フロイデンタールのおすすめランニングルート

beautiful wetland biotope right on the wayside

Dragonfly on a leaf on the bank of the pond

beautiful natural pond

The grey mare Helene, who was particularly dear to King Frederick I of Württemberg, suddenly fell ill in the spring of 1812, at the ripe old age of 27. Even the most distinguished veterinarians who were summoned were unable to save Helene. The beloved animal died shortly after her illness. King Frederick then had a grave dug in the Freudental Forest, and two days later, the horse was buried. The entire court servants were present, and the deceased mare was given military honors by the king's order. The prince also had a gravestone made for Helene's final resting place. Later, King Wilhelm I had the gravestone removed, after which it was purchased by a farmer from Löchgau. He used the stone as a gatepost at his farm entrance, where it remained until 1961. The community of Freudental purchased the stone, had it restored, and erected at its current location on "Stutenweg."

In 1723, the first six Jewish families moved into the building, later called the Judenschlössle, on what is now Strombergstrasse. Thus began Jewish life in Freudental.

Between 1738 and 1750, the first Jewish families to settle in Freudental built a small synagogue, after a room in the "Judenschlößle" had previously served as a prayer room. The synagogue was built in 1770 in the neoclassical style; the architect is unknown. The synagogue was listed as a historic monument as early as 1926. In 1943, the Freudental community acquired the former synagogue from the Reich Association of Jews in Berlin to convert it into a gymnasium or warehouse. In 1949, the building was returned to the Jewish community in Stuttgart and reacquired by the Freudental community in 1954. For a time, the former synagogue was used as a warehouse for a craft business.

The new cemetery was established on Bönnigheim's land at the foot of the Seeberg. Its secluded location at the edge of the forest reflects both the religious requirement that Jewish burials be located extra muros (extra muros) and the tendency toward exclusion within the Christian majority. Originally, it only encompassed the area to the right of the present entrance gate. The oldest gravestone is that of Pesle Ballenberg, who died on December 4, 1811. The cemetery was primarily occupied from back to front, with women and men initially buried in separate rows. All older gravestones are made of sandstone, mostly flat steles. Their sole, but frequent, decoration is rounded arches. The model for the Mosaic tablets of the commandments is obvious. Gradually, the rounded arches were replaced by gables and cornices. The inscriptions were initially almost entirely in Hebrew. It wasn't until the mid-19th century that stones with a German inscription on the reverse, in addition to the Hebrew front, became more common. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, steles with bilingual fronts became more common. Gravestones with purely German inscriptions remained rare even in the 20th century. While the Freudental Cemetery thus documents the Jewish community's rapprochement with its non-Jewish surroundings, it also demonstrates the religious conservatism that characterized Freudental's Jews until the community's extermination by the Nazis.

The "Garden of Remembrance" is intended to be a place of reflection and contemplation. It is intended to commemorate the more than 200 years of Jewish presence in Freudental, in the awareness of their horrific end. Over 200 years in which Jews were as much a part of Freudental as Christians, in which they were neighbors in harmony and conflict, and considered Freudental their home. One common feature was the farm gardens and orchards, to which Jews and Christians alike owed fruit and joy, and which shape the landscape.