Bamberg, known in Old Germanic as Babenberg, after the famous Babenberg royal dynasty of Germany, is an ancient town situated in the fertile valley between the two shoulders of the Regnitz river, a tributary of the Main in Bavaria, south-east of Germany.
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| Bamberg City |
History
The first mention of Bamberg as a castle owned by the Babenberg family dates back to 902. But it is assumed that there was an older, perhaps Celtic, settlement on the hilltop of Altenburg – the “Old Castle“. At the time of the Great Migration, the Slavs pushed the Germanic tribes out and controlled the area. Remnants of their primitive stone deity statues were found in the 19th century. Later, however, the countryside was again populated by Germanic tribes.
In 903, The Babenbergs fought with the Franconian Conrads over the territory and the town later became part of the Royal Crown. In 973, Emperor Otto II gave Bamberg to his cousin Henry the Quarrelsome, Duke of Bavaria. His son, the German King, and later Holy Roman Emperor Henry II. founded the bishopric in Bavaria in 1007. At the same time, he began to build the Kaiserpfalz – the “royal stronghold“ and the magnificent Dome (1004). It is assumed that he chose Bamberg to be his seat of power.
The bishopric originally answered directly to the Pope. Later, the bishops became the lords of the city, and there was no change during the bourgeois uprisings (the largest was in 1435). The city did not gain freedom. Initially, a Bamberg developed a long-distance trade relationship with both Rhineland and Bohemia. But in the 13th century, Nuremberg was at the top.
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| Bamberg - Obere Mühlbrücke |
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| Bamberg town hall from opposite bridge |
During the Thirty Years' War, the city remained on the side of the Catholic League and was occupied by Swedish troops in 1631-1648. Just before, during 1625-1631, a series of brutal witch trials took place in and around the city, for which Bamberg’s bishop Johann Georg of Dornheim was responsible. The exact number of victims is unknown, but according to estimates and incomplete documents it could have been over a thousand that were executed or tortured—most of them women.
After the Thirty Years War, Bamberg went through its cultural pinnacle. Under the leadership of Bishops of the Schönborn family, extensive baroque reconstruction of the city took place in the first half of the 18th century. The four Dientzenhofer brothers were hired by the Bishops as their court builders and left a large imprint behind.
In 1801, Bamberg became part of Bavaria to compensate for the loss of the Rhine Palatinate following the French-Austrian peace treaty in Lunéville. In 1802, the city was occupied by Napoleon’s soldiers, and the bishop became subordinate to them. His office was temporarily canceled. The incorporation of the Bamberg territory into the Bavarian Kingdom was confirmed by the Viennese Congress in 1814-1815. In 1817, the Bavarian bishopric was promoted to Archbishopric. The ancient bishoprics of Würzburg, Speyer and Eichstätte were incorporated into the new archdiocese.
A Look Into The Town
Bamberg, also called Franconian Rome, is situated on seven hills and in the valley between the shoulders of the River Regnitz. The charming cottages on the banks of the river, once-inhabited by fishermen, are collectively called "Little Venice" (Klein Venedig). In the historic burghers‘ district, the houses are packed and the city is interwoven with a network of winding streets.
Bamberg also has a world rarity in the form of an originally Gothic town hall building, standing on a bridge in the middle of the river. The Town Hall was rebuilt in Baroque style in the middle of the 18th century. Near the Old Town Hall is the ring-shaped Geyerswörth castle with its tower.
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| Bamberg Old Medieval Synagogue |
The bishop's part of the town (Bischofsstadt) is dominated by a Romanesque-Gothic style church with four slender towers and an interior with beautiful Gothic decoration. This is the third church built from 1211-1237, as the previous two were burned. There is also a sculpture from the first half of the 13th century (the so-called Bamberger Reiter), representing the ideal medieval knight on his horse that is world-famous. It is believed that it could be the King of Hungary, St. Stephen I, the brother-in-law of Emperor Henry II – or Henry II himself.
The interior of the cathedral is also remarkable by having two choirs with altars. The west one is dedicated to St. John the Baptist. Peter and the remains of Pope Clement II. It is the only papal grave to the north of the Alps. There is also an eastern chorus with an altar of St. George and in front of the tomb lies the remains of the only canonized king, the Emperor Henry II and his wife Kunhut. In the eastern crypt there is a sarcophagus with the coffin of another German king, Conrad III, who died in Bamberg.
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| Bamberg New Synagogue |
In the square in front of the dome opposite the Old Hofchaltung from the 16th century, the Prince-Bishop Lothar Franz von Schönborn erected a magnificent Baroque New Residence (Neue Residenz) at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. The Bamberg branch of the state gallery has its headquarters today in the premises of the New Residence. Visitors can admire the works of the old masters and the castle halls decorated with beautiful stuccoes. In 1647, an academy was founded in Bamberg, which was abolished in 1803 and later restored - today, the Otto-Friedrich University in Bamberg.
The Bamberg Jews
It is hardly possible to summarize the history of the Jews in Bamberg – which is as old as the local history itself – in a moment, although this may sometimes happen with terms like "Rintfleisch" and "Holocaust". But Jewish presence in Bamberg is definitely more than that!
It is not known when the first Jews in Bamberg settled. It is theorized that they, together with Roman legions, came to southern Germany as merchants. But we can safely assume that since the beginning of the diocese in Bamberg, the Jews already settled there. The diocese celebrated its millennium in 2007, so we could say that Jewish presence in the city is more than a thousnad years old.
Except for a few years when Jews were actually expelled from Bamberg, e.g. in 1478, and apart from the great catastrophe that is the Shoah, Jews have always lived in Bamberg. The prince-bishops, as spiritual and temporal lords, were always well paid by the Bamberg Jewish community – until secularization in the early 19th century (1803). However this “local custom“ was so deeply-rooted that this princely gift of money was expected from the Jews of Bamberg even after that.
A constituted Jewish community in Bamberg is mentioned for the first time in the 2nd half of the 12th century. In the area of Pfahlplätzchen, a small community with a synagogue was recorded. The synagogue was confiscated in 1478 by the then prince-bishop and demolished. In its place, a Marienkapelle church was built and the Jews were expelled from the city. Later they were allowed to come back, but they had to pay immense taxes for their stay in the city as well as for the right to stay, the so-called "Gedinckten Zins".
Later, in the upper Kesslergasse, the today’s Hellergasse, a new second prayer hall was established. Finally in the Generalsgasse from the 17th century a new synagogue was built, and was rebuilt in 1853. However, the conversion was so varied that the synagogue resembled a new building and thus also the fourth synagogue had to be built. Finally, in 1910, the large, richly decorated grand – fifth – synagogue in the Herzog-Max-Straße was consecrated. This one was destroyed in 1938 during the Kristallnacht.
The prewar community ceased to exist and most of the original members were murdered by the Nazis. However, this did not mean the ultimate end of Bamberg’s Jewry. The community was reestablished after the war; it grew very slowly but steadily, uniting a colorful mix: the local Jews who survived the holocaust and stayed, and new Jewish immigrants, who arrived as immigrants mostly from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. But also there were also members of the dispatched US Army units who joined.
Today's synagogue is the seventh in the history of Bamberg. It opened in 2007, on the one-thousand-years anniversary of the existence of the Jewish community. The building houses not only the synagogue, but also a communal center, Jewish school and a kosher canteen that serves the several-hundred-strong community of Bamberg. The community is still growing to this day. The Jewish community of Bamberg is one of the best examples of rebirth of Jewish life in nowadays Germany. For Jewish travelers who are interested in knowing more about the history of the Jews in Bamberg, they will definitely learn a lot from
Jewish heritage tours in the area.
