History:
Jews were noted in the region by the tenth century and organized communities appeared about three centuries later. In territory included in Thuringia today, Erfurt stands as the oldest Jewish settlement, having begun in the twelfth century. During the next 200 years, it grew to become a major religious and social center, one of the largest then in German lands. In 1237, Rudolph I of Hapsburg gave jurisdiction over Erfurt and surroundings to the archbishopric of Mainz. Despite subsequent changes in official political leadership, the Jews paid heed primarily to Mainz, thus protecting themselves from the more dire fates endured by nearby coreligionists. Essentially, the region belonged to the bishopric until 1802, when Napoleon conquered Prussia. The Erfurt area became a political island controlled from Berlin and was then subject to Napoleon’s various liberalizing codes. It remained Prussian until 1945. Through the ages, though, Jews in the southern part of today’s Thuringia suffered from a variety of persecutions. Exacerbated because various nobles were in deep debt to Jewish moneylenders, the persecution culminated in the fourteenth century during the Black Death accusations. Perhaps because these lands were rural, scattered and far from centers of power, the Jews quickly recuperated. With official protection renewed, by 1391 a rabbinical assembly was held in Erfurt, while Jews in Eisenach, Gotha, Jena, Weimar and Weissensee, among other places, were freed upon payment from attendance at Mainz’s ecclesiastical court. In 1416 a Rabbi Heller of Erfurt was nominated Judenmeister of Thuringian Jewry. During this time, a moneylender, Isaac the Rich of Jena, was the agent of Duke Frederick of Saxony while the latter bought up and annexed estates of nobles in debt to Isaac. During the Middle Ages, many Jewish scholars emerged as well. In the midfifteenth century, Thuringia became part of Saxony and the Jews’ situation deteriorated, propelled by the Reformation. They were expelled in 1559. The entire territory of Thuringia began disintegrating and although Jews couldn’t live in cities, by the end of the seventeenth century they were allowed to settle on nobility’s estates. A bizarre occurrence took place in 1737, when the Duke of Saxe-Weimar was convinced by an apostate rabbi to allocate the city of Doenburg for Jews requesting instruction in Christianity. Then the rabbi ran off with the collected funds. Between 1840 and 1848, Mendel Hess was positioned to publish Der Israelite des 19. Jahrhunderts, and Jews elsewhere in Thuringian lands enjoyed similar opportunities. But Thuringia, no longer a jurisdictional entity but the designation of a general area, was reconstituted after World War II and then again before Germany’s recent reunification.

Community:
The only contemporary Jewish community in Thuringia is in Erfurt. A building houses the synagogue that is noteworthy as the only new synagogue built in the former East Germany. However, not more than 10 of the approximately 400 members today are of German origin. The remainder, along with about 300 unaffiliated individuals with at least some Jewish blood, are primarily from the former Soviet Union. The majority are over 60 and, according to common plaint, are more interested in remaining Russian in Germany than becoming German; reportedly, few know what it is to be Jewish. Though there are daily services and services every Friday night attended by on average 75 people, there is not always a minyan on Saturdays. Various events are held in the community house, but its main function is tending to welfare needs. The synagogue and community center are located at Juri-Gagarin-Ring 16 (36-1-562-4964) and kosher meals are available.

Sights:
Despite, or because of, its polyglot heritage and Johnny-come-lately status, today’s Thuringia offers Jewish sightseers an almost complete range, for better and worse, of the Germanic panorama. The starting point is a toss-up: Weimar has the name, Erfurt the history and elsewhere are sights of stunning individuality. Weimar is an odd German entity. Last year the city was Europe’s cultural capital, for here was the place where arts and humanities once reached a zenith. But here, too, was arguably the heartland of Germany’s nadir—the place that in name if not actuality became synonymous with the attempt at enlightened politics—the Weimar Republic—that ultimately led to the Third Reich. Though the region had nurtured arts and artists from Bach to the Bauhaus, with Goethe and Schiller in between—it also saw in the early twentieth century a swing against the remnants of Weimar’s intellectualism. So potent was this inclination that Thuringia became the first German state to put Nazis in high-level office, installing Wilhelm Frick as minister of the interior in 1930, three years before Hitler took power. Even before they became the law of the land, Frick instituted racist and anti-Semitic policies. His enthusiasm plus Weimar’s erstwhile culture made it a favored haunt of Nazi bigwigs all the way up to the top. So “inspiring” was it that only a few miles from Goethe’s homestead and the German National Theater the Nazis built their first truly ferocious concentration camp: Buchenwald. Thus, though ironically no Jewish community exists in Weimar, in this charming city there is much that both tangibly and intangibly had an impact on Jewry.

Even before its cultural ascendency Weimar was a merchant’s town, with Jews its leading bankers. Julius Elkan, who owned the land on which the city’s cemeteries stood, lived at Windischenstrasse 35 (now the Blumen Welzel flower shop) and had his own mikve and synagogue, which he opened to the public on special occasions. Until recently his coat of arms and an impression of a mezuza could be discerned above the door and on its sill. Another Jewish residence of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century era stands at Burgplatz 3, where two diagonal streets converge. The now-elegant Duke’s Castle is near the city’s main castle and opposite the 150-year-old Café Residenz, an artist’s meeting place which hosted over the years such as Ilya Ehrenburg and Franz Kafka. Goethe’s home is a prime attraction and while his fondness or lack thereof for Jews is controversial, he did invite the young Felix Mendelssohn to come from Leipzig to play for him in his home. A statue of Goethe and Schiller stands outside the National Theater; the Weimar Republic was proclaimed from its columned steps. Jews were among its founders, the most significant of whom were Hugo Preuss, who drafted the Constitution, and Walter Rathenau, first minister of reconstruction, then foreign minister. The assignment of Weimar’s name to Germany’s post-World War I attempt at democracy was, however, a façade. Though the republic was proclaimed in the city, this was simply to avoid major disturbances in less controllable urban sites, particularly Berlin, where Rathenau was subsequently assassinated by young anti-Semites. Opposite the National Theater stands the Bauhaus, the museum of the art institute founded in 1924. Among its leading lights were Lyonel Feininger and Franz and Annie Albers. Marie Friedlander started Bauhaus ceramic workshops. About a block away is Weimar’s town square, a lively place edged by storybook façades. But it has an ominous underside: The Elephant Hotel, now a Kempinski, is noteworthy for its grand balcony facing the square from which Hitler gave several rabble-rousing speeches. Meanwhile, the square has metamorphosed from Der Fuhrer Square to Karl Marx Square to Rathenau Square.

Less than 10 miles away stands Buchenwald. Though little of the original camp remains except for the entrance, the crematorium and the end of the tracks, its museum is evocative. Despite various disclaimers, the camp remains haunted: It was here that the commander’s wife, Ilse Koch, is still rumored to have made human-skin lampshades. Far more pleasant is contemporary Thuringia’s capital of Erfurt, a relatively unscarred city filled with many fine medieval houses. There is, of course, the synagogue, a simple, boxy structure of nondescript color with tall, rectangular windows punctuating its sides and a gilt Magen David above its entrance. Among the most fascinating sights are remnants from the past located off a marketplace whose entrance is via the Merchant’s Bridge; its central passageway is edged by houses and shops straddling a section of a river that ran through the city’s Jewish quarter. Just below the bridge in the river’s gray retaining walls are the square and arched red-brick outlines of what is almost certainly traces of a medieval mikve. And on one of the comely houses on the bridge there was uncovered the outline of the Ark of what must have been a private synagogue in the midnineteenth century.

Side Trips:
Eisenach, Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthplace, is doing its best to document its Jewish heritage. Its chief archivist, Reinhold Brunner, hosts regular reunions of the city’s survivors and survivors’ children. Additionally, Eisenach has created on the site of its erstwhile synagogue a thoughtful memorial in a tree-enclosed area, where some hints remain of the white marble pillars that lined the structure in two parallel rows. Dieter and Uta Bernecker (91-214-422; E-mail: tbg-bibelcafe@t-online.de) conduct tours of historical Jewish sites. Today Karlstrasse, from the Middle Ages until 1825 Eisenach’s main shopping street was Judengasse. A sad reminder exists at Goethestrasse 48, currently a nondescript stucco structure called the Jewish House. It was the mansion in which the last Eisenach Jews were gathered in 1943 for deportation to Auschwitz. Driving south from Eisenach to Meiningen, you arrive in a town where in 1856 Jews and Christians together founded the Central-German Credit Bank, which financed industrial projects beyond the area’s bounds. Yet in both 1898 and 1932 the Nazi votes exceeded the national average. With 550 Jews in 1844, the nearby village of Walldorf was home to the initial seat of the rabbinate. Though the synagogue was demolished, two stone friezes set in a rock wall commemorate its existence. One memorial plaque in German notes that the synagogue of the Walldorf community had stood there since 1790. Next to it is a frieze of the synagogue exterior in minute detail down to the steps to the main entrance, panes of glass in windows, a lower door to the cellar and what was probably the mikve, and most noticeably, its tall entrance tower. It is reached by bearing left on entering town, then heading right up a steep hill. From there, a right turn is necessary down an easily passed road. From Walldorf you might continue to Aschenhausen, the road leading primarily into cow pastures. And atop a slight hill, at Oberkätter Strasse 16, stands a still-extant synagogue. Its exterior—two sides of oak paneling, two of stucco—gives barely a clue to its former purpose. But the inside is amazing, the ceiling adorned with almost cartoon-like outlined frescos of the heavens with multihued clouds, stars, a man-in-the-moon face and a large gold sun with rays, some dark, splashing rather than streaking through space. For tours, in German, call 96-680-572.

Even more astonishing, perhaps, is the scene in Berkach, where on a country road stands a complex with a full-timbered building. Entered from a side path this was—and is—a consecrated synagogue. Renovated in black-and-white modern style, it features a pulpit with an ash-blond wooden Ark surmounted by a blue-hued roseate stained-glass window. Not far away, set back from the road and looking like a dollhouse, is the mikve, its water still clear. For keys to various sites, the Erfurt community must be contacted (361-562-4964). In the other direction, north of Eisenach lies Mülhausen, a jewel of an undamaged medieval town, which also boasts a consecrated synagogue that stands on Judengasse (1-427-640). In its renovation it radiates a golden hue. Among other spots with Jewish connections are Steinweg, a street that once housed many Jews.

Recommendations:
It is difficult to imagine a better choice for getting to Germany than Lufthansa, which continues to go the extra yard when possible to maintain higher standards than many. Travel in Germany can usually be done easily by train, made even simpler when using a Germanrail or Eurail pass, both obtainable from DER Travel (800-782-2424). In Weimar, the Hotel Elephant is as grand as ever and centrally located. For enjoyable accommodations on a park’s edge only a few minutes walk from the town center is the Weimar Hilton. Eisenach is a good jumping-off point for more far-flung excursions and the Pension Mahret takes a special interest in its Jewish visitors. In Erfurt, the Best Western Hotel Excelsior is excellently located for all destinations. Happy, somber, unusual, perhaps even unique, Thuringia is solidly packed with excellent opportunities for Jewish, and other, travelers.