von Mainz (Schenk von Erbach) bestätigt den Juden seines Amtsbezirks neuerlich ihre Rechte.
Das Oberamt Starkenburg wurde 1461 im Zuge der Mainzer Stiftsfehde an die Pfalz verpfändet. Juden hatten in der Pfalz seit 1390 kein Bleiberecht mehr. Nach reichsweiten Austreibungen aus den Städten, im Jahre 1473 gar aus Mainz, war das urbane Judentum Ende des 15. Jh. auf eine heute kaum mehr nachweisbare Größe geschrumpft. Allein in Frankfurt, Worms, Prag und Wien existierten noch nennenswerte Gemeinden. Die Juden überlebten — wenn sie nicht nach Osteuropa gezogen waren — in kleinen Herrschaften, in denen sie in der Lage waren, sich zu Landjudenschaften zu organisieren. In das Oberamt Starkenburg kehrten sie erst nach Aufhebung der Pfälzer Pfandschaft zurück — mitten im Dreißigjährigen Krieg.

A tax exemption and extensive privileges in gratitude for financial aid received by the Archbishop of Mainz from Jews residing here provides the earliest indication of their permanent settlement in the medieval Amt Starkenburg. In the records of the town of Heppenheim it is handed down that on January 3, 1384, the Archbishop of Mainz Adolf I „granted his Jews“ in the nine towns of Aschaffenburg, Miltenberg, Buchen, Dieburg, Seligenstadt, Heppenheim, Bensheim, Amorbach and Tauberbischofsheim the grace that they should not be burdened with any tax, except the ordinary levies, for the next three years, since they had paid him his collegiate debts. The Jews of the aforementioned towns were also not to be summoned to ecclesiastical courts. They were only to stand in judgment where the archbishop commanded. Finally, they were to not have to give dice, water and land taxes for the next three years. In 1404 and 1456 similar privileges were confirmed by Adolf I’s successors. In 1461, with the onset of the Palatinate seigniory, the Jews lost their right to stay in Starkenburg. Still in the course of the Thirty Years‘ War they returned and founded an era of successful
an era of successful rural Jewry in the region.