Settlements have existed on the banks of the River Elba (Labe in Czech) on the boundary between the Central Bohemian Uplands and the Krušné Mountains for many thousands of years. In the 2nd century of the Common Era on Ptolemy’s World Map it has the name Nomisterium, at this time it was settled by Germanic tribes. Later it was occupied and settled by a Czech tribe called Litoměřici. The town’s oldest written record dates back to 1057. A royal charter was granted in 1219 and it became an important, political, cultural and economic centre.
Several wars between Protestants and Catholics affected the town’s population throughout the 15th to 18th Centuries and the town became dominated by its German speaking population. After the formation of Czecholsovakia in 1918, the area became known as Sudetenland and was subject to territorial claims from Germany.
Jews are mentioned in the town’s founding charter as salt merchants, thus making Litoměřice the first town in Bohemia, after Prague, in which Jews are mentioned. There was a Jewish quarter in 1411. In 1514 the city council protected its “poor Jewish artisans” against financial demands of outside lords, and in 1529 the Bohemian royal authorities demanded that the town mayor provide proper protection for the Jews. Ferdinand I canceled a permit allowing free trade in wine in 1540, and in the following year, after a massacre, the Jews were expelled. The town was granted the privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis in 1546; the synagogue was turned into a hospital (a Hebrew inscription on the building was preserved). In 1584 Jews were permitted to attend fairs. Six Jewish families settled in Litomerice in 1851. By 1863 there were 100 Jews. The community was constituted in 1875 and a synagogue was dedicated in 1883. There were 616 Jews in 1921. Between the two world wars there was a training center for settlement in Ereẓ Israel at the Litomerice agricultural school. In 1930 the community numbered 425 (2.3% of the total population), of whom 143 declared their nationality as Jewish. At the time of the Sudeten crisis (1938) nearly all of the community left the town, the few men who remained being deported to concentration camps.
The garrison town of Terezin was established on the other side of the river and was then used as a Concentration Camp for thousands of Czech Jews.
bibliography:
H. Ankert, in: H. Gold (ed.), Die Juden und Judengemeinden Boehmens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (1934), 363–9; Germ Jud, 1 (1963), 157; 2 (1968), 478. Add. Bibliography: J. Fiedler, Jewish Sights of Bohemia and Moravia (1991), 182–83.
Joachim Frankl’s family moved here and opened stores between 1870 and 1880 and in the 1890’s Arthur, Oscar and Ida Schick were born here. Gunther Kletetschka was also born here in 1964.
