The project begins at the end of the Middle Ages, when the focus of Jewish settlement activity shifted from the old urban centers to rural regions as a result of the almost nationwide expulsions of the ‘long’ 15th century. It includes the age of Jewish enlightenment in the 18th century and that of emancipation from the turn of the 19th century onwards.

According to a preliminary overview, around 590 Jewish cemeteries founded between 1500 and 1800 still exist within the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany; the number of gravestones preserved in these cemeteries is certainly in the six-figure range. In view of this situation, the project must make an exemplary selection. As a result, the work program is divided into three clusters with a total of eight three-year modules, which build on each other in terms of time and theme and follow the major lines of German-Jewish history.

The first and most extensive cluster, which consists of four modules, focuses on the rural association cemeteries of southern Germany, some of which date back to the 16th century. The second cluster is dedicated to a series of cemeteries in the urban environment, as they emerged in the course of the consolidation of the Jewish settlement structure after the Thirty Years’ War. Finally, Cluster III traces the different paths to modernity that opened up in the wake of the Enlightenment and emancipation, including different ways of dealing with the Hebrew tradition that go back as far as the 19th century.

The strength of the project lies in its interdisciplinary collaborative research. For example, the digital monument technologies – beyond topographical recording – create 3D models of gravestones whose inscriptions are no longer legible due to weathering. The epigraphy team can profitably use these models for the transcription and translation of the inscriptions in addition to resorting to photographs. Building research, in turn, takes on the analysis of form, condition and materiality and systematically records and models these characteristics for quantitative evaluation as so-called semantic graphs. The aim is to bring together all the data obtained from the disciplines in a joint research data management system.

The first cluster focuses on the rural association cemeteries in southern Germany. The selection of the cemeteries studied is aimed at a representative spectrum of different cemetery types, in each of which the dynamic relationship between settlement and cemetery network manifests itself in its own way.

One example is the suburban cemeteries in Jewish settlement areas close to the city center, which were themselves closed to Jewish settlement. This is the case with the Jewish cemetery in Kriegshaber, a village on the outskirts of the imperial city of Augsburg, which expelled its Jews in 1438. Things were different in Walsdorf, where the Jews of the prince-bishopric of Bamberg buried their dead. Although there was a Jewish community in the residential town itself, around ten kilometers away, the establishment of its own cemetery was only permitted there in 1851.

The association cemetery in Walsdorf, a small aristocratic residence near Bamberg, was established in 1628. The Jews of Bischberg, Burgebrach, Viereth, Trunstadt and Walsdorf buried their dead here alongside the Jewish community of the prince-bishop’s residence town. A tahara house for the ritual ablution of the deceased was built in 1742. Many of the almost 1,100 stones are heavily weathered, so that epigraphic recording is urgent. Many of the tombs are elaborately designed and show the influence of Bamberg Baroque.