Jewish History
With a brief interruption in the mid-15th century, Landau had a sizable Jewish community from the Middle Ages until the Nazi era, at one point the largest in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as one of its most prosperous (many Jews were wine merchants). This accounts for 'Landau' and 'Landauer' being a common Ashkenazi Jewish family name. A prayer room is known to have existed since the 16th century: the first actual synagogue was built in 1648, and rebuilt in 1691 after a fire. The Great Synagogue (350 sq. m., 16 m. high) was consecrated in 1884: it was burned down during the Kristallnacht in 1938, and only its charred remains can now be seen. The historic Frank-Loeb house is another relic of the Jewish presence in Landau: its proprietor in the late 19th Century was Zacharias Frank, great-grandfather of Anne Frank.
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Famous quotes containing the words jewish and/or history:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)