Mikulov

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Mikulov
Town
Old town center
Coat of arms
Country	Czech Republic
Region	South Moravian
District	Břeclav
Commune	Mikulov
Elevation	242 m (794 ft)
Coordinates	48°48′20.01″N 16°38′00″E / 48.8055583°N 16.6333333°E / 48.8055583; 16.6333333
Area	45.34 km2 (17.51 sq mi)
Population	7,624 (2005)
Density	168 /km2 (435 /sq mi)
City rights	1410
Mayor	Rostislav Koštial
Timezone	CET (UTC+1)
- summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Postal code	692 01
Location in the Czech Republic
Wikimedia Commons: Mikulov
Statistics: statnisprava.cz
Website: www.mikulov.cz

Mikulov (Czech pronunciation: [ˈmɪkulof]; German: Nikolsburg, Yiddish: ניקאלשבורג Nikolshburg) is a town in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic with a population of 7,608 (2004). It is located directly on the border with Lower Austria.

Geography

Mikulov is located at the edge of a hilly area and a large lake. It extends from a sea level of 200 to 250m. Pálava Landscape Protected Area begins at Mikulov, and so does the Moravian Karst.

History

Mikulov was the site of the Treaty of Nikolsburg on December 31, 1621 during the Thirty Years' War. After the Austro-Prussian War, Count Károlyi began work on a peace treaty in Mikulov that led to the Treaty of Prague in 1866.

In 1938, the town had 8,000 (mostly German-speaking) inhabitants, but only a population of about 5,200 in 1948. The town's German population was expelled between 1945-46.
Also in 1938 Mikulov had 472 (mostly German-speaking) Jewish inhabitants, of whom only 110 managed to emigrate in time. 327 of Mikulov's Jews did not survive the Holocaust.

The most remarkable historic sights are Mikulov Castle of the Dietrichstein family and the Piarist College.

Jewish Mikulov

Judengasse (1900s)

Synagogue in the former Jewish ghetto

Obere Synagoge, 2009

graveyard (1900s)

The beginning of the Jewish settlement in Mikulov dates as far as 1421, when Jews were expelled from Vienna and from the neighboring province of Lower Austria by the duke of Austria, Albert II of Germany. Fugitives settled in the town situated close to the Austrian border, some 50 miles from the Austrian capital, under the protection of the princes of Liechtenstein. Additional settlers were brought here after the expulsions of the Jews from the Moravian royal boroughs by the king Ladislaus the Posthumous after 1454.^[1] The community first became important in 1575, when the emperor gave Mikulov to Adam von Dietrichstein, whose son, Cardinal Franz von Dietrichstein, was a special protector of the Jews, their taxes being necessary to the prosecution of the Thirty Years' war.
The settlement grew in importance and in the first half of the 16th century Mikulov became the seat of the regional rabbi of Moravia, thus becoming a cultural centre of Moravian Jewry. The famous rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525 – 1609), who is said to have created the golem of Prague, officiated here for twenty years as the second regional rabbi between 1553 and 1573.
In the first half of the 18th century the congregation in Mikulov totalled over 600 families, the largest Jewish settlement in Moravia. The census of 1754 decreed by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria ascertained that there were some 620 families established in Mikulov, i.e. the Jewish population of about 3,000 comprised half of the town‘s inhabitants.^[1] It is obvious that only a small number of the Mikulov Jews could make their living in the town as artisans; the rest had to become merchants. The congregation suffered severely during the Silesian wars (1740–1742, 1744–1745 and 1756–1763), when they had to furnish the monarchy with their share in the supertaxes exacted by the government of Maria Theresa from the Jews of Moravia.
Quite a number of Mikulov Jews continued to earn their livelihood in Vienna, where they were permitted to stay for some time on special passports. The freedom of residence which was conceded to the Jews in Austria in 1848 reduced the number of resident Jews in Mikulov to less than one-third of the population which it contained at the time of its highest development. In 1904 there were 749 Jewish residents in the city, out of a total population of 8,192.
In 1938 the city population totalled about 8,000 inhabitants. Out of these 472 were Jewish.^[1] The Jewish settlement of Mikulov ceased to exist during World War II.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jewish community in Mikulov

Rabbis

This section requires expansion.

• Judah Löw ben Bezaleel, the first rabbi of Nikolsburg, chief rabbi of Moravia, officiated in Nikolsburg about 1553 - 1573
• Judah Löb Eilenburg (1574 - 1618)
• Gabriel ben Chajjim ben Sinaj (1618 - 1624)
• Yom-Ṭob Lipmann Heller (1624 - )
• Pethahiah ben Joseph (1631 - 1637)
• Abraham ben Mordechaj Jaffe (1637 - 1647)
• Menahem Mendel Krochmal (1648 - 1661)
• Gerson Ashkenazi (1661 - )
• Aaron Jacob ben Ezekiel (- 1671)
• Judah Löb, son of Menahem Krochmal (1672 - 1684)
• Eliezer Mendel Fanta (1684 - 1690)
• David Oppenheim (1690 - 1702)
• Gabriel Eskeles (1709 - 1718)
• Bernard Eskeles (1718 - 1753)
• Moses Lwow-Lemburger (1753 - 1757)
• Gershon Politz (1757 - 1772)
• Shmuel "S(c)hmelke" (ben Hirsh Halevi) Horowitz of Nikolsburg (1772 - 1778)
• Gershon Chajes (1780 1789)
• Mordecai Benet (1789 - 1829)
• Nehemias Trebitsch (1831 - 1842)
• Samson Raphael Hirsch (1847 - 1851)
• Hirsch Teltscher (1851 - 1853)
• Isak Weinberger (1853 - 1855)
• Solomon Quetsch (1855 - 1856)
• Mayer Feuchtwang (1861 - 1888)
• David Feuchtwang (1892 - 1903), also chief rabbi of Vienna; Son of Mayer
• Moritz Levin (since 1903 - 1918)
• Alfred Willmann (1919 - 1938)

See also Nikolsburg (Jewish Encyclopedia)

population development

^[2]

Economy

Important economic activities in Mikulov are the machine-making and clay industries, as well as oil found at the edge of the Viennese Basin. It is also one of the centres of local wine-making industry

People

• Auerbach (Jewish family)
• Moses ben Avraham Avinu (? - 1733), a printer, author, Christian convert to Judaism
• Rabbi Shmelke of Nikolsburg (1726 - 1778)
• Joseph von Sonnenfels, né Lipmann (1732 - 1817), an Austrian and German Jewish (later Christian) jurist, novelist
• Rabbi Mordecai Benet (1753 - 1829)
• Anton Josef Leeb (1769 - 1837), a Mayor of Vienna (de)
• Rabbi Solomon Quetsch (1798 - 1856), rabbi and Talmudist
• Heinrich Landesmann (1821 - 1902), a Jewish poet and philosophical writer
• Heinrich Auspitz (1835 - 1886), a Jewish dermatologist
• Edmund Wengraf (1860 - 1933, Vienna), Austrian jurist, journalist, narrative writer, novelist, essayist, poet, theatre critic^[3]
• Siegfried Altmann (1872 - 1961), a Jewish educator^[4]
• Adolf Schärf (1890 - 1965), a Moravian German politician
• Karel Krautgartner (1922 - 1982), a Czech jazz and classical clarinetist, saxophonist, arranger, composer, conductor and teacher

Other residents

• Joseph Almosnino, a Greek-Serbian rabbi, died here
• Simon Bacher
• Samuel Baeck
• Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, a chief rabbi of Moravia
• Vincent, Count Benedetti
• Mordecai Benet, Hungarian rabbi, a chief rabbi of Moravia
• Simcha Bunim of Peshischa
• Bonifác Buzek (1788, Příbor - 1839, Brno) (de)
• Rabbi Judah he-Hasid
• Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller (1578, Wallerstein, Bavaria - 1654)
• Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Hamburg-born Moravian chief rabbi
• Balthasar Hubmaier (c. 1480, Friedberg, Bavaria – March 10, 1528), an Moravian German Anabaptist (Schwertler (de)) leader
• Rabbi Aaron Samuel Kaidanover
• Meyer Kayserling
• Rabbi Menahem Mendel (ben Abraham) Krochmal (c. 1600, Cracow - 1661), a Polish-Moravian rabbi

• Karl (Carl) Borromäus Landsteiner (pseudonym: Arthur Landerstein; 1835, Schloß Stoitzendorf, Stoitzendorf bei Eggenburg, Lower Austria - 1909, Mikulov), Austrian Catholic theologian, author^[5]
• Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak of Lublin

• Alfons Mucha, hired by Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov
• Abraham Neuda
• Leonhard Schiemer
• Richard Teltscher (1888, Vienna - 1974, London), a Jewish Austrian wine-merchant, patron and patriot, founder of the Jewish Central Museum for Moravia-Silesia in Mikulov Richard Teltscher (cs)
• Rabbi Abraham Trebitsch

See also

• Lednice - Valtice area
• Lednice–Valtice Cultural Landscape
• Old Hungarian alphabet of Nikolsburg
• Ostlandkreuz

External links

Castle in Mikulov

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mikulov

• Official city site (cz, en, de, pl)
• http://www.nikolsburg.org
• Mikulov - tourism, portal
• Nikolsburg (Jewish Encyclopedia)

Document

1. ^ ^{a b c} Nezhodová, Soňa. The Jewish Mikulov (Židovský Mikulov). 1. ed. Brno: Matice moravská, 2006. 423 p. ISBN 80-86488-28-4
2. ^ Historický místopis Moravy a Slezska v letech 1848–1960, sv.9. 1984
3. ^ http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/philosophy/vienna/wengraf.html, http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/philosophy/vienna/wengraf.html
4. ^ http://digital.cjh.org/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=431106&local_base=GEN01, http://www.doew.at/thema/thema_alt/holocaust/behindert/juedblinde.html
5. ^ http://www.aeiou.at/aeiou.encyclop.l/l159167.htm;internal&action=_setlanguage.action?LANGUAGE=en, http://onb-ccs.dlconsulting.com/cgi-bin/newsonb?a=d&d=ONB19090405.1.4&cl=&srpos=0&st=1&e=-------de-logical-20--1-----all