Munich

views updated May 29 2018

MUNICH

MUNICH (Heb. עיר הכמרים), capital of *Bavaria, central Germany. In 1229 a Jew called Abraham, from Munich, appeared as a witness at a Regensburg trial. In the second half of the 13th century Munich appears to have had a sizable Jewish community; the Jews lived in their own quarter and possessed a synagogue, a ritual bath, and a hospital. On Oct. 12, 1285, in the wake of a *blood libel, 180 Jews who had sought refuge in the synagogue were burnt to death; the names of 68 of the victims are listed in the Nuremberg *Memorbuch, which dates from 1296. The Jews obtained permission to rebuild the synagogue in 1287, but for several centuries they remained few in number and suffered from various restrictions, which from time to time were further exacerbated (e.g., in 1315 and 1347). During the *Black Death (1348/49) the community was again annihilated. However, by 1369 there were Jews in the city once more, and in 1375 Duke Frederick of Bavaria granted them (and the other Jews resident in Upper Bavaria) the privilege of paying customs duties at the same rate as non-Jews. Some years later the Jews planned the construction of a synagogue and a *hekdesh, but their plans do not seem to have been realized. The remission of debts owed to Jews ordained by Emperor Wenceslaus (1378–1400) resulted in Munich Jews losing all their assets. They also suffered severely in 1413, when they were accused of desecration of the *Host. In 1416 the small community was granted some privileges, including permission to acquire a lot for a cemetery; in 1432, when Duke Albert iii sought to impose a special tax on Munich Jews, the results were disappointing. The clergy succeeded in having all the Jews of Upper Bavaria expelled in 1442, and eight years later they were also driven out of Lower Bavaria, where they had taken temporary refuge. Duke Albert gave the Munich synagogue (in the modern Gruftgasse) to Johann Hartlieb, a physician, and it was subsequently converted into a church. For almost three centuries Jews were excluded from Munich and Bavaria (although there may have been some periods when their residence was permitted, as may be deduced from a renewal of the ban announced in a 1553 police ordinance).

During the Austrian occupation, Jews were readmitted to Bavaria and some of them presumably found their way to Munich. At any rate, a new decree issued on March 22, 1715, again ordered them to leave the country. Some ten years later, a few Jews who had business dealings with the Bavarian count began to settle in Munich, and by 1728 several Jews resided in the city. In 1729 (or 1734) the Court Jew, Wolf *Wertheimer, took up residence there and was joined by his family in 1742; in 1750 all Court Jews and Jews in possession of passes granting them freedom of movement were excepted from the general ban on Jewish entry into the city. A community was formed by Jews who maintained connections with the court. Of the 20 of them in 1750, there was only one woman and a single child, which attests to the temporary and migratory nature of the settlement. Except for these *Schutzjuden, the only Jews permitted to reside in the city were those who had been commissioned as purveyors or who had made loans to the state; all others were permitted to stay in the city for a short while only and had to pay a substantial body tax (*Leibzoll). This situation continued for most of the 18th century, and it was not until 1794 and 1798 that the number of women and children in the city was commensurate with the number of heads of families. In 1794 there were 153 Jews, including 27 heads of families, 28 women, and 70 children; in 1798 the respective figures were 35, 33, and 98. Up to the end of the 18th century, Jewish women had to go to Kriegshaber to give birth to their children, and it was not until 1816 that Jews were permitted to bury their dead in Munich rather than transport them to Kriegshaber for burial. At this time Munich Jews earned their livelihood as *contractors for the army and the royal mint (see *mint-masters), merchants dealing in luxury wares and *livestock, moneylenders, and *peddlers. Since there was no legal basis for their residence in Munich, they did not have the right to practice their religion, and every year they had to pay a special tax to enable them to observe Sukkot. In 1805 a "Regulation for Munich Jewry" was issued (it formed the basis for the Bavarian Judenmatrikel of 1813); among other privileges, the Jews were permitted to inherit the right of domicile, to conduct services, and to reside in all parts of the city.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the number of Jews was augmented by immigrants, and by 1814 there were 451 Jews in the city. Two years later, the Jewish community was formally organized. In the same year the community was given permission to establish a cemetery, and in 1824 a permit was issued for the construction of a synagogue (dedicated in 1827). The first Jewish religious school was founded in 1815 and a private one in 1817. The community played a leading part in Bavarian Jewry's struggle for civil rights, which lasted up to the founding of the German Reich (1871); delegates of the Bavarian communities frequently met in Munich (1819, 1821) to make common representations to the government. In the second half of the century the community grew further (from 842 in 1848 to 4,144 in 1880, and 8,739 in 1900) as a result of increased immigration from the smaller communities (especially in the last few decades of the 19th century). By 1910, some 20% of Bavarian Jews lived in the capital (11,000). There was also a steady immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe, mainly from Galicia, which lasted up to World War i.

Jews were prominent in the cultural life of Munich, a center of German arts, in the late 19th and 20th centuries, as well as being more equally represented in Bavarian political affairs than in other German states. After World War i a revolutionary government on the Soviet model was formed, in which Kurt *Eisner, Eugene *Levine, and Gustav *Landauer were prominent. It was routed by counterrevolutionary forces, and a "White Terror" against Communists, Socialists, and Jews was instigated. In the postwar years of economic and political upheaval, Munich was a hotbed of antisemitic activity and the cradle of the Nazi *party; many Jews from Eastern Europe were forced to leave Munich. Sporadic antisemitic outbursts characterized the years until the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, when Reinhold *Heydrich and Heinrich *Himmler took control of the police; the first concentration camp, *Dachau, was erected near Munich. At the time, the community numbered 10,000 persons, including an independent Orthodox community and many cultural, social, and charitable organizations. Munich Jewry was subjected to particularly vicious and continuous acts of desecration, discrimination, terror, and *boycotts but responded with a Jewish cultural and religious revival. Between 1933 and May 15, 1938, some 3,574 Jews left Munich. On July 8, 1938, the main synagogue was torn down on Hitler's express orders. During the Kristallnacht, two synagogues were burnt down, 1,000 male Jews were arrested and interned in Dachau, and one was murdered. The communal center was completely ransacked. During the war a total of 4,500 Jews were deported from Munich (3,000 of them to *Theresienstadt); only about 300 returned; 160 managed to outlive the war in Munich. A new community was founded in 1945 by former concentration camp inmates, refugees, displaced persons, and local Jews. In the following five years, about 120,000 Jews, refugees, and displaced persons passed through Munich on their way to Israel. In 1946 there were 2,800. The community increased from 1,800 persons in 1952 to 3,522 in January 1970 (70% of Bavarian Jewry). In 1966 a Jewish elementary school was opened, the second in Gemany, but the postwar community was repeatedly troubled by acts of desecration and vandalism (against synagogue and cemetery). In March 1970 the Jewish home for the aged was burned down and seven people lost their lives. The Munich library contains a particularly valuable collection of Hebrew manuscripts.

During the Olympic games, which took place in Munich in 1972, Palestinian terrorists took eleven Israeli sportsmen as hostages. All of them died. In 1982 the first Jewish bookshop in Germany was opened in Munich. It has branches in Berlin and Vienna. In 1995 Hagalil was established in Munich, which is the largest Internet site on Jewish life in Europe.

The Jewish community numbered 4,050 in 1989, 5,000 in 1995, and 9,097 in 2004, making it the second largest Jewish community in Germany. The increase is explained by the immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union. In 2003 the cornerstone was laid for the new Jewish center. The complex was to have a new community center (with kindergarten, elementary school, youth center, library, offices, etc.), a main synagogue, and a Jewish museum. Partially financed by the Jewish community, the city of Munich, the Federal State of Bavaria, and private donors, the center was slated to open in 2006.

In 1995 the liberal Jewish community Beth Shalom was founded. It is a member of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany and of the World Union of Progressive Judaism. Since 2003 the community has had its own community center. It had about 275 members in 2005. Munich is the seat of the Association of Jewish Communities in Bavaria.

bibliography:

L. Baerwald, in: Festgabe 50 Jahre Hauptsynagoge Muenchen (1937), 11–16; H. Lamm (ed.), Von Juden in Muenchen (1958); idem, in: zgjd, 8 (1938), 99–103; Germ Jud, 1 (1963), 237f.; 2 (1968), 556–8; P. Hauke, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Muenchen zwischen 1933 und 1945 (1968); W.J. Cahnmann, in: jsos, 3 (1941), 283–300; idem, in: zgjd, 7 (1937), 180–8; idem, in: hj, 3 (1941), 7–23; A. Cohen, in: Zeitschrift fuer Demographie und Statistik der Juden, 15 (1919), 8–12, 121–30; idem, in: zgjd, 2 (1931), 262–83; J. Segall, Die Entwicklung der juedischen Bevoelkerung in Muenchen 1875–1905 (1910); P. Weiner-Odenheimer, in: Zeitschrift fuer Demographie und Statistik der Juden, 11 (1915), 85–96; 12 (1916), 34–43; H. Schnee, Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat, 4 (1963), 187ff.; L. Prijs, in: blbi, 6 (1963), 67–80; Germania Judaica, vol. 3, 1350–1514 (1987) 900 – 06. add. bibliography: Y. Gleibs, Juden im kulturellen und wissenschaftlichen Leben Muenchens in der zweiten Haelfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Miscellanea Bavarica Monacensia, vol. 76. Neue Schriftenreihe des Stadtarchivs Muenchen, vol. 96) (1981); W. Selig (ed.), Synagogen und juedische Friedhoefe in Muenchen (1988); D. Bokovoy (ed.), Versagte Heimat. Juedisches Leben in Muenchens Isarvorstadt 1914–1945 (1994); A. Heusler and T. Weger, Кristallnacht. Gewalt gegen Muenchner Juden im November 1938 (1998); E. Angermair et al., Beth ha-Knesseth – Ort der Zusammenkunft. Zur Geschichte der Muenchner Synagogen, ihrer Rabbiner und Kantoren (1999); S. Wimmer, Vergangene Tage. Juedisches Leben in Munich (1999); P. Landau and H. Nehlsen (eds.), Grosse juedische Gelehrte an der MuenchenerJuristischen Fakultaet (Abhandlungen zur rechtswissenschaftlichen Grundlagenforschung, vol. 84) (2001); A. Heusler, et al., Biographisches Gedenkbuch der Muenchner Juden. 1933 – 1945 (2003); I. Petersdorf, Lebenswelten. Juedische buergerliche Familien im Muenchen der Prinzregentenzeit (Studien zur Zeitgeschichte, vol. 32) (2003); W. Selig, Arisierung in Muenchen. Die Vernichtung juedischer Existenz 1937–1939 (2004); A. Baumann and A. Heusler (eds.), Muenschen arisiert. Entrechtung und Enteignung der Juden in der ns-Zeit (2004). websites:www.ikg-muenchen.de.

[Larissa Daemmig (2nd ed.)]

Munich

views updated May 29 2018

MUNICH

MUNICH. Although settlement along the Isar River, south of the Danube, dates from Roman times, this city owes its German name München (meaning 'monks') to the brothers of the Benedictine abbey of Tegernsee, who first nurtured an agricultural outpost in the region in Carolingian times. In 1158, the Saxon duke Henry the Lion granted the town its first market charter, allowing the fledgling settlement to compete commercially against the rival trade and diocesan capital of Freising, about thirty miles north of the modern city center. Despite fits and starts, Munich's role as a commercial outpost developed from its control of an important bridgehead on the Isar and its strategic location on the trade route between Salzburg and the north. Its commerce in Bavarian salt, gold, and other commodities grew in the later Middle Ages, although its population lagged far behind the other great cities of the German south, including Augsburg (which by the sixteenth century had a population of around forty thousand), Nuremberg (with around twenty thousand), and Regensburg (fifteen thousand). The city's fourteenth-century defensive walls proved largely sufficient to hold Munich's population until the eighteenth century, and the town's inhabitants probably numbered around five thousand in 1500. Despite its modest size, Munich's prosperity is attested to by the surviving monuments of the late fifteenth century, including the imposing Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady; 14681488) and the Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall; 14701480). During the sixteenth century the city rose to prominence as a center of government, of Catholic reform, and of art. As a result of the brief Landshuter Erbfolgekrieg (Bavarian Succession War; 15031505), several previously separate Bavarian possessions in the region were joined into a single duchy, and in the course of the century that followed, the Wittelsbach dynasty increasingly identified Munich as their capital. In the city a lavish building program began in the 1560s with the expansion of the ducal palace, the Residenz. Its Antiquarium or library, completed between 1569 and 1571, was hailed in the early modern period as the "eighth wonder of the world." Other additions to the Residenz followed, including the rococo-era Cuvilliés Theater (constructed between 1746 and 1777). Although minorities of Protestant artisans were present in Munich during the mid-sixteenth century, the building program also expressed the attachment of the Wittelsbachs and the city's burghers to Catholicism. These included the massive Michaelskirche (Church of St. Michael; completed 1597), the first structure in northern Europe to be modeled on the famous Roman church of the Jesuit order, Il Gesú; the seventeenth-century Theatinerkirche (Church of the Theatines), which was decorated for more than a century by a succession of Italian and French artists and architects; and the fantastically ornate Church of St. Johann Nepomuk (also known as the Asamkirche), designed by the brothers Cosmas and Aegidius Asam and built between 1733 and 1746. The role of architecture was considerable in establishing a Catholic confessional identity in early modern Munich. At the same time, the Wittelsbach dynasty pioneered governmental innovations that were mimicked elsewhere and were designed to rid the city and the surrounding territory of Protestant sympathizers and to foster a new purified culture of Catholic religious practice. In the late sixteenth century Munich became home to the duchy's Clerical Council, an institution of both clerical and secular officials that supervised the Catholic clergy and all aspects of religious practice in the duchy for more than two centuries. Music was yet a third prong of the Wittelsbach's counteroffensive against Protestants. In 1556 Duke Albrecht V recruited the Franco-Flemish musician Orlando di Lasso (15321594) to serve in his court chapel, elevating him to the status of musical director in 1562. During his more than thirty years in this position, Lasso reigned as the greatest composer of the Catholic Reformation in Europe, with hundreds of his compositions being printed in France, the Netherlands, and Italy. The alliance between the Wittelsbach dukes and artists deepened in the seventeenth century, although the city's fortunes fell into a decline for a time during the Thirty Years' War, especially during the years between 1632 and 1634, when occupation by the Protestant King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden and an outbreak of the plague decreased the town's population by as much as a third. Munich's staunchly Catholic allegiances softened somewhat during the eighteenth century, as the Wittelsbach dukes adopted an enlightened despotic stance similar to that of the Habsburgs in Austria or the Hohenzollern in Brandenburg-Prussia. The more worldly sensibilities of the age are displayed in the monuments of that time, including the suburban pleasure palaces of Schloss Nymphenburg and the Amalienburg on Munich's outskirts, as well as the grand, but naturalistic Englischer Garten (English Garden) first laid out in the city in 1789. While the great monuments of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries show that Munich was an important early modern provincial capital, its rise to the status of a major international city occurred only in the nineteenth century as the town's population increased fivefold in the half century after 1850. During the early modern centuries Munich displayed traits typical of many German provincial capitals, including local autonomy, guild dominance, concerns for confessional purity, and grand dynastic pretensions.

See also Bavaria ; Palatinate ; Wittelsbach Dynasty (Bavaria) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nöhbauer, Hans F. Munich, City of the Arts. Translated by Peter Green. Munich, 1994.

Spindler, Max, ed. Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte. 4 vols. Munich, 1967.

Philip M. Soergel

Munich

views updated May 18 2018

MUNICH

On 5 September 1972, while the Olympic Games were taking place in Munich, eight men belonging to the Black September faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) broke into the Olympic Village and killed two Israeli athletes, taking another nine hostage. They demanded the liberation of two hundred Palestinians imprisoned in Israel and safe passage for themselves out of Germany. The Israeli government refused to yield to blackmail and asked the German authorities for permission to intervene to liberate the hostages, but this was not granted; instead, during lengthy negotiations, a plan was made under which the terrorists and their hostages would be flown to Cairo. Although German police intended to kill the terrorists at the airport, they were not aware of how many there were and did not bring a force large or well-equipped enough to do so. As a result, during a bloody firefight during which five terrorists and a policeman were killed, one of the helicopters carrying the hostages was blown up

by a terrorist grenade and the rest of the hostages were shot.

A day later, Israel retaliated by launching simultaneous air strikes on at least ten PLO bases in Syria and Lebanon. Three of the terrorists were captured. On 26 October, more terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa airliner, demanding that the Munich killers be set free, and the Germans let them go. The Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, then gave the order to Mossad to eliminate all the terrorists who participated in the killing. This operation, which came to be known as "Operation Wrath of God, " was designed not only to see justice done but to send a message to all who might contemplate future terrorist acts. One by one the killers were tracked down and assassinated. As of 2004, only the planner of the Munich attack is still alive.


SEE ALSO Black September Organization;Mossad.

Munich

views updated May 23 2018

Munich ★★★½ 2005 (R)

Back in “Schindler's List” mode, Spielberg explores in horrifying magnification the politics and far-reaching aftermath of the real-life shocking murders of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. However, the film is primarily about a team of Israeli agents (Bana, Craig, Hinds, Kassovitz) hired to exact revenge on the Palestinian assassins. Gold standard screenwriters Kushner and Roth draw liberally from George Jonas's nonfiction tome “Vengeance,” and, like his other fact-based dramas, Spielberg delivers a thought-provoking and intense experience, making us cringe at the transforming power of revenge. 164m/C DVD . US Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, Geoffrey Rush, Michael (Michel) Lonsdale, Mathieu Amalric, Lynn Cohen, Marie Josee Croze, Makram Khoury, Moritz Bleibtreu, Gila Almagor, Moshe Ivgi, Yvan Attal, Hiam Abbass, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Meret Becker, Ayelet Zurer, Igal Naor, Omar Metwally, Mostefa Djadjam; D: Steven Spielberg; W: Tony Kushner, Eric Roth; C: Janusz Kaminski; M: John Williams.

Munich

views updated May 23 2018

Munich (München) City in s Germany, on the River Isar; capital of Bavaria. Founded in 1158, Munich became the residence of the Dukes of Bavaria in 1255. Occupied by the Swedes in 1632 and the French in 1800, it developed rapidly in the 19th century, when its population grew to more than 100,000. From the early 1920s, Munich was the centre of the Nazi Party. It sustained heavy bomb damage in World War II. Industries: chemicals, brewing, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, precision instruments, tourism. Pop. (1999) 1,193,600.