Obermayer German Jewish History Award

GröschlerHaus

Volker Landig & Hartmut Peters

Jever, Lower Saxony

Since its founding in 2014, GröschlerHaus: Zentrum für Jüdische Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte der Region Friesland/Wilhelmshaven (Gröschler House: Center for Jewish History and Contemporary History of the Friesland/Wilhelmshaven Region) has served as an informational center, event venue and meeting place for people rediscovering the Jewish heritage of Jever and the surrounding area in northwestern Germany. Named after the brothers Hermann and Julius Gröschler, the last individuals to lead Jever’s Jewish community before perishing in the Holocaust, GröschlerHaus stands on the site of Jever’s former synagogue, which burned on Kristallnacht, and today serves as an education resource for students investigating history, politics, religion and ethics, as well as for adult learning.

Founded with the help of Zweckverband Schloss-Museum Jever (Jever Castle Museum Union Administration), Friesland county and Jeverländische Altertums- und Heimatverein e.V. (Ancient Jever Land and Home Club), GröschlerHaus houses the exhibition “Zur Geschichte der Juden Jevers” (History of Jever’s Jews) and has become a dynamic cultural place of learning bringing to life the town’s Jewish legacy and history—much of which was forgotten. “The Jewish tradition is so important in this region, and that’s why there is so much to tell about and think about and see,” says Volker Landig, a retired Lutheran pastor and one of the founders of GröschlerHaus, which is run and managed by a small team of volunteers. “That’s why we started our work: so the population can know all of this history.”

Landig’s work resuscitating Friesland’s Jewish past started more than 40 years ago, in 1976, when he moved to Jever and was astonished to find that nothing of the town’s Jewish past existed. Landig had studied history, earned a Masters degree in Theology focusing on the German Jewish philosophers Martin Buber and Hermann Cohen, and knew an important Jewish community had existed in Jever before the war. “I was interested,” he recalls, “so I saw a large Jewish cemetery that was in very, very bad condition, and working with my confirmation students, I started to clean it up.” Two years later, he worked with Jever’s mayor to install a brass commemorative plaque on the building where the town’s synagogue once stood. He then set to work researching the family histories of the former Jewish residents of Jever and establishing contact with their living descendants.

One of those descendants was Paulette Buchheim, of Malden, Massachusetts, whose great uncle Fritz Levy escaped from Germany to Shanghai in 1939 and later went to San Francisco before returning to Jever in 1950. Levy was given back his family’s property, stayed in the town for the remainder of his life, and was known as “the last Jew of Jever” before his death in 1982, which also marked the final burial in Jever’s Jewish cemetery. Hartmut Peters, a teacher at Mariengymnasium who led an extra-curricular project with students in the early 1980s researching the town’s Jewish past—who and worked with Landig many years later to found GröschlerHaus—knew Levy and considered the nonconformist man “one of my cultural heroes.” For Buchheim, the founding of GröschlerHaus culminated “a lifetime of passion and commitment” by Landig and Peters to uncover personal stories like her great uncle’s. “The impact of their work has touched the students of Jever and helped them understand the past,” she says, and “they have also been a beacon for the children and grandchildren of the Jever Jews.”

It wasn’t until 1983, when Landig and Peters finally met, that Jever’s Jewish heritage fully reemerged. The next year, together with students the two organized a week of encounters to which dozens of relatives of former Jever Jews were invited and part of which was a Christian-Jewish service in the city church. The event became a historic reunion, attended by the renowned German rabbi Henry George Brandt. Landig was, at the time, the official representative of the Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche (Evangelical Lutheran Church) for the Oldenburg region, enabling him to act as a bridge between the religions. “We accept and recognize the Jewish tradition as the parent religion,” he says. “We want Jews in Europe today to know that we are ashamed about what happened, and that we have to learn from them—from the times of Jewish history that preceded Christian times.”

Since that one-week visit of Jews who had been expelled from Jever, Peters has published many newspaper articles and two books: the first, Verbannte Bürger: Die Juden aus Jever: Dokumente und Darstellungen zur Geschichte der Juden Jevers, 1698-1984 (Banished Citizens: The Jews of Jever: Documents and Representation of the History of Jever’s Jews, 1698-1984), chronicled the Jewish history of Jever, while the second described the story of the town’s synagogue and its burning on Kristallnacht. Thanks to Landig’s and Peters’s tireless research, visitors to GröschlerHaus today can learn about Jever’s centuries-long Jewish presence, which began in 1698 when the first Jewish traders began to settle the farming region. At its height in 1900, the town’s Jewish community numbered around 200, a high density given its size. At least 67 of Jever’s Jewish inhabitants were killed by the Nazis; the first one perished in 1938 at Sachsenhausen near Berlin, and the last one died in 1945, along with hundreds of other Jews being evacuated by sea from Neuengamme concentration camp, when the ship was mistakenly sunk by British bombers.

In addition to its musical events, exhibitions, lectures and other activities, GröschlerHaus hosts a website that contains more than 100 articles, many of them written by Peters, and has become an online magazine of local regional history about Jews and the Nazi period in the region. In 1986, Peters and a group of students received the Theodor-Heuss-Medaille for the organization of the visit of former Jewish citizens and his contribution to education about Jever’s Jewish past. “Now the students come to the GröschlerHaus and experience history at an authentic place of remembrance,” says Peters, 67, who initially became a teacher because he wanted “to change society” and expose it to its Nazi past. “The young people coming to us are very interested. They know more about the past than previous generations of students. They want to be part of the solution, and in GröschlerHaus they can see what really happened— that it’s not just something from books or letters.”

Every year, Landig and Peters organize Kristallnacht commemorations in Jever. In 1996, they created a memorial entitled “Pile of Books,” which inscribed on the wall of the Jever jail the names of the 67 Jewish residents killed by the Nazis, who were held in the jail in 1938 prior to their deportation to the camps. (The memorial was funded entirely through donations from the public totaling 60,000 Deutsche Marks, the equivalent of 30,000 Euros.) Volunteers work at GröschlerHaus all week long, opening the door to residents and visitors who want to learn about Jever’s Jewish past. In addition, the building sits atop the remains of an ancient, recently discovered mikvah, or ritual bath, which is probably the only remaining mikvah known to exist in northwestern Germany. Now, says Landig, “we are going to restore the mikvah and put a glass top to enable viewers to look into it, giving an impression of how a mikvah worked.”

In the future, he hopes GröschlerHaus—which receives support from local authorities, the European Union and private donations—will be able to raise enough funds to buy the building outright. Landig considers their work a “humanitarian responsibility for every person, not only Christians. We all live together in this world, we have to respect each other and respect other identities, other philosophies, other nationalities, and to be aware what we ourselves are,” he says.

For Peters, who retired from teaching in 2014, the task of GröschlerHaus, and educating the next generation about Jever’s Jewish legacy, must continue. “We have to go on—to institutionalize the culture of remembrance, to untie it from our pioneer generation,” he says. The achievements and contributions of the Jews, the crimes committed against them, and the causes require collective memory. “There must be a new stage of it. There is no other choice.”