History of the Jews in Hamburg

The history of the Jews in Hamburg in Germany, is recorded from at least 1590 on. The Jews of Hamburg have lived primarily in the Jewish neighbourhoods of Grindel () and New Town, where the Sephardic Community „Newe Salom“ (Hebrew: נוה שלום‎‎) was established in 1652. Since 1612 there have been toleration agreements with the senate of the prevailingly Lutheran city. Also Reformed Dutch merchants and Anglican Britons made similar agreements before. In these agreements the Jews were not permitted to live in the Inner-City, though were also not required to live in ghettos.

From 1600 onwards, also German Jews settled in Hamburg, but in 1649 these Ashkenazi Jews were driven out of the city. From then on, only Sephardi Jews were permitted to live in Hamburg.

Around 1925, about 20,000 Jews lived in Hamburg. When the Nazis came to power, most synagogues were destroyed and soon the associated communities also were dissolved. In 1945, a Jewish community was founded by survivors of the Shoah. And finally in 1960 the new Synagogue "Hohe Weide" was built.

The Jewish Community in Hamburg, began with the establishment of Sephardic Jewish from Spain and Antwerp. They came around 1577, as they were expelled from Spain. Before the destruction of the Jewish community by the Nazis, Eimsbüttel was the center of Jewish life in Hamburg. There were several synagogues, the most famous were the "Neue Dammtor-Synagoge" (1895), the "Bornplatzsynagoge" (1906) and the Temple on Oberstrasse (1931).

Approximately 6,500 Jews lived in Hamburg in 1800. Thus, they represented a share of six percent of the city's total population. This was the largest Jewish community in Germany. Since in 1812 the French annexation administration ordered the dissolution of the 1671-founded cross-border joint Ashkenazi community Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek (Hebrew: אה"ו‎‎; Dreigemeinde AHU), combining the three Ashkenazi congregations of Altona (est. 1622) and Wandsbek, both in Holstein, and the 1662-founded one in Hamburg, then First French Empire, resuming its independence as the "German-Israelite Congregation of Hamburg" (German: Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde zu Hamburg; DIG), comprising by city-statute, enforced again in 1819, all Ashkenazi Hamburgers.

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