As was once the case when the magnificent synagogue was inaugurated in 1883, its striking twin towers now dominate the city skyline on the Main in stylized form.

They are representatives of what was probably the happiest phase of Jewish existence in Kitzingen. Until its almost complete destruction in the pogrom night of 1938, the current "Kultur- und Bildungshaus Alte Synagoge Kitzingen" was the spiritual and cultural center of the Jewish community, which reached its highest number around 1910 with almost 500 people (5.2% of the population).

Mayor Andreas Schmiedel (1859 - 1881) was a far-sighted businessman who had deliberately persuaded Jewish wine and grain merchants from the surrounding villages to resettle in Kitzingen. He even actively supported the relocation of the district rabbinate with 28 religious communities from Mainbernheim to Kitzingen through official channels.

Immigration and the founding of the community was only made possible by the repeal of the matriculation paragraphs in 1861 by the Bavarian state parliament, which had previously denied the Jewish population the right to freedom of establishment and occupation.

Attempts to establish a Jewish settlement and community in Kitzingen, which had been documented several times since the Middle Ages, had previously always ended in murder and manslaughter (Rintfleisch pogrom, 1298; Armleder uprising, 1336, plague pogrom) or failed due to arbitrary expulsion orders by the competing local prince-bishops and margrave "patrons". Even the first simple baroque synagogue in Obere Bachgasse, which was pushed through against massive resistance from church and civic neighbors, had to be abandoned after the expulsion of 1763.

Thanks to the entrepreneurial talent, diligence and innovative spirit of Jewish entrepreneurs, Mayor Schmiedel's strategy led the city to economic prosperity, primarily through the wine trade sector. Jewish citizens rose to the highest offices and titles, and the Israelite community flourished in religious, social and societal terms to the benefit of its members and the city.

The acceptance of the Jewish minority by the rest of the town's population, which was always fragile despite everything, fell apart beginning with the First World War, in which 11 Kitzingen Jews also fell, the subsequent economic recession and the strengthening of the National Socialist movement. The violent excesses following the Reichspogromnacht marked the beginning of the dissolution of Kitzingen's Jewish community:

99 arrests, emigration of 192 people, deportation to Izbica and murder of 75 people from Kitzingen from March 24, 1942 and 19 elderly people in September 42 to Theresienstadt. Three women survived.

"Stumbling stones" all over the city in front of their former homes commemorate them.

The last gravestone in the Rödelsee Jewish cemetery, where Jews from Kitzingen had been buried since the 15th century, was placed for Benno Oppenheimer, who was driven to suicide in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1940.

Personalities such as Michael Schneeberger, Dr. Elmar Schwinger, Gisela Bamberg, Dr. Harald Knobling and town archivist Doris Badel traced and documented the lives and fates of the Jewish people of Kitzingen from the last third of the 20th century onwards. Since 1982, the Friends of the Former Kitzingen Synagogue have been committed to the historical reappraisal and current clarification and discussion of anti-Semitism and the understanding of democracy. Conversely, not least thanks to the internet, descendants of survivors are now returning to Kitzingen in search of family traces: the Gersts, the Oppenheimers, the Schurs ...

Margret Löther