The first records of a Jewish community in Dettelbach date back to the 15th century. In addition to documents about the disputes of the Würzburg prince-bishop Erkinger von Seinsheim in 1423, Jews in Dettelbach are mentioned in Würzburg documents in 1489 (1).
Sources from the Dettelbach City Archives and the Würzburg State Archives report on disputes between Jewish and Christian citizens in the 17th century (2). It can be assumed that after the Thirty Years' War the number of Jewish inhabitants in Dettelbach and in the other towns and villages increased. In 1675, for example, nine Jewish families are mentioned in Dettelbach (3). In 1699, a total of 23 Jews (four men, three women, eleven children and four servants) held a letter of protection, according to a list from the Bishopric of Würzburg (4).
The records from the property registry of the city of Dettelbach from 1777 list those Jewish fellow citizens who at that time owned property in Dettelbach. From 1803 there exists a detailed directory of the Jewish population in the Principality of Würzburg, in which the Dettelbach Jews are also listed. At that time, 66 Jewish people lived in Dettelbach, which was a small part of the total population of Dettelbach, which was around 2150 people (5). During the 19th century, the number of Jewish citizens continued to rise steadily, so in 1814 the Jewish community of Dettelbach had 111 souls (25 households) (6). Towards the end of the 19th century, a decline in the number of Jewish inhabitants can be seen. While they still represented 5.3% of the total population (2,445 inhabitants) in 1837, the Jewish population of Dettelbach had fallen to 3.9% of the total population of 2,058 inhabitants by 1910. In 1933, the 39 Jews represented only 1.8% of the population of Dettelbach (7). For 1911, Konrad Reinfelder was able to prove the existence of 16 Jewish households in Dettelbach (8).
In principle, however, the relationship between the members of the different religions in Dettelbach seems to have been quite good until the beginning of the 1930s, as can be seen from a report on the inauguration of the Dettelbach synagogue on September 18, 1862. According to this, the solemn procession from the old to the new synagogue included not only the religious teacher and the rabbi, but also the royal officials of the local city in uniform, the city council, the Israelite religious community, a large number of Christian fellow citizens, mostly from the higher classes, and a crowd of foreign strangers [...] It was a touching sign of true brotherly love to see how Israelites and non-Israelites rejoiced together on the Lord's day.” The good relationship is probably not least due to Jakob Kahn, who was a teacher and prayer leader of the Jewish community from 1858 to 1898, and his successor Abraham Mannheimer. Jakob Kahn even taught at the Christian school in Dettelbach for a time (9). The Jewish community was also represented in the Dettelbach city council by Hermann Weichselbaum and Hirsch Sittenheim until 1933 (10).
In 1907, the Jewish community of Bibergau was incorporated into Dettelbach. Of the 40 households in Bibergau, only two remained in 1907, so that the community of Bibergau was ultimately dissolved (11).
The seizure of power in 1933 changed a number of things. Hirsch Sittenheim resigned from the city council in April and Hermann Weichselbaum as early as March. The SPD and BVP city council members, as well as Mayor Emmerich Knötgen, also resigned in the spring of 1933. In July 1933, Hermann Weichselbaum was accused of causing damage amounting to 5,200 RM in the so-called Ingelheim Forest. The city council filed an “application for urgent arrest [...] to protect the city from loss” at the district court. In July 1933, a claim for damages amounting to 5,300 RM was also filed against Hirsch Sittenheim because he had sold the pit wood from the so-called Grafenwald. He was to transfer the amount to the city, “otherwise things should be left to their own devices” (12).
During the pogrom night of 1938, things remained relatively calm in Dettelbach and the synagogue, which had been rebuilt in 1862, was not destroyed. But already on November 14, 1938, a contract was signed according to which the synagogue was to be given to the city of Dettelbach free of charge. On December 19, 1938, this transfer contract was converted into a purchase contract, according to which the synagogue – the sales value of the property was set at 10,000 RM – was sold to the city for only 300 RM, which used the building as a primary school until it was demolished in 1962 (13).
On April 25, September 10 and September 23, 1942, 23 Jewish men and women were deported from the town of Dettelbach and four from the community of Bibergau. The train of April 25 led to the area around Lublin; among those on the train were twelve Jews from Dettelbach, with the evacuation numbers 429-440. Two Jewish citizens of Bibergau were also among the deportees. The two transports in September 1942 went to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Two Jewish women from Bibergau were among the deportees on the train that left Würzburg on September 10, 1942. On September 23, 1942, eleven more Jewish men and women from Dettelbach were transported to Theresienstadt under evacuation numbers 135-145. Only one of the deportees, Pauline Laubheim, who was born in Bibergau, survived (14).
