Jewish population in Harxheim
Jewish life was part of the culture and history of Rheinhessen for generations. In almost all Rhine-Hessian towns and communities, Jewish families lived side by side with their Catholic or Protestant neighbors, including Harxheim. Old population statistics show that in Harxheim in the 19. and beginning of the 20 century about 20 people of Jewish faith lived.
In 1834, 503 inhabitants were reported for Harxheim, of whom 332 were Protestant, 153 Catholic, and 18 Hebrew. In 1905 the population was 493, of which 350 were Protestants, 121 Catholics and 22 Israelites. Around 1925, 11 people from Harxheim were members of the Jewish community. 1) 2) 3)
The Jewish religious communities in Ebersheim and Harxheim were closely connected even before 1830. However, the Harxheim Jews were too few in number to build their own prayer house or synagogue. This probably led to the merger with the Ebersheim religious community. For reasons of proportional representation, the board of the Jewish community of Ebersheim-Harxheim always included a member from Harxheim.
A very important member from Harxheim was Ferdinand Mayer, who volunteered for the Jewish community as a member of the board, including as a precentor, from 1896 to 1934. 4)
The fates and lives of members of the Harxheim Mayer family:
The communal synagogue stood in Ebersheim, its origin can already be dated to the time before 1842. Later, the building was extended by an annex with a teacher’s apartment. The Jews of Harxheim went on foot to Ebersheim for church services and religious instruction. In the winter months, the religion teacher also came to Harxheim to teach the children. 4)
Harxheim also did not have its own Jewish cemetery. The burials took place at the community cemetery in Ebersheim. This is located at the end of the village on the right side of the road to Zornheim.
The synagogue was already vandalized and burned down by SA people from Nieder-Olm and Ebersheim in a kind of anticipatory obedience on November 8, 1938, one day before Pogrom Night. Likewise, the houses and apartments of the five Jewish families still living in Ebersheim were completely destroyed. The land on which the synagogue stood passed into private ownership in 1956. The remains of the building were removed and disposed of. Today, a memorial plaque embedded in the sidewalk in front of the house at Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse 9 commemorates the former Jewish house of worship. 4)
Nothing is known of any outrages against the Jewish couple Moritz and Käthie Mayer, who were still living in Harxheim at the time.
The Reichstag elections from 1928 to 1933 dramatically document the exponential growth of the NSDAP’s vote from virtually zero to one hundred. This explains the parallel rapid spread of anti-Semitism, which was consciously promoted. In contrast to municipalities with a predominantly Catholic population, the proportion of NSDAP voters was above average in more Protestant peasant communities. In some of these municipalities, NASDAP achieved vote shares of well over 70%. 5)
Share of the NSDAP vote (in %) in the Reichstag elections from 1924 to 1933 (city of Mainz, Harxheim and neighboring communities)
Source: Klein, Thomas. The Hessians as Reichstag Voters, Third Volume: Grand Duchy/State of Hesse 1867-1933)
After 1933, the persecution of Jews by the National Socialists quickly led to increased emigration from rural communities in Rheinhessen or to people leaving Germany. The Jewish rural population preferred to move to the larger cities. This was followed by school and job bans, business boycotts, exclusion and harassment of the Jewish population.
Those who were not able to leave Germany by the beginning of the war in 1939 after the Pogrom Night in 1938 and the massive pressure of the National Socialists that followed were forcibly resettled, deported and murdered in the death camps in the following years. Very few people survived the Holocaust. Jewish life was extinguished in the Rhine-Hessian communities. This also applies to Harxheim.
In the chronicle for the 1200 year celebration of Harxheim in 1967 the Jewish fellow citizens and their fates remained unmentioned. Today, eyewitness accounts from the time before the Second World War are no longer to be found in Harxheim. The surviving information is often vague or contradictory due to the same first and family names of the Jewish citizens concerned.
Using the example of the Mayer family, which lived in Harxheim for generations and had many branches, the following reports attempt to show their lives and their family relationships, especially from about 1900 onwards. The inspection of the files on reparations from the post-war period provide insights into the situation of the families before and during the Nazi period. Likewise, circumstances and details of the escape of the individual family members as well as the beginning of a new life in the USA can be traced.
In addition to the Mayers, other Jewish families with family ties to the neighboring communities of Ebersheim, Mommenheim and Bodenheim lived in Harxheim for a time. If the information situation permits, these Harxheim citizens should also be reminded.
Mayer family, Harxheim
Family tree Mayer family, created by Rüdiger Gottwald and Siegfried Schäfer 2023
Image source: Siegfried Schäfer
Mayer family – individual life paths
- Ferdinand and Judith Mayer
- Sara Mayer
- Simon Mayer
- Johanna Mayer
- Judith Mayer
- Herta Mayer
- Fritz Mayer
- Moritz and Katharina Mayer
| In today’s Untergasse 19 lived for generations the merchant family Mayer. Last were Ferdinand (born 16.07.1880 in Harxheim) and wife Judith, née. Weil (born on 30.03.1881 in Randegg near Esslingen) resident here. They were married on August 20, 1906 in Harxheim. The marriage produced five children, Moritz Fritz, Sara, Johanna, Herta and Simon. |  |
Ferdinand was the cousin of Moritz Mayer, the son of Gottschalk Mayer, who lived at the same time in today’s Untergasse 13. Ferdinand was the only one to survive his six siblings. These died either in the first years of life or in early adulthood.
Her life path is described here in detail ...
| Sara Mayer, born on December 15, 1908, school years in Harxheim and Mainz, emigrated to the USA as early as 1930. |  |
The ship’s passage on the SS Milwaukee departed Hamburg for New York on January 24, 1930, arriving on February 6. Sara immediately applied for naturalization and was granted American citizenship on July 11, 1935.
Her life path is described in more detail here ...
| Simon Meyer, born in Harxheim on April 20, 1919, was the youngest of five siblings. Like the other children in the family, he first attended the local elementary school and then a high school in Mainz. |  |
At the end of 1934 he moved with his parents to Frankfurt. He left Germany on November 19, 1935, when he was only 16 years old. He traveled on the passenger ship Europa from Bremen to New York, where he disembarked on November 25.
His life is described in more detail here ...
|
Johanna Mayer was born in Harxheim on June 9, 1909. She spent her school years in Harxheim and Mainz.
|
 |
She lived with her mother at Hegelstraße 7 in Frankfurt until she left the country. In 1936 she was maid of honor at the wedding of her brother Fritz to Karola in Frankfurt. Johanna left Germany on the liner Hamburg on November 25, 1937, bound for New York.
Her life path is described in more detail here ...
| Ferdinand Mayer’s widow Judith prepared her emigration to the USA from October 1938. Of the household goods and furnishings she wanted to take with her from her Frankfurt apartment, half were removed from the inventory list by the Frankfurt Nazi authorities. |  |
Their lives are described in more detail here ...
| Herta Mayer, born in Harxheim on July 17, 1913, was the youngest of the three Mayer sisters. After attending elementary school in Harxheim, she transferred to the secondary school for girls (today’s Frauenlob-Gymnasium) in Mainz. There she graduated from high school with top grades in March 1933. |  |
Herta had considered studying mathematics and science because of her excellent high school diploma. She combined this with the chance to even receive a scholarship due to her very good performance. The Nazi restrictions limiting university access for Jewish students to 1.5% of the student body forced Herta to change her career plans.
Her life path is described here in detail ...
| The eldest son of Ferdinand Meyer, Moritz Fritz, call name Fritz, born on August 21, 1907, went to elementary school in Harxheim and graduated in 1926 (in Mainz or Frankfurt). |  |
According to the stories of his sons Thomas and Bernard, their father loved the walks in the vineyards and also the Rhine-Hessian wine during his time in Harxheim. Father Fritz also mentioned to them the wine festivals, where sometimes one too many glasses were drunk. Fritz’s father Ferdinand, a strictly observant member of the Jewish community of Ebersheim-Harxheim, envisioned an education as a rabbi for his son and sent him to Frankfurt at a young age for the appropriate training. At the age of about 15, however, Fritz realized that he did not want to take this path and there were heated arguments about this with his father. Fritz prevailed and studied literature and humanities in Frankfurt and Paris/Sorbonne. In 1936 he was awarded the degree of Dr. phil. doctorate, probably one of the last doctorates awarded to Jews in Frankfurt. As a Jew, he had to wait for some time for official recognition of his doctorate, but in the end he received the title.
His life path is described here in detail ...
| In Untergasse 13 lived another family named Mayer: Moritz (born 17.10.1879 in Harxheim) and wife Gutta Katharina, née. Reinheimer (born on 05.05.1879 in Reinheim near Dieburg) and the two sons Julius and Friedrich. |  |
Moritz and Ferdinand Mayer, who lived at Untergasse 19, were cousins. Moritz’s father Gottschalk (24.12.1852 – 04.09.1941) was the brother of Ferdinand’s father Jakob III (13.11.1850 -15.10.1921). Gottschalk Mayer was a merchant by profession and married Babette, née May (01.03.1851 – 18.08.1914) married. His brother Jacob III married Babette’s sister Sara, née. May (10.04.1841 – 07.07.1903). The May sisters came from Geinsheim.
Moritz himself was the only one to outlive his five siblings. The latter all died within the first two years of life.
Moritz, his wife Katharina and father Gottschalk lived in a small, modest property that was demolished in the 1970s. Like his father, he was a merchant and ran a wine and grain business. In addition, he sold fabrics, haberdashery and other daily necessities as a traveling salesman.
Her life path is described here in detail ...
Acknowledgement
The existing contact with the grandchildren of Ferdinand and Judith Mayer from Harxheim and their families, who live in the USA today, was and is of great value in the reappraisal of the family history. Special thanks to Thomas, Bernhard and Sara Mayer for the open discussions and the friendly and very moving exchange.
A big thank you goes to Rüdiger Gottwald, Friesenheim, who collected many details of the family tree of the Mayer family and data of other Jewish citizens living in Harxheim. Based on the data available, a picture of the Mayer family in particular emerges of their lives since the end of the 19th century. We would also like to thank Horst Kasper, Bodenheim, who has been involved for decades with the reappraisal of Jewish history in Bodenheim and Nackenheim and who supported us with his advice in the thematic reappraisal.
For those interested in the history of the Jewish community of Ebersheim-Harxheim, we recommend the book by Berthold Tapp entitled Die israelitische Gemeinde Ebersheim mit Harxheim und ihre Synagoge (1830-1938).
In the book Rettet wenigstens die Kinder – Kindertransporte aus Frankfurt am Main, edited by Angelika Rieber and Till-Lieberz-Groß, Frankfurt 2018, Angelika Rieber describes in detail the life of Herta Mayer, a daughter of Ferdinand Mayer born in Harxheim. Before fleeing Germany, she was a teacher at the Jewish District School in Bad Nauheim and was instrumental in organizing Kindertransports to rescue Jewish children in 1938-39.
Angelika Rieber deserves special thanks for her support in documenting the life of Herta Mayer.
References:
1) Heße, W.. Rheinhessen in seiner Entwicklung von 1798 bis Ende 1834, ed. 1835.
2) Brilmayer, Karl Johann. Rheinhessen, Giessen 1905.
3) www.alemannia-judaica.de/ebersheim-synoygoge
4) Tapp, Bertholt. The Israelite community of Ebersheim with Harxheim and its synagogue (1830-1938), 2014.
5) Klein, Thomas. Die Hessen als Reichstagswähler, Third Volume: Großherzogtum/Volksstaat Hessen 1867-1933, Marburg 1995.
