BAIERSDORF

BAIERSDORF, village in Bavaria, Germany, formerly the summer residence of the margraves of Kulmbach-Bayreuth. Tombstones in the Jewish cemetery indicate the presence of Jews in Baiersdorf at the end of the 14th century, although the   first document in which they are mentioned dates from 1473. In 1632 they numbered 12 families. The synagogue, established before 1530, was rebuilt in 1651. After persecutions in 1680, the margrave issued an order in 1695 granting the Jews freedom of trade. In 1699 a "Jewish pharmacy" was opened in Baiersdorf. The community increased to 40 families (300 persons) in 1713 and 83 families in 1771. Baiersdorf was the seat of a district rabbinate in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Bavarian restrictions limiting Jewish households (Matrikel-Gesetz) led many of the younger sons to emigrate to England and America (for instance, the seligman family), and by about 1900 only 12 Jewish families remained. The rabbinate was dissolved in 1894. The synagogue built in 1711 was destroyed under the Nazi regime in November 1938; only three Jews remained in Baiersdorf at the time. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: ZGJD, 2 (1888), 95–96; A. Eckstein, Ge schichte der Juden im Markgrafentum Bayreuth (1907); Baiersdorf, Entwicklungsgeschichte einer fraenkischen Kleinstadt (1953), 98–105, 143, 179. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Aus der juedischen Geschichte Baiersdorfs (1992). (Ze'ev Wilhem Falk)