Commission for the History of the Jews in Hesse
The Commission for the History of the Jews in Hesse was founded in 1963 in the wake of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial. It was based in the Hessian Main State Archives in Wiesbaden. The aim was and is to research the history of the Jews in Hesse on a scientific basis. The form of a historical commission was chosen for this purpose. The foundation was initiated by the Hessian Minister of Culture, Prof. Ernst Schütte, and the state of Hesse continues to support the difficult financing, especially in the early years, to this day.
The extent to which the state took on this task is also reflected in the people who have chaired the commission since 1975, with the active and former ministers Johannes Strelitz, Karl Krollmann and Ruth Wagner showing remarkable continuity. Nevertheless, the Hessian commission was not imitated in the other federal states. The initial aim was to involve Jewish researchers in the still small commission, and this was achieved. With the horrors of the Nazi era in mind, research into this period was the order of the day, but not the only topic.
At the beginning of the 1970s, the Commission published the two volumes "Jews in Court 1933-1945" and "Nazi Crimes in Court 1945-1955", which had already become "classics". These and later publications were supervised and promoted in particular by Wolf-Arno Kropat. The program includes monographs on general Jewish history in Hesse, population and social history, the emancipation of Jews and anti-Semitism, documentation on the fate of Jews under Nazi terror, as well as resources and source publications, especially from the state archives. The range of books includes more than 30 titles.
The documentation of old Jewish cemeteries in Hesse began in 1981. To date, a total of 75 cemeteries (out of almost 350) in Hesse with around 18,000 grave inscriptions have been processed, including the Jewish cemetery at the "Schöne Aussicht" in Wiesbaden. These are old cemeteries that still have gravestones from before 1800. The gravestones were photographed, the inscriptions copied, translated and supplemented with further genealogical information from other sources, especially from the surviving death registers of the 19th century. In addition, site plans were drawn up for the larger cemeteries. The results are currently being made available to a wider public via the LAGIS information system of the Hessian State Office for Historical Regional Studies in Marburg.
A new project was started in 2008 to create a lexical record of the synagogues in Hesse.
The Commission for the History of the Jews in Hesse has around 70 members who deal with the history of the Jews in Hesse in a wider regional context. In addition, special attention is paid to cooperation with other institutions: the Historical Commissions, the Hessian State Archives, the Hessian State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments, the Hessian State Office for Historical Regional Studies, the Jewish Museum Frankfurt and the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt. Great importance is also attached to contacts with the local "grassroots", which have achieved outstanding results in recent years.