“It happens to me so often that I talk about the two villages and people are amazed that there was such a rural ghetto in Switzerland,” says Ruth Dreifuss. The now over 80-year-old became Switzerland’s first female President in 1999. The prominent politician not only feels very attached to her roots in Endingen and Lengnau.
In 2009 she opened the Jewish cultural trail in the canton of Aragau between Endingen and Lengnau, which was brought into being through an initiative of many volunteers so that this chapter of Jewish history would not be forgotten.
Because nowhere else in Switzerland can visitors find such a dense and intact Jewish building culture as in these two villages in the valley of the river Surb. There are synagogues, school and community houses with their mikvehs, a shared cemetery and a Jewish retirement home that is still inhabited today. The ancestors of the Wyler, Bollag, Dreifuss, Weil, Bernheim, Picard and Guggenheim families lived here for generations.
Since Jews were not allowed to own land or real estate at that time, they lived in houses with double doors as a special feature. One entrance each for Jews and Christians, each leading to different floors. In this way, the ban on cohabitation, which prohibited the two different denominations from living together, was circumvented.
From Aargau to America
The big change did not start until the second half of the 19th century, in particular through the total revision of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1874, which guaranteed freedom of residence and freedom of belief and conscience for all religious communities.
“It is remarkable that Switzerland was the only country in the world to pass a referendum on equality for Jews – in response to external pressure, but it was the democratic will of the people and the cantons,” comments Jonathan Kreutner, General Secretary of the Swiss Association of Israelites in the “NZZ” this decision, which resulted in a strong emigration of Surbtal Jews to the Swiss cities.
Before that, a few villagers had already emigrated, such as parts of the Guggenheim family via Hamburg to the United States in 1847, where Simon Guggenheim and his son Meyer set up a company from which a mining company emerged.
Meeting center of the association double door
Today Lengnau itself does not have an active Jewish community, but has joined the religious community in Endingen. For André Bloch from the local community, the Jewish cultural path tells “in the smallest of spaces the story of the relationship between Jews and Christians, which was formerly of a fragile nature.”
When the former Matze bakery had to be demolished in Lengnau in 2013 and had to give way to a new residential building, a discussion arose: How to deal with the inheritance? The association Doppelür was founded, which in 2019 acquired a three-story double-door house in the center of the village of Lengnau, where a visitor and meeting center is to be built.
In the meantime, a communication and exhibition concept for the project, which is estimated at 11.2 million Swiss francs, is in place: “The aim is to provide insights into the extraordinary history of the Surbtal and at the same time links to current social issues such as respect, migration and the coexistence of people of different religious and cultural backgrounds Origin to offer. “
The Double Door Center is intended to be a place of dialogue in the form of events and workshops, especially for young people. When the house opens its doors as planned in 2024, thanks also to many sponsors, the Jewish cultural path will also have built a bridge to the present.
sources: www.lengnau-ag.ch/kulturweg, www.doppeluer.ch, www.alemannia-judaica.de, www.swissjews.ch
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