The handwritten recipe booklet by Frieda Mannheimer
Dettelbach had a lively Jewish community in the 19th century. There was obviously a good relationship and open cooperation between the members of the different religions. This is shown, for example, by a report on the inauguration of the Dettelbach synagogue on September 18, 1862, according to which the ceremonial procession from the old to the new synagogue included the religious teacher and the rabbi, "the royal officials of the local town in uniform, the town council, the Jewish religious community, a large number of Christian citizens, mostly from the upper classes, and a large number of strangers from outside [...]".
The peaceful coexistence of religions is also shown by the recipe booklet of the Jewish woman Frieda Mannheimer (born in Dettelbach in 1899), the daughter of the Dettelbach teacher Abraham Mannheimer, which has survived to this day.
It is a small notebook in which the pages are marked with a red index to make it easier to open. The recipes are handwritten one after the other in old German script.
The recipes written down are not specifically Jewish dishes, but rather recipes for cookies and cookies, such as cinnamon stars, aniseed cookies, roasted almonds, etc. The classic recipes for Christmas cookies such as Ulm bread, cookies or marzipan potatoes can be found alongside similar recipes from Jewish housewives such as "Frau Friedmann", "Sara Kohn" or "Frau Sichel-Nürnberg".
Only one product is mentioned as specifically Jewish in the recipes, namely kosher margarine from the "Tomor" brand.
The origin of the recipes was documented by Frieda Mannheimer. On November 5, 1938, a recipe for "Gewürz-Blätzchen" is written down with the addition "from Mrs. Friedmann". This is interesting because Mrs. Friedmann was a Jewish teacher's wife from the neighbouring community of Mainstockheim, who lived with her family in the synagogue there.
A few days after Frieda had written down the recipe, the Mainstockheim synagogue was destroyed on November 9/10, 1938.
Frieda Mannheimer and two of her sisters were deported from Dettelbach to Izbica/Lublin in April 1942; her father, the teacher Abraham Mannheimer, was deported to Theresienstadt a few months later. The recipe booklet was passed on by a family friend in the Christian neighborhood, through whom it eventually found its way to the Kitzingen synagogue as a gift.
