The former Jewish guardhouse

A building called the "Judenwache" (Jewish Guardhouse) stood on this site. The city guard guarded the entrance to the Judengasse (Jewish Alley), Mainz's Jewish ghetto. This Judengasse was established in the late seventeenth century under Elector Johann Philipp von Schönborn.

For centuries, Jews were only allowed to live here. The neighbourhood was densely populated and dark. There was a curfew in the evening. On high Christian holidays, no one was allowed to leave the neighbourhood. Jews lived here separately from the Christian population. But the walls of the quarter also meant protection from the Christian population's hatred of Jews, from riots, from pogroms and everyday insults and humiliations.

This was the case until 1792 when the troops of the French Revolution came to Mainz. Because the revolution's call for freedom, equality and fraternity should apply to all people, including Jews. The gates of the ghetto were torn down. When Karoline Weis was born in 1880, the Judenwache had long ceased to exist, but it was here in the old Jewish quarter that the Jews of Mainz had their roots.

In the nineteenth century, Jews in Germany gradually became legally equal to the Christian population. For many Jews, economic and social advancement began. However, although the Jews moved closer and closer to the Christian population, adopted the culture and assimilated, the hatred of Jews did not disappear. It even experienced a theoretical radicalization: Modern anti-Semitism was born.

In the traditional Christian sense, a Jew was a member of another religion who could become a Christian through baptism. An anti-Semite, on the other hand, argues differently, in a racist way: "A Jew belongs to a different and inferior race and can never belong to one's own race." When Karoline Weis was young and at school, this anti-Semitism was prevalent among a small minority in Germany. This was to change, at the latest with the rise to power of the National Socialists under Adolf Hitler.

Our walk takes us a few meters back along Klarastrasse and to the right into Vordere Synagogengasse (Front Synagogue). Look out for the remains of the wall on the right-hand side. Large panels show the former façade of the old main synagogue.