Obermayer German Jewish History Award

Heinrich Dittmar

Alsfeld, Hesse

Heinrich Dittmar began asking questions when asking questions was taboo. It was the early 1970s in Alsfeld, a small town in Hesse where Jews had once lived. “I squeezed people. ‘There were lots of Jews here—where are they now?’ ” the 68-year-old remembers asking. “They just replied, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ ” 

But Dittmar did talk about it. He collected material bit by bit, piece by piece. Through three decades, he assembled the history of a generations-long partnership that had existed between Jews and other Hessians. As a local politician, he pressed for the repair and maintenance of the 16 Jewish cemeteries in the region and worked with the Alsfeld Museum to exhibit his material. 

These days, he is a “central figure” for Jewish history in the Vogelsberg region, says Joachim Legatis, a journalist inspired by Dittmar to pursue Jewish historical work. Dittmar, who worked as a special-education teacher, arranges guided tours and lectures for school classes, and he is responsible for a yearly Kristallnacht commemoration ceremony. He also publishes books and articles in local papers and stays in contact with survivors. He brings this energy to his other pursuits, whether history, the church community, football clubs or local politics. “Contacting and working with people, like in his guided tours, organizing projects—that is really his world,” says his daughter, Christiane Sattler.

About 25 years ago, Dittmar found a dusty stack of documents in a corner of the town’s archive. “They were about the Jews of Alsfeld,” he said. “They had been separated from the others.” The History of the Jews of Alsfeld, a book that he researched and helped write, describes how closely Germans and Jews in the region had lived since the 17th century. (The relationship was so close, the two groups had even influenced one another’s mourning rituals.) He wanted to send a volume of his book to every survivor he could find, regardless of where they lived. Town officials hesitated, so Dittmar decided to pay for postage himself. “My work is dedicated to the people who never got a gravestone,” he says.

The news of his efforts in Alsfeld eventually reached Arthur Strauss, who had been born in the town but emigrated to South Africa in the 1930s. After the war, Strauss went to Frankfurt, but he says Dittmar’s work motivated him to return to the place where his grandparents are buried. “Without him, there would have been no reason to build up relations in Alsfeld again,” Strauss says. Because of Dittmar, Strauss reconnected with a cousin, friends from his youth and schoolmates, among others.

When Dittmar started his research, his fascination with the German-Jewish past was inspired by simple curiosity. He even used family vacations to visit historic sites or do research for friends. But it quickly grew deeper. “When I saw how grateful and happy people were that I could help find out something,” he says, “that really gave me a tremendous pleasure.”

His pleasure has been tempered by difficulties, however. While open hostility was rare, Dittmar vividly recalls the time when researching German-Jewish history met with resistance at every turn. “One day, I came to use a village’s archive,” he says. “When I mentioned that my research was about Jews, suddenly the door key was lost.” But problems like that one didn’t stop him. Getting past them just required patience, something Dittmar learned from nearly 30 years of teaching special-education students.

Today, his tracing of the past continues. For his latest project, he interviewed an Alsfeld Jew who shared memories about growing up there. Dittmar next wants to talk to other Germans and juxtapose the stories on video. “He is never resting,” his daughter says. “His brain always needs new nutrition.”