Topic: Jewish life in medieval Erfurt between everyday life and extinction
Speaker: Dr. Anne Bezzel, Evangelical Augustinian Monastery, Erfurt
Time: Friday, November 21, 2025, 3:00 p.m.
Location: TU Ilmenau, Faraday-Hörsaal, Weimarer Straße 32, access via Prof.-Schmidt-Straße
Admission: 5 euros
In 2021, Thuringia celebrated the 750th anniversary of "Jewish Life in Thuringia". The commemorative year revealed the great enrichment that we owe to the coexistence of Jews and Christians over 700 years. At the same time, the anniversary also challenged us to come to terms with the dark chapters of anti-Judaism in German history, with the history of persecution and exclusion. The city of Erfurt in the middle of the 14th century is an example of this. The present-day capital of Thuringia was home to a large Jewish community in the Middle Ages. When over 900 Erfurt citizens of the Jewish faith were murdered on a single day in March 1349, this vibrant everyday life was wiped out.
In her lecture at the TU Ilmenau Citizens' Campus, the Protestant theologian Dr. Anne Bezzel, who holds a doctorate in church history, will focus on the everyday life of the Jewish community before the catastrophe of the pogrom: What role did marriage and family, education, professions and social cohesion play in the Jewish community in medieval Erfurt? Anne Bezzel also sheds light on the pogrom itself, its background and its course - as well as the stereotypical accusations to which Jews were repeatedly subjected in the Middle Ages. According to Dr. Anne Bezzel, who now works at the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt and as a freelance author, knowledge of the past could provide guidance in overcoming the challenges of the present.
