Into the present
In 1991, the cemetery's central avenue, which was mostly used as an access pathway and had previously been owned by the Bischöfliches Priesterseminar (catholic seminary), was given to the Jewish community by way of a donation agreement. This avenue had presumably been separated off when the cemetery was enlarged in 1886/7 (documents no longer exist) to guarantee access to plots belonging to various ecclesiastical foundations bordering the cemetery to the north. After the barracks were built, there was no longer any need for such an access route. Whereas in the 1950s it was still possible to file an appeal under canon law against such a donation, following the reform of canon law in 1983 there was no longer any obstacle to the transfer.
A few years later (in 1994), a narrow strip of the adjacent barracks grounds to the west was acquired. In the purchase contract, the Bundeswehr authorities stated that further expansion to the west would no longer be possible as long as the site continued to be used for military or other federal administrative purposes.
But since the Jewish community had by this time tripled in size due to the influx of “quota refugees” from the former USSR, it was inevitable that there would be further demand for burial plots. Thus in 2002 the Münster city authorities allocated part of the Hohe Ward municipal cemetery in Hiltrup to the Jewish community for its own burials.
The Jewish cemetery on Einsteinstraße was added to the list of monuments by the Münster Municipal Monument Authority in 1991. The reasons given include the following: “(...) The cemetery takes on a special significance as the burial place of the Jewish community of Münster, which was persecuted for centuries. It has survived the turmoil of time, including the persecution and extermination during the National Socialist era. Overall, the cemetery is of extraordinary importance, as it is the only one in the city of Münster to provide an almost complete record of the early 19th century right up to the present day.”
In Münster, burials are carried out in the traditional way: the body is washed by members of the Chevra Kadisha (the honorary association of men or women from the community who prepare and carry out the funeral), wrapped in a shroud and placed in the coffin. At the cemetery, a prayer is said in the mourning hall, from where the coffin is carried to the prepared grave. There another prayer is said. All participants who are able to do so join in covering the coffin with earth. The grave is marked by a simple wooden sign bearing the name of the deceased. Whereas flowers were seldom seen on graves up to 1990, members of the community who moved here from Eastern Europe brought with them the custom of decorating graves with flowers.
The family of the deceased is supported while “sitting shiva”, a mourning period of seven days. After one year, prayers are said in the synagogue to mark the yortseyt (“anniversary”) and only then is the grave completed with a headstone. Those wishing to pay their respects often place pebbles on the gravestone in memory of the deceased.
In recent times, epitaphs have generally remained brief and, in addition to a German-language dedication, usually also include the Hebrew opening phrase “Here rests” plus the final blessing and the Star of David. Some of the more recent graves, moreover, bear a Russian or Ukrainian inscription in Cyrillic characters. This reflects the fact that many members of the current Jewish community, more than 90% of whom originated in the former USSR, now face the challenge of reconciling their East European cultural identities and their Jewish roots with their new life in German society.
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 centuries.
Sharon Fehr (ed.), Erinnerung und Neubeginn. Die jüdische Gemeinde Münster nach 1945. Ein Selbstporträt, Münster 2013, especially pp. 205-211 on Münster's Jewish cemeteries (medieval cemetery, Einsteinstrasse cemetery, burial ground below the Christian Münster-Hiltrup cemetery since 2002).
Unpublished sources
Documentation by students of the Wilhelm-Emmanuel-von-Ketteler-Schule in Münster, Jüdischer Friedhof Münster, Einsteinstrasse: bound 98-page computer printout, Münster, June 1996, comprising historical details, a list of the graves and a site plan. – A visit to Israel by a group of teachers from Münster's Wilhelm-Emmanuel-von-Ketteler-Schule gave rise to the idea of documenting the Jewish cemetery on Einsteinstrasse, Münster. Under the guidance of their teacher, Dipl. Ing. Josef Anders, students at the technical secondary school (class 12/B1) surveyed the gravestones, read off the inscriptions and compared them with a list from 1990 provided to them by the Jewish Community of Münster. In the summer of 1995, they were able to complete a list covering a total of 386 gravestones and recording the last name, first name, date of birth and date of death on each stone. The list was arranged topographically (according to the gravestone numbers and in two parts, one for the left- and one for the right-hand half of the cemetery) but was then supplemented by an index sorted alphabetically by last name. This documentation is available as a small number of computer printouts bound into an A4 format book. One copy has been kept in the Zentralarchiv zur Erforschung der Juden in Deutschland, Heidelberg, since 2012. When the website relating to the cemetery was created at the Seminar für Exegese des Alten Testaments at the University of Münster, the documentation was supplemented and corrected.
(compiled by Marie-Theres Wacker)