The Case of the Jewish Cemetery in Ottensen

Ina Lorenz

Source Description

When the conflict about the planned construction on the site of the Jewish cemetery in Ottensen was already in full swing, the German Rabbinical Conference in November 1991 issued an opinion. They judged the construction project as a clear violation of Halakhic law and demanded that all work on the site be halted immediately. This document represents the climax of the conflict, when battle lines were drawn between the city, the developer, and various Jewish groups whose positions were by no means unified, however, and in some cases even contradicted one another.
  • Ina Lorenz

The Ottensen cemetery


On Oc­to­ber 28, 1661 Ashke­nazi Jews from Ham­burg bought a bur­ial ground on Hol­stein ter­ri­tory in the Danish-​ruled town of Ot­tensen. The ceme­tery had been es­tab­lished on open ground. In the course of the fol­low­ing decades the ceme­tery's lo­ca­tion on the out­skirts changed due to be­gin­ning set­tle­ment. In the Wil­helmine era it came to be lo­cated in the midst of an area of com­mer­cial and in­dus­trial use in the now Pruss­ian town of Al­tona, which in 1937 was in­cor­po­rated into the city of Ham­burg. Dur­ing the Sec­ond World War the Wehrma­cht built an air raid shel­ter on the ceme­tery grounds, which de­stroyed a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of graves. In De­cem­ber 1942 the Reich As­so­ci­a­tion of the Jews in Ger­many Re­ichsvere­ini­gung der Juden in Deutsch­land, of which Ham­burg’s Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion was a mem­ber by this time, was forced to trans­fer the prop­erty to the city as its new owner. In No­vem­ber 1942 the Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion had lost its in­de­pen­dence com­pletely, hav­ing al­ready been in­cor­po­rated into the Reich As­so­ci­a­tion Re­ichsvere­ini­gung in Au­gust. Al­ready in the sum­mer of 1945 the con­gre­ga­tion, re­or­ga­niz­ing it­self, de­manded resti­tu­tion of the ceme­tery site. When the city re­jected the claim, the con­gre­ga­tion brought a law­suit be­fore Ham­burg’s dis­trict court (court for resti­tu­tion cases). The law­suit was set­tled by a mu­tual agree­ment in 1950 / 51. The con­gre­ga­tion and the Jew­ish Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, who con­sid­ered it­self au­tho­rized as trustee of for­mer Jew­ish as­sets, sold the prop­erty to the de­part­ment store chain Her­tie be­fore it was resti­tuted. A de­part­ment store was even­tu­ally built on the site.

Construction plans for the cemetery site


A com­pletely new sit­u­a­tion arose in 1990 and the fol­low­ing three years. The de­part­ment store chain Her­tie had closed the Ot­tensen store in 1988 and sold the prop­erty to the Ham­burg prop­erty de­vel­op­ing firm Büll & Lüdtke, who in­tended to de­mol­ish the ex­ist­ing build­ings, in­clud­ing the air raid shel­ter, and erect a new shop­ping mall on the lot. The Al­tona dis­trict of­fice in charge is­sued a pre­lim­i­nary no­tice in No­vem­ber 1990, au­thor­i­ta­tively con­firm­ing the gen­eral ad­mis­si­bil­ity of the con­struc­tion project. By this time it had al­ready be­come known pub­licly that the con­struc­tion project on the site of the for­mer Jew­ish ceme­tery was to go ahead. Whether the Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion was al­ready aware of the con­struc­tion plans in early 1990 is not clear. In March 1991 the prop­erty de­vel­oper ap­plied for a build­ing per­mit for a new shop­ping mall. Spe­cific in­for­ma­tion from Ham­burg most likely reached Jews in Is­rael, Eng­land, and the U.S. by early sum­mer 1991. Vir­tu­ally at the same time, the first protests or­ga­nized by Athra Kadisha, an in­ter­na­tional, very well-​connected so­ci­ety of Ha­sidic Jews “for the preser­va­tion of Jew­ish holy sites,” took place. In Au­gust 1991 au­tho­rized de­mo­li­tion work began, start­ing the phase of “clear­ing the con­struc­tion area,” in tech­ni­cal terms. In Sep­tem­ber 1991 about 30 Or­tho­dox Jews from Am­s­ter­dam oc­cu­pied the con­struc­tion site. This at­tracted great at­ten­tion not just in Ger­many, but also abroad. Athra Kadisha de­manded the un­con­di­tional resti­tu­tion of the for­mer ceme­tery site. They ar­gued that the sale of a Jew­ish ceme­tery was pro­hib­ited by re­li­gious law. The con­flict now also took on an in­ter­na­tional di­men­sion when both the min­is­ter of the in­te­rior and the for­eign min­is­ter were urged by Jew­ish or­ga­ni­za­tions in Is­rael, Canada, and the United States to in­ter­vene against the con­struc­tion project. By sum­mer 1991 city of­fi­cials had to ac­cept that they could no longer limit their treat­ment of this con­struc­tion project to the legal as­pects of build­ing reg­u­la­tions alone.

The German Rabbinical Conference intervenes


Ham­burg’s Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion now, too, began to re­al­ize that they were in po­lit­i­cal and in­ter­nal trou­ble. For they now found them­selves at the cen­ter of pub­lic at­ten­tion, a de­vel­op­ment they had pur­posely sought to avoid in pre­vi­ous decades. In this sit­u­a­tion the con­gre­ga­tion sought help in order to over­come its iso­la­tion and the pres­sure to ex­plain it­self. Many peo­ple, in­clud­ing many from the Jew­ish com­mu­nity, asked how it had been pos­si­ble that the site of a Jew­ish ceme­tery was sold and a com­mer­cial struc­ture built on it. The con­gre­ga­tion re­ceived sup­port from a state­ment is­sued by the Ger­man Rab­bini­cal Con­fer­ence. This state­ment, is­sued in No­vem­ber 1991, de­scribes a clear vi­o­la­tion of Ha­lakhic law and in­cludes the de­mand that “every­thing hu­manly pos­si­ble must be done in order to pre­vent the des­e­cra­tion of this ceme­tery and pro­hibit any con­struc­tion work on this sa­cred ground.” Of course the rab­bis knew that a vi­o­la­tion of Ha­lakhic law did not im­pact a prop­erty trans­fer based on of­fi­cial state law. There­fore their opin­ion should pri­mar­ily be re­garded as a moral ap­peal.

The city of Hamburg


The city ap­peared po­lit­i­cally clue­less. It did not have an urban de­vel­op­ment plan for this part of Ot­tensen. It could have is­sued a re­de­vel­op­ment statute in the early 1980s al­ready. This would have en­abled it to ex­er­cise its legal op­tion to buy and thus pre­vent con­struc­tion on the site. None of this hap­pened, how­ever. Mean­while the de­vel­oper of­fered a buy­back of the prop­erty for 30 mil­lion D-​Mark. The Jew­ish com­mu­nity was un­able to raise this sum. City of­fi­cials ini­tially re­mained silent on the mat­ter be­fore even­tu­ally of­fer­ing a sub­sidy, which was eas­ily done since it was im­pos­si­ble that ei­ther the con­gre­ga­tion or the Cen­tral Coun­cil of Jews in Ger­many Zen­tral­rat der Juden in Deutsch­land would be able to raise a sub­stan­tial part of the buy­back sum.

Disturbing the dead


In early March 1992 about 100 to 150 Or­tho­dox Jews from Eng­land, Bel­gium, Switzer­land, and Is­rael oc­cu­pied the con­struc­tion site. A new legal mat­ter had emerged, since the ex­ca­va­tions vi­o­lated the law against dis­turb­ing the dead. Ac­cord­ing to Ger­man crim­i­nal law, this is a statu­tory of­fense. The Of­fice of the Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tor re­ceived a crim­i­nal com­plaint for dis­turb­ing the dead. Mean­while, Ham­burg’s ad­min­is­tra­tive court tem­porar­ily halted con­struc­tion. In this sit­u­a­tion, the Ham­burg chief rabbi, Dr. Nathan Peter Levin­son, on April 1992 de­cided for an ex­huma­tion in ac­cor­dance with Jew­ish rites. His Ha­lakhic opin­ion also re­ferred to Tal­mu­dic legal sources, but mainly to the pos­si­bil­ity of a rein­ter­ment as stip­u­lated in the Shulchan Aruch, a com­pi­la­tion of re­li­gious laws from the 16th cen­tury that is of the high­est Ha­lakhic au­thor­ity. In the early 20th cen­tury, when a road widen­ing was planned, Al­tona’s chief rabbi at the time, Dr. Meier Lerner, had de­cided for mov­ing graves from the Ot­tensen ceme­tery in the same man­ner. When the Jew­ish ceme­tery at Grindel had to be cleared for the con­struc­tion of new hous­ing in 1936, chief rabbi Dr. Joseph Car­lebach had also found rein­ter­ment ad­mis­si­ble. Both chief rab­bis thus con­sid­ered rein­ter­ring the dead a “lesser evil” than if “for all fu­ture time peo­ple, an­i­mals, and ve­hi­cles of all kinds tram­ple on” the graves, as the Ham­burg chief rabbi Levin­son wrote in his opin­ion, quot­ing from an ear­lier state­ment by Ham­burg chief rabbi Dr. Samuel Spitzer. Yet he omit­ted one sig­nif­i­cant Ha­lakhic as­pect: the opin­ions writ­ten by Meier Lerner and Joseph Car­lebach re­ferred to mu­nic­i­pal ob­jec­tives, mean­ing those that were in the pub­lic in­ter­est. In the case of the Ot­tensen ceme­tery, how­ever, the mo­tives were ex­clu­sively fi­nan­cial. Ac­cord­ing to Ha­lakhic law, fi­nan­cial gain must never be de­rived from a ceme­tery.

The dividing line


The sug­ges­tion made by Ham­burg chief rabbi Nathan Peter Levin­son in May 1992 failed due to op­po­si­tion by Athra Kadisha, who re­jected any ex­huma­tion as a vi­o­la­tion of re­li­gious law. In the mean­time, the front lines of the con­flict had changed, for there also was clash within the Jew­ish com­mu­nity about the right way for­ward. For many on the non-​Jewish side this was rather con­ve­nient as it meant that they were tem­porar­ily re­lieved of their moral re­spon­si­bil­ity for find­ing a so­lu­tion to the con­flict. Set­tling the con­flict within the Jew­ish com­mu­nity re­quired me­di­a­tion by a re­spected Jew­ish fig­ure of great re­li­gious rep­u­ta­tion. No­body was able to re­mem­ber later on who had first sug­gested the Ashke­nazi Or­tho­dox chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Itzchak Kolitz. By early May 1992 the Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion and the Or­tho­dox pro­test­ers had agreed on chief rabbi Kolitz “as ref­eree.” After var­i­ous pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions, Kolitz agreed to take on this role. He trav­eled to Ham­burg and vis­ited the re­main­ing ceme­tery site, mean­ing what was left of it after the air raid shel­ter and the de­part­ment store had been built. On May 21, 1992 he de­clared his de­ci­sion in Jerusalem. Just as the state­ment by the Ger­man Rab­bini­cal Con­fer­ence and the opin­ion by Ham­burg chief rabbi Levin­son had done ear­lier, he crit­i­cized that the Ham­burg con­gre­ga­tion had sold the ceme­tery site at the time. Yet chief rabbi Kolitz did not see ex­huma­tion as a sat­is­fac­tory so­lu­tion and pro­hib­ited it. This con­tra­dicted the tra­di­tion that had de­vel­oped in Ham­burg’s con­gre­ga­tion. He did not give a Ha­lakhic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. He also re­jected an­other so­lu­tion which had re­peat­edly been dis­cussed, namely to take the re­mains and soil to Is­rael. Mean­while he found con­struc­tion ad­mis­si­ble, in­clud­ing for com­mer­cial pur­poses, but he pro­hib­ited any fur­ther ex­ca­va­tion. A per­ma­nent su­per­vi­sor from Is­rael ap­pointed by Kolitz was to mon­i­tor the en­tire process. Thus Kolitz’ word stood against that of the Ham­burg chief rabbi. While the Jerusalem so­lu­tion might have been con­testable from a Ha­lakhic point of view, it was os­ten­si­bly prag­matic. If the de­vel­oper and the gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties agreed, the con­flict would be solved. This was a judg­ment within the Jew­ish com­mu­nity and not a rab­bini­cal “opin­ion,” as it was later in­cor­rectly de­scribed in a draft de­ci­sion by the Ham­burg Sen­ate sub­mit­ted to the City As­sem­bly. Dur­ing con­struc­tion work it turned out that of the roughly 4,500 graves ex­ist­ing around the turn of the 20th cen­tury only about 400 to 500 graves could still be lo­cated. They re­mained in the ground and were cov­ered by con­crete “for all eter­nity.”

The compromise and its cost


In Au­gust 1993 the pub­lic found out about the price the city of Ham­burg had to pay for set­tling this po­lit­i­cal con­flict. The Sen­ate pre­sented the com­pro­mise ne­go­ti­ated with the de­vel­oper to the City As­sem­bly. It was sup­posed to com­pen­sate the de­vel­oper for the losses he had in­curred due to agree­ing not to ex­ca­vate the site. The Sen­ate had to admit that the de­vel­oper had po­lit­i­cally “fronted” the po­lit­i­cal cost of the with­drawal of the Athra Kadisha pro­test­ers and the ar­bi­tra­tion by chief rabbi Kolitz. Both par­ties agreed that the com­pen­sa­tion should be cal­cu­lated at roughly 16.4 mil­lion D-​Mark. The sum took into ac­count two fur­ther prop­er­ties in ex­cel­lent lo­ca­tions sold to the de­vel­oper at a gen­er­ous price as well as the city's waiv­ing of fees due. The doc­u­ment fails to men­tion that the de­vel­oper had ac­quired the for­mer ceme­tery site in 1990 for 14.2 mil­lion D-​Mark and there­fore might be said to have de­rived the great­est ad­van­tage from the con­flict over the Jew­ish ceme­tery at Ot­tensen.

Select Bibliography


Gruppe K (ed.), Für den Erhalt des jüdischen Friedhofs in Ottensen, Hamburg 1992.
Ina Lorenz / Jörg Berkemann (eds.), Streitfall Jüdischer Friedhof Ottensen. Wie lange dauert Ewigkeit, vol. 1, Hamburg 1995.
Ina Lorenz / Jörg Berkemann (eds.), Streitfall Jüdischer Friedhof Ottensen 1663-1993. Texte und Dokumente, vol. 2, Hamburg 1995.

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About the Author

Ina Lorenz (1940), Prof. Dr. phil. habil, deputy research director at the Institute for the History of the German Jews (IGdJ) until 2005 and professor at the Institute for Economic and Social History at Hamburg University. Her work focuses on German-Jewish history in the 19th and 20th century, as well as on social history of the Jewish comunity during National Socialism. She published several critical source editions on the history of the Jewish congregations in Hamburg, Altona and Wandsbek.

Recommended Citation and License Statement

Ina Lorenz, The Case of the Jewish Cemetery in Ottensen (translated by Insa Kummer), in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, September 04, 2018. <https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:article-249.en.v1> [January 09, 2025].

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License. As long as the work is unedited and you give appropriate credit according to the Recommended Citation, you may reuse and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes.