German citizens of the Jewish faith (1880-1933)
In 1886/7, the synagogue community purchased a plot of land from the Catholic Diocese of Münster that was located to the west of its existing cemetery. The first burials there took place in 1890; unlike in the earlier phase (from 1812) they now began at the northern end of the cemetery rather than in the southern section near the road. In the early 1890s a wall was built around the cemetery, which now covered approximately 1250 square meters.
Some of the first gravestones erected after 1887 are still traditional in form and content, but the recent adoption of the majority culture is already evident. A telling example is the grave of a young woman, Margarete Marks (L 171), who died in 1896 at the age of 22. For the first time in Münster's cemetery, her parents broke with a traditional taboo – that of depicting human figures on gravestones. The high plinth is inscribed only with the deceased’s name and her dates of birth and death, unadorned by any traditional Jewish symbols. The full-figure sculpture of a young woman rises above the plinth. She is resting her left arm on a broken column while holding a wreath in her right hand. The broken column – a symbol of a life cut short – is a feature of several graves in Münster's Jewish cemetery, but this is the only grave where it is accompanied by the depiction of a person. In this way, the Marks family were demonstrating their integration into a non-Jewish society and were evidently dispensing with – or at least didn’t feel it necessary to display – any Jewish symbols, even in a protected space like the cemetery of their own community. It is interesting to note that a very similar sculpture can also be found on a grave in Münster's Central Cemetery (entering from Himmelreichallee, it is in the first aisle on the right-hand side). This grave dates from around the same time; the inscription is more recent, but originally the grave was also that of a young woman. Margarete Marks' parents were thus expressing their grief over the loss of their daughter in the same way as their Christian neighbors – and in a way that reflected an emerging trend.
In Münster, as everywhere else in Germany at the time, many Jewish families were German patriots who saw themselves as German citizens of the Jewish (the “Mosaic”) faith. Jewish-German families, too, were proud that their sons fought for the German fatherland in the First World War. The fallen from their own community were commemorated on a plaque in the synagogue.
Ernst Marcus, son of the Münster poet Eli Marcus and his wife Anna, was among the soldiers who lost their lives. One day before his death on the Russian front, he wrote to his parents that he had just been awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class. His body was transferred to Münster and buried here. The gravestone inscription states that Ernst Marcus (L99) was awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class.
It was evidently important for his parents, too, that the recognition their son had received for his service at the front should not be forgotten.
With this stone as well, Hebrew characters and Jewish symbols are notable for their absence. This applies to a number of other graves from the first three decades of the 20th century. Belonging to the Jewish community was a matter of course, but for many of its members this no longer had to be expressed in traditional ways. So we increasingly see joint tombs with a single gravestone commemorating both spouses or even a whole family. Gravestone designs become more diverse and incorporate contemporary styles. We find large urns resting atop the tombstones, oak-leaf wreaths around the inscriptions, or gravestones in the shape of an obelisk.
The choice of an architect to design the “mourning hall” (Trauerhalle) in 1928 also typifies the modern era: whereas the synagogue of 1880 was designed by a Jewish architect, this was the work of Peter Strupp, a local citizen known for his Bauhaus style.
Literature:
Gisela Möllenhoff / Rita Schlautmann-Overmeyer, article on Münster in: Historisches Handbuch der jüdischen Gemeinschaften in Westfalen und Lippe, vol. 2, Münster 2008, pp. 487-513, here p. 509: the authors briefly outline the acquisition and successive expansion of the Einsteinstrasse cemetery and the role played by gravestones in Jewish burial culture in the 19th and early 20th century.
Marie-Theres Wacker, Ein neuer Mordechai und ein quellender Brunnen. Genderspezifische Beobachtungen zum Jüdischen Friedhof an der Einsteinstraße in Münster/Westfalen (1816–2016), in: Angela Berlis et al. (eds.), Die Geschlechter des Todes. Theologische Perspektiven auf Tod und Gender, Göttingen 2022, p. 363–395 (+ 6 illustrations).
(compiled by Marie-Theres Wacker and Ludger Hiepel)