EINBECK:

Town in the province of Hanover, Prussia. That Jews lived there at a very early date is shown by the fact that some Einbeck Jews were burned at the stake in 1298. In a document of 1355 a Jews' street and a "schole der Joden" are mentioned, and an "old Jewish cemetery" is referred to in a document dated 1454. An old and mutilated tombstone still exists to record the interment of a Jewess in the year 5160 (= 1400). It appears from an assignment of Duke Erich of Brunswick to his wife Ilse (Elizabeth), dated July 14, 1405, and from a letter of Duke Philipp to his brother Ernst, dated 1562, that the Jews of Einbeck paid a yearly tax which formed part of the revenues of the castle of Grubenhagen. When the dukes Wolfgang and Philipp of Grubenhagen forbade all Jews not under their protection to pass through the principality, the envoys of the "Gemeine Jüdischheit" petitioned Emperor Maximilian (Feb. 25, 1570), who annulled their decree. A few years later, in 1579, when the fanatic Magister Johann Velius, pastor of the Jacobior Marktkirche at Einbeck, raised a storm of public feeling against the Jews of the town, the latter were expelled. They reappeared, however, after the Thirty Years' war.

In 1718 the elector Georg Ludwig of Hanover was forced to restrict the influx of Jews in the interest of the Christian merchants. During the French supremacy (1806-13) the district contained forty Jewish families, nine of which lived at Einbeck. On Aug. 31, 1896, a new synagogue was dedicated by Dr. Lewinsky, to which the banker Bernhard Meyersfeld of Brunswick, a native of Einbeck, contributed 20,000 marks. In 1902 the community of Einbeck included 110 persons.

Bibliography:
  • Harland, Gesch. der Stadt Einbeck, Einbeck, 1854-59;
  • Wiener, Jahrb. für die Gesch. der Juden, 1860, i. 176 et seq.;
  • idem, in Monatsschrift, 1861, pp. 243 et seq., 251 et seq.;
  • idem, in Zeitschrift des Histor. Vereins für Niedersachsen, 1861, pp. 248 et seq.;
  • Salfeld, Martyrologium, pp. 28 et seq.;
  • Max, Gesch. des Fürstentums Grubenhagen, 1862-63;
  • Feise, Zur Gesch. der Juden in Einbeck, in Einbecker Zeitung, 1903, Nos. 23 et seq.;
  • Zeitschrift des Histor. Vereins für Niedersachsen, 1899, p. 339;
  • L. Horwitz, Die Israeliten Unter dem Königreich Westphalen, pp. 9, 99;
  • Monatsschrift, 1901, p. 568.
D. A. Lew.
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