Follow
This project seeks to collect all of the Jewish families from the town of Fürth (Mittelfranken/Bayern), Germany also known as Fuerth.
It is not these towns: Fürth, Hesse, Germany Furth, part of Gloggnitz, Lower Austria Furth, part of Maria Anzbach, Lower Austria
In the recent past,1900's to 2000's, it has been submerged by Nuremberg. Erlanger is also becoming larger.
From JewishGen the link is to this town Jewish-Gen-Fürth (Mittelfranken/Bayern)
On JewishGen Family Finder JGFF we find 160 individual researchers with interest and connections to Furth.
On Jewish Gen Worldwide Burial Registry JOWBR we find approximately 400 grave records with a reference to Furth, birth or death.
On Yad Vashem we note over 1600 individual records with a reference to Furth. Some are Pages of Testimony, a rich source for family connections up to the present. Submitters of POT's may also be searched.
On the International Jewish Cemetery Project a large collection of information is readily available here: https://iajgscemetery.org/germany/bayern-bavaria/fuerth
On Beit Hatfutsot we can review a vast collection of data and photos of Furth. Here: https://dbs.bh.org.il/place/fuerth
On the Rabbi index of the Steinheim Institute we find 68 Rabbis with a connection to Furth. Here: http://steinheim-institut.de/wiki/index.php/RabbinerHandbuch:1:Name...
From Wikipedia, accessed February 16, 2020: "Judaism The position enjoyed by Jews in Fürth (compared with other towns) led to the sobriquet "Franconian Jerusalem", though this is based on an older, pejoratively intended reference to Fürth.
Jewish residents are mentioned as early as 1440; in 1528 the Margrave of Ansbach, George the Pious, permitted two Jews, Perman und Uriel, to settle in Fürth (in return for high taxes), and from then on the number of Jewish residents increased.
By the 17th century, there was a local Yeshiva (Talmudic academy) of considerable repute, and in 1617, a synagogue was built. In 1653, the first Jewish hospital in Germany (and Fürth's first hospital) was built.
When Emperor Leopold I deported the Viennese Jews in 1670, many upper-class Jewish families moved to Fürth, and by 1716 there were about 400 Jewish families in the town. In 1807, the proportion of Jews in the overall population was about 19%. Following the Mediatization and the Bavarian Judenedikt (Jewish Edict) of 1813,[7] there were more restrictions on Jews. In particular, the Matrikelparagraph provisions prevented Jewish immigration. In 1824, the Talmudic academy was closed. The Bavarian Judenedikt of 1813, with its restrictions on Jewish life and Jewish immigration was rescinded by the law of 29 June 1851, and further laws dated 16 April 1868, and 22 April 1871, which led to further emancipation of the Jews, and restrictions on residence were removed.[8] By 1840, there were 2535 Jews living in Fürth, more than half of all Bavarian Jews.
In 1862, a Jewish primary school was founded, followed by a secondary school in 1882. The highest number of Jewish residents was reached in 1880, at about 3,300.
In 1933, there were 1,990 Jews in Fürth.[9][10] By early 1938 after the rise of the Nazis, there were 1,400 Jews in Fürth. In November 1938, there were about 1,200 when the synagogue was destroyed in the Kristallnacht pogroms, and 132 Jews were deported to Dachau. All except a handful of those who remained in Fürth after Kristallnacht either fled while they still could (abroad or to other areas in Germany) or were deported to concentration camps and/or death camps; virtually all those who remained in Germany were deported to their deaths. By 1944, perhaps 23 Jews were left in Furth. Overall, 1,068 Jews from Furth were murdered in the Holocaust.[10][11]
After the end of the Second World War, a Displaced persons camp for Jewish Holocaust survivors was established in Fürth (Finkenschlag). In 1945 it housed 850 inhabitants; it was shut down in July 1950.
There is a memorial to the Jewish community in the Geleitsgasse square, just off Königstrasse. Archaeologists discovered a Mikvah (ritual bath) in a house in the centre of Fürth. This building now houses the Jewish Museum of Franconia, which opened in 1998.
The old Jewish cemetery (Weiherstraße), which was established in 1607, is one of the oldest in Germany. It suffered considerable destruction and desecration during the Nazi regime and the Second World War, but was restored in 1949 and is now one of the best-preserved Jewish cemeteries."
The JewishEncyclopedia.com site offers additional information in great detail. Public Domain 1906 Edition. Accessed February 24, 2021. For example: "FÜRTH: By: Gotthard Deutsch, A. Eckstein City of Bavaria, Germany. On April 17, 1528, George the Pious, Margrave of Ansbach, permitted two Jews, Perman and Uriel Wolff, to settle under his protection at Fürth, which was in his territory; and in 1553 the Prince Bishop of Bamberg permitted three Jewish families—probably emigrants from Old Bavaria—to settle at Fürth on a piece of property belonging to the provost of the Bamberg cathedral. The free imperial city of Nuremberg, which had expelled its Jews in 1499, vainly protested against the settlement of a Jewish community in its vicinity; Jews continued to come to Fürth; and after their expulsion from Vienna in 1670, the Bavarian city became more and more a place of refuge for the banished. The two communities which gradually developed in Bamberg and Ansbach were bound together by common internal interests, and tended more and more to fuse into one, especially after 1690.
Owing to the rivalry between Bamberg and Ansbach, which manifested itself in part in the granting of privileges to the Jews, the condition of the latter at Fürth was better than elsewhere in the country. Moreover, on March 2, 1719, the cathedral provost of Bamberg confirmed the Jews in all their privileges, and in addition allowed them to send two Jewish representatives to the city council. For these privileges the Jews paid protection-money amounting in the aggregate to 2,500 florins yearly, which sum by 1754 was increased to 4,500 florins. The few Jews who belonged to the Margrave of Ansbach, and who in 1719 passed under the rule of the cathedral provost of Bamberg, paid their lord a yearly protection-tax of 10 florins per family.
Internal Affairs. The Jewish community of Fürth formed an independent body with a republican constitution. It was governed by a senate consisting of twenty-one men, from among whom were chosen the "barnossen" (= "parnasim")—that is, the heads of the congregation—who alternated every month in occupying the honorary position of president of the congregation. For policing and in all matters of discipline the senate had to draw upon the support of the civil government. A foreign Jew was admitted to the body only with the consent of the members, but the community was not limited to a certain number, as was elsewhere the case (see Familianten-gesetz). The judicial organization, at the head of which was the chief rabbi, was distinguished from that in other communities by the fact that an appeal from a decision of a Jewish court was not carried to the superior Christian government, but to other rabbinical courts of the second or even third instance. In 1728 the senate passed a set of laws which regulated not only the religious but even the social life of the community.
Jewesses of Fürth in 1705.(After an old engraving.) The happy condition of the Jews caused the rapid growth and prosperity of the community and city. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were from 350 to 400 taxable Jewish families, of whom 100 were house-owners; while at the end of the century the community probably numbered 3,000members. These Jews had commercial relations with many German courts, were engaged to a great extent in manufactures, and monopolized banking. Dohm, in his "Ueber die Bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden," cites the Jewish community of Fürth as an instance of the fact that those localities are prosperous where Jews are not oppressed.
Some Jews became the financial agents of the princes, and Court Jews acquired political influence with the margraves of Ansbach. The most famous of the court Jews was Elkan Fränkel, son of Enoch Levi of Vienna; he was the victim of a court intrigue and of his own ambition, dragging with him in his fall his brother, the cabalist Hirsch Fränkel (1712). In the eighteenth century the family of Gabriel Fränkel—court purveyor and banker—at Fürth carried on very extensive commercial transactions with the Margrave of Ansbach. A favorite of this same prince and a resident of his court was Isaac Nathan, who met with a fate similar to Elkan Fränkel's. Among the later court agents who were preferred by the margraves as financiers and business agents, mention may be made of Meïr Berlin, great-grandfather of Samuel Berlin, the privy councilor at Fürth.
Rabbis and Institutions. The community at Fürth was a center of Jewish learning. Young men came from all quarters to study at its Talmudic school; and numerous works issued from the printing-press established there in 1690. The fame of Fürth rests chiefly upon its learned rabbis, of whom a list follows, as nearly as possible in chronological order:
Simson ben Joseph; Menahem Man Ashkenazi (d. 1655); Aaron Samuel Kaidanower (c. 1660); Meïr ben Asher ha-Levi (d. 1683); Wolf ben Meïr of Buczacz; Samuel of Wodzislaw (1691-94); Eliezer ben Mordecai Hellprin (d. 1700); Bärmann Fränkel (1700-08); Baruch Rapoport (1710-46); David Strauss (d. 1762); Joseph Steinhart (d. 1776); Hirsch Janow (d. 1785); Meshullam, Zalman Cohn (d. 1819); Isaac Löwi (1830-73); Dr. Neubürger, who entered office in 1875, and who is still (1903) officiating."
Using Google Image search for Jewish Furth serves up many dozens of photos and drawings and maps and other details of the Town and inhabitants.