RIESBÜRG incorporating PFLAUMLOCH: Ostalbkreis district | baden-wuerttemberg-baden-wuerttemberg

RIESBÜRG incorporating PFLAUMLOCH: 48°51' N 10°26' E, 284.4 miles SSW of Berlin and 5 km west of Nordlingen. The city has a beautifully restored 1847 synagogue. The city is a conglomerate of Goldburghausen , Pflaumloch, and Utzmemmingen gehören fünf Dörfer, Höfe and Häuser. In Pflaumloch Jews were resident since 1487 . The synagogue was established 1703 but burned down in 1802. The reconstruction was inaugurated in 1846. It used since 1963 as a town hall. The town has a gold mining museum. [Mar 2013]

Jewish Historical Society of Augsburg with Jewish history in Pflaumloch synagogue in Pflaumloch: "Around the year 1900, five Jewish families lived here. When in 1907 the last remaining resident died, a native of Stuttgart, Pflaumloch wealthy banker Alexander Pflaum and Commerce (1839-1911), now an empty synagogue and communitiy was left. An 1963 interior remodel made the synagogue into the town hall of the Pflaumloch and since 1973 of Riesbürg. In the cemetery re still about 110, mostly not very well preserved, gravestones. A documentary was made in 1999, but the cemetery is apparently not published.

Pflaumloch: Directly on the B 29 between Aalen and Nördlingen is the administrative center of the municipality with about 1000 inhabitants and about 350 manufacturing jobs. First mentioned in 1246. It belonged to the house Oettingen As part of the media coverage due to the Imperial Diet losing the 1806 Oettingensche area initially fell to the Kingdom of Bavaria and then in 1810 to the Kingdom of Württemberg .[Mar 2013

Utzmemmingen: Utzmemmingen is surrounded by Bavarian places at the foot of the Swabian Alp. The village has around 1200 inhabitants, the largest community. [Mar 2013

Riesbürg. Since 1972, the city may has an official health resort. Utzmemmingen was for the first mentioned in 852 .[Mar 2013]

Goldburghausen: Goldburghausen has approximately 300 inhabitants, the smallest town of the community. First mention was 1276. It belonged toNördlingen and in the early 19th century to the Kingdom of Württemberg .[Mar 2013]

Jewish cemetery [history and photos] established in 1840 in Plaumloch continues to this day. iI the 15th century several Pflaumlocher Jews were buried in Nördlingen. Until 1833 , the dead were buried in the Bavarian cemetery at the Wallerstein (district of Donau-Ries). Since then, a separate Jewish cemetery surrounded by a high wall (Parcel 284, area 5.68 a) adjoins today's municipal (Christian) cemetery. The cemetery was the last used in 1916. In March 1926 a serious desecration of the cemetery happened wheneleven students of the Protestant school in Pflaumloch threw around 18 gravestones, some of which were broken. Formerly located among fields, since 1980, a residential and commercial area (now Daimler-roads and highway) emerged. From the history of the cemetery, desecration of the cemetery was only in March 1926. The Jewish cemetery can be visited at any time by appointment at Pflaumloch City Hall . [Mar 2013]

DISTRICT: Ostalbkreis.
LOCATION OF CEMETERY: Heerstrasse/Daimlerstrasse adjoining local general cemetery. (Detail).
IN USE: From 1840 (oldest datable gravestone) until 1916 (last known burial).
NUMBER OF GRAVESTONES: 113.
DOCUMENTATION:

1990 photographs of all gravestones with mapping of graves by Zentralarchiv.
1999 cemetery documentation including above photographs by the Office for Historic Monuments (Landesdenkmalamt ed. Gert Wildensee).
Numerous photographs of individual gravestones and general cemetery views in Alemannia Judaica.
A recent (April 2008) selection of named gravestones also in Alemannia Judaica.

PUBLICATIONS:

Photographic survey by in Württemberg 1932, page 116.

NOTES:

Prior to 1830 the cemetery in Wallerstein (Bavaria, Donau-Ries district) was used for burials by the Pflaumloch Jewish community (Sauer 1966, page 150).
Several deceased members of this community were buried in the Nördlingen cemetery during the 15th century.
Serious vandalism of this cemetery took place in March 1926, when about 11 boys and girls, aged between 11 and 14, from the local elementary school, left 18 gravestones toppled and others partially smashed. This event was widely reported in the local media at that time. Anti-Semitism does not appear to have been the motive.

SOURCES: University of Heidelberg and Alemannia Judaica.