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Jewish settlers founded the Ashkenazi Jewish community in the Early (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (c.1000–1299 CE). The community prospered under Charlemagne, but suffered during the Crusades. Accusations of well poisoning during the Black Death (1346–53) led to mass slaughter of German Jews, and their fleeing in large numbers to Poland. The Jewish communities of the cities of Mainz, Speyer and Worms became the center of Jewish life during Medieval times. "This was a golden age as area bishops protected the Jews resulting in increased trade and prosperity." The First Crusade began an era of persecution of Jews in Germany.〔 Entire communities, like those of Trier, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne, were murdered. During the war upon the Hussite heretics became the signal for the slaughter of the unbelievers. The end of the 15th century was a period of religious hatred that ascribed to Jews all possible evils. The atrocities of Chmielnicki (1648, in the Ukrainian part of southeastern Poland) and his Cossacks drove the Polish Jews back into western Germany. With Napoleon's fall in 1815, growing nationalism resulted in increasing repression. From August to October 1819, pogroms that came to be known as the Hep-Hep riots took place throughout Germany. During this time, many German states stripped Jews of their civil rights. As a result, many German Jews began to emigrate. From the time of Moses Mendelssohn until the 20th century the community gradually achieved emancipation, and then prospered. In January 1933, some 522,000 Jews lived in Germany. However, following the growth of Nazism and its antisemitic ideology and policies, the Jewish community was severely persecuted. Over half (approximately 304,000) emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship. In 1933, persecution of the Jews became an active Nazi policy. In 1935 and 1936, the pace of persecution of the Jews increased. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from exerting any influence in education, politics, higher education and industry. The SS ordered the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) to be carried out that night, November 9–10, 1938. The storefronts of Jewish shops and offices were smashed and vandalized, and many synagogues were destroyed by fire. Increasing antisemitism prompted a wave of a Jewish mass emigration from Germany throughout the 1930s. There were only approximately 214,000 Jews in Germany proper (1937 borders) on the eve of World War II. The remaining community was nearly eradicated in the Holocaust following deportations to the East.〔 By the end of the war between 160,000 and 180,000 German Jews had been killed in the genocide officially sanctioned and executed by Nazi Germany.〔 In the Holocaust, approximately 6 million European Jews were deported and murdered during World War II. On May 19, 1943, Germany was declared ''judenrein'' (clean of Jews; also ''judenfrei'': free of Jews). Of the 214,000 Jews still living in Germany at the outbreak of World War II, 90% died during the Holocaust.〔 After the war the Jewish community started to slowly grow again, fueled primarily by immigration from the former Soviet Union and Israeli expatriates. By the 21st century, the Jewish population of Germany approached 200,000, and Germany had the only growing Jewish community in Europe.〔Schoelkopf, Katrin. (''"Rabbiner Ehrenberg: Orthodoxes jüdisches Leben ist wieder lebendig in Berlin''" (Rabbi Ehrenberg: Orthodox Jewish life is alive again in Berlin). ) ''Die Welt''. November 18, 2004〕 Today, the majority of German Jews are Russian-speaking. The total estimated enlarged population of Jews living in Germany (including non-Jewish household members) is close to 250,000.〔Sergio DellaPergola. “World Jewish Population, 2013,” in Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M. Sheskin. (Editors) The American Jewish Year Book, 2013, Volume 113(2013) (Dordrecht: Springer) pp. 279-358. Available at http://jewishdatabank.org/Studies/downloadFile.cfm?FileID=3113〕 Currently in Germany it is a criminal act to deny the Holocaust or that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust (§130 StGB); violations can be punished with up to five years of prison.〔(No Room for Holocaust Denial in Germany ), Deutsche Welle.〕 In 2007, the Interior Minister of Germany, Wolfgang Schäuble, pointed out the official policy of Germany: "We will not tolerate any form of extremism, xenophobia or anti-Semitism." In spite of Germany's measures against right-wing groups and anti-Semites a number of incidents have occurred in recent years. ==From Rome to the Crusades== Jewish immigration from Roman Italy is considered the most likely source of the first German Jews. While the date of the first settlement of Jews in the regions the Romans called Germania Superior, Germania Inferior, and Magna Germania is not known, the first authentic document relating to a large and well-organized Jewish community in these regions dates from 321〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.museenkoeln.de/archaeologische-zone/default.asp?s=4303#top )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.juedischesfrankfurtvirtuell.de/en/en_A.php )〕 and refers to Cologne on the Rhine.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Cologne, City of the Arts '07 )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Medieval Source book Legislation Affecting the Jews from 300 to 800 CE )〕 (In Rome itself, a Jewish community existed as early as 139 BC.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12816-rome#1005 )〕) It indicates that the legal status of the Jews there was the same as elsewhere in the Roman Empire. They enjoyed some civil liberties, but were restricted regarding the dissemination of their faith, the keeping of Christian slaves, and the holding of office under the government. Jews were otherwise free to follow any occupation open to their fellow citizens and were engaged in agriculture, trade, industry, and gradually money-lending. These conditions at first continued in the subsequently established Germanic kingdoms under the Burgundians and Franks, for ecclesiasticism took root slowly. The Merovingian rulers who succeeded to the Burgundian empire were devoid of fanaticism and gave scant support to the efforts of the Church to restrict the civic and social status of the Jews. Charlemagne (800–814) readily made use of the Church for the purpose of infusing coherence into the loosely joined parts of his extensive empire, by any means a blind tool of the canonical law. He employed Jews for diplomatic purposes, sending, for instance, a Jew as interpreter and guide with his embassy to Harun al-Rashid. Yet, even then, a gradual change occurred in the lives of the Jews. The Church forbade Christians to be usurers, and so the Jews secured the remunerative monopoly of money-lending. This decree caused a mixed reaction of people in general in the Frankish empire (including Germany) to the Jews: Jewish people were sought everywhere as well as avoided. This ambivalence about Jews occurred because their capital was indispensable, while their business was viewed as disreputable. This curious combination of circumstances increased Jewish influence and Jews went about the country freely, settling also in the eastern portions. Aside from Cologne, the earliest communities were established in Mainz, Worms and Speyer, which existed up until the 1930s. The status of the German Jews remained unchanged under Charlemagne's successor Louis the Pious. Jews were unrestricted in their commerce; however, they paid somewhat higher taxes into the state treasury than did the Christians. A special officer, the Judenmeister, was appointed by the government to protect Jewish privileges. The later Carolingians, however, followed the demands of the Church more and more. The bishops continually argued at the synods for including and enforcing anti-Semitic decrees of the canonical law, with the consequence that the majority Christian populace mistrusted the Jewish unbelievers. This feeling, among both princes and people, was further stimulated by the attacks on the civic equality of the Jews. Beginning with the 10th century, Holy Week became more and more a period of anti-Semitic activities. Yet the Saxon emperors did not treat the Jews badly, exacting from them merely the taxes levied upon all other merchants. Although the German Jews were as ignorant as their contemporaries in secular studies, they could read and understand the Hebrew prayers and the Bible in the original text. Halakhic studies began to flourish about 1000. At that time, Rav Gershom ben Judah was teaching at Metz and Mainz, gathering about him pupils from far and near. He is described in Jewish historiography as a model of wisdom, humility, and piety, and has been praised as a "lamp of the Exile". He first stimulated the German Jews to study the treasures of their religious literature. This continuous study of the Torah and the Talmud produced such a devotion to Judaism that the Jews considered life without their religion not worth living; but they did not realize this clearly until the time of the Crusades, when they were often compelled to choose between life and faith. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of the Jews in Germany」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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