Hohenems is a town with 16,731 inhabitants (as of January 1,
2020) in the Dornbirn district of the Austrian state of Vorarlberg.
The city is famous for its Hohenems Palace, the former residential
palace of the Counts of Hohenems. In the 18th century, two of the
three most important manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied were found in
the palace library. Hohenems was the residence of numerous Jewish
families from the 17th to the 19th century. In the 20th century
Hohenems became world famous through the Schubertiade music
festival.
City coat of arms and origin of the House of
Hohenems
The coat of arms of Hohenems, the ibex, is likely to be
traced back to the same heraldic animal in the coat of arms of
Graubünden, because the first documentary mention of the Ems family
comes from the year 1170 for Ober- or Wälsch-Ems ob Chur. Whether
the Counts of Ems actually come from this place is controversial, as
historian Andreas Ulmer mentions that the Counts of Ems may also
come from the progenitor Hainricus de Amides, a half-brother of the
last Count of Bregenz named Rudolf (d. 1160 ), could descend.
Middle age
The beginning of the settlement in the Hohenems
area is not known. Since the end of the 12th century, the Altems
Castle of the Lords of Ems has been one of the most powerful and
largest castle complexes (350 meters long and 80 meters wide) in
southern Germany. The Staufer fortress served, among other things,
as a repository for prominent prisoners such as Wilhelm III from
1195. (Sicily) or in 1206 Archbishop Bruno of Cologne. In 1406 the
Appenzeller burned down the village of Ems completely in the
so-called Bund ob dem See.
In 1333 Hohenems was granted city
rights, but this was not realized because the financial means were
not raised for the construction of the city wall.
For the
history of the spa, see sulfur bath.
Free imperial county
On April 27, 1560 Ems Ferdinand I elevated Ems to an imperial
county. A Renaissance palace was built at the foot of the
Schlossberg. In 1570 Karl Borromäus paid a short visit to Count
Jakob Hannibal, the husband of his half-sister Hortensia. The parish
church is consecrated to Karl Borromeo, who was canonized for his
services to the Counter Reformation, and he is the patron saint of
Hohenems. Count Kaspar acquired the imperial county of Vaduz and the
Freiherrschaft Schellenberg and granted the county of Hohenems
market privileges.
At the end of the 18th century Hohenems
gained notoriety with the discovery of parts of the Nibelungenlied:
in 1755 the manuscript C was discovered in the library of the Lindau
doctor Jacob Hermann Oberreit, and a little later in 1779 the
manuscript A appeared again in the palace.
Rule of the
Habsburgs
In 1765 the County of Hohenems was acquired by Austria.
The Habsburgs ruled the County of Hohenems alternately from Tyrol
and Upper Austria (Freiburg im Breisgau). From 1805 to 1814 the
place belonged to Bavaria, then after four years of dispute over
ownership rights back to Austria. The respective Habsburg rulers
showed the title of Count of Hohenems in the grand title. Franz
Joseph I, however, used to go on private trips abroad under the
title of Count von Hohenems, if he made it his business to spare his
hosts the observance of disruptive protocol obligations.
Hohenems has belonged to the Austrian state of Vorarlberg since it
was founded in 1861.
In 1595 the sulfur chapel, in 1607 the
chapel of St. Sebastian and St. Anthony, 1617 the chapel of St. Karl
Borromeo, 1898 the chapel of St. Josef erected in Unterklien.
Republic of Austria
The place was part of the French
occupation zone in Austria from 1945 to 1955. Since 1969 the
community has belonged to the newly founded Dornbirn district. In
1983 Hohenems was made a city and is the youngest city in
Vorarlberg.
Emser Chronicle
In 1616 Bartholomäus Schnell
(* 1580 in Langenargen, † April 19, 1649 in Hohenems) established
the first printing works in Vorarlberg, the Graflich Hohenemsische
Buchdruckerei (1616-1730) in Hohenems. With the Emser Chronik, which
he presented in the same year, Schnell succeeded in creating a
"masterpiece of book printing" in the first year of his activity in
Hohenems, which was repeatedly described as "the most beautiful book
ever printed in Vorarlberg". A well-preserved copy is one of the
treasures of the State Library in Bregenz today.
The work, completed by Johann Georg Schleh from Rottweil in 1613,
also marked the "beginning of Vorarlberg regional historiography":
Around 100 coats of arms are depicted in this work - as are
cartographic woodcuts, including the oldest surviving map of
Vorarlberg. Not least because of this, the Emser Chronik represents
the high point of the art of printing in Vorarlberg. The political
intentions behind this work are clear in the Vorarlberg map, which
shows the whole of today's Vorarlberg: The area is marked with
hatched borders. which, if the initiator, Count Kaspar von Hohenems,
had wanted, would form a sovereign territorial state under the rule
of the Counts of Ems as a "sub-council".
In 1663 the print
shop was headed by Johann Kaspar Schwendimann, who, along with the
Emser Chronicle, produced the most famous Hohenems print with the
“Philotheus” (autobiographical shepherd novel) by the baroque poet
Laurentius von Schnüffis.
Jewish community
In 1617 a
letter of protection from Count Kaspar von Hohenems laid the legal
basis for the settlement of Jewish families and the establishment of
a Jewish community. The imperial count hoped that this would
generate economic impetus for his market. There were evictions in
the 17th century, but after Jewish families were allowed to return,
the Jewish community flourished. A synagogue, a ritual bath (mikveh)
and a poor shelter were built, and a cemetery was laid out.
In 1797, Herz Jakob Kitzinger from Augsburg founded the first coffee
house in Vorarlberg. The "Kitzinger Coffee House" was soon a meeting
place for a wide variety of Israelite social groups. In 1813, Jewish
citizens founded the reading society in this house. The community
grew continuously until the first half of the 19th century, with the
number of Jewish residents reaching its peak in 1862 with 564
people. The basic state laws of 1867 and the associated free choice
of residence for Jews then led to a strong emigration to surrounding
cities, so that in 1890 only 118 Jews lived in the city.
In
1935 the Jewish community had only 35 members. In 1938 after the
annexation of Austria, Jewish property was "Aryanized" by the
Hohenems community. This was followed by the forced dissolution of
the religious community in 1940 and the deportation of remaining
community members to the extermination and concentration camps.
Frieda Nagelberg was the last Jew to be deported from Vorarlberg on
February 25, 1942.
After the end of the Second World War in
1945, Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) were temporarily resettled.
None of the former parishioners returned.
After 1945, the
Hohenems community acquired the synagogue properties from the
Innsbruck IKG in order to convert them into a fire station. The
rabbinate house next to it was demolished. Due to the great
commitment of the St. Gallen community, it was possible to prevent
the tombstones from being removed from the cemetery and pencils made
from the old cedars. The cemetery itself should have been used for
planting Christmas trees. (Dreier 1988: 232 f.)
Gad Hugo
Sella, who was born Hugo Silberstein in Innsbruck in 1912 and was
able to leave Austria on time in 1938, describes his experiences in
an on-site report from 1977:
“Apart from the cemetery, nothing
remains of the flourishing Jewish community in Hohenems. […] The
synagogue, a large building in which the word of God was preached
for centuries, has become a tool shed for the Hohenems fire brigade,
truly blasphemy for which there is no excuse. Hohenems is also free
from Jews today. "
- Gad Hugo Sella: quoted in: Dreier 1988:
228 f.
20th century
With the Diepoldsau Rhine breakthrough
and the regulation of the Rhine in 1923, the centuries-old danger of
flooding ended and further settlement of the valley floor was made
possible.
In 1983 Hohenems was elevated to the status of town
by the Vorarlberg state government on the occasion of the 650th
anniversary of the town charter from 1333.
In 1998, the first
Vorarlberg crematorium was put into operation in Hohenems.