The newly discovered Erfurt Mikwe
For a Jewish community in the Middle Ages, the ritual bath was of great significance. It was primarily the women who had to visit the baths after giving birth and after menstruation, so that they could enter the synagogue after being purified. But men also had to be immersed in the Mikwe after contact with dead or sick people or other impure things in the religious meaning of the word, before they could visit the synagogue again. Tableware also had to be cleansed in the Mikwe before its first use or after ritual contamination. Bathing in the Mikwe was subject to precise rules. The completely naked body had to be fully immersed in the water, and even jewellery had to be removed first. The water had to be "living" water; it could not be scooped out, only spring water or ground water was allowed, and the basin needed to contain the equivalent of at least one cubic metre of water. Bathing was in cold water at all times of the year, although warm water could be added.
In the spring of 2007, the remains of the medieval Jewish ritual bath were discovered without any doubt during the building work to redesign the landscaped area to the northwest of the Krämer Bridge. The bath can be traced back to 1250 in the freehold land registers for Severi church. The owner of the site on which the Cold Bath ("frigido balneo") was located is listed as being the Jewish community, which had to pay a tax of 2 guilders a year for the bath, firstly to the Bishop and then to the City. In 1495, the cemetery of the Benedictine Church is moved or extended to the site. By this time, the Jews had long been driven out of the city. The name "Cold Bath" was retained as a description of the site until 1618, even though this function had long disappeared by this time. The Cold Bath can clearly be recognised as a ritual bath; the normal bathing steps are called "stupa" in the documentary sources.
Before the start of the excavations, it was assumed that the Mikwe was located by the Krautstegen, on the site at Kreuzgasse 4. However, only a 19th century cellar was found here. Its construction had destroyed any traces of older settlements. The mistaken location of the bath is due to the fact that the freehold land registers give the name of the streets, but the numbers of the individual houses are less clear.
During the excavations, it was possible to document a number of house outlines, but they were often already seriously damaged when they were revealed. None of the cellars could be dated any further back than the 16th century. The southernmost cellar – which is now clearly the Mikwe – did have parts of a vault, but this too was seriously damaged, and had completely disappeared at the western end. However, the extraordinarily good quality of this vaulting was clear even when it was first discovered. It is built from limestone bricks of varying quality finish, which are built in even layers. The north wall of the building, which is about 9 m long and just under 3 m wide inside, contains a recess, probably intended to hold clothing taken off before bathing. The water basin is at the eastern end of the building, and runs across its full width. A change in the masonry work in the area of the basin is striking. In the lowest section, only large sandstone blocks are used, in several layers, and this has not been seen in any other Erfurt cellar. It is not yet clear where the access was, and after abandoning the bath, the steps, which were undoubtedly also made from very high-quality building materials, were broken up, and only the substructure remains. As laid down in the rules, water was supplied to the bath from the groundwater, which was always available in sufficient quantities so close to the Gera river. It was always possible to descend the steps and be totally immersed in the water, since any seasonal variations in the groundwater level could easily be compensated.
The Mikwe building, which was initially thought to have been built in the 13th century, had at least one predecessor on the same time, against the south wall of which the new building was built. It can be assumed that there was also a Mikwe at the time of the first synagogue, since the ritual bath was essential for those visiting the synagogue. As the excavation work stands at the moment, we are assuming that the first building was constructed in the 12th century. The question of the size of the first building has not yet been totally clarified, since the walls in the southwest were completely demolished after the building was abandoned. It is possible that further excavation work from spring 2008 onwards will throw some light on this. The first building could extend more towards the Gera than its successor; the modern flooring is to be removed here in the spring. The extent of the building in a northerly direction is also unclear, though it is clear that the building was no wider than the newer one, since there were no traces of masonry to the north.
The city fire of 1472 also destroyed the building in which the Mikwe was located. After this, both the north and the west wall were demolished and the stones used again as building material. The surviving north wall shows traces of great heat. The rubble of the cellar backfill also contained sandstone blocks that had been heated through, which undoubtedly also come from the building walls. After the fire, the rubble was left in the western part of the cellar, a partition wall was then built and a new access created through the east wall, which had been closed until then. At this time, the Mikwe had already fallen out of use and had been filled in. The Jewish community had already been annihilated. From 1495, the adjoining cemetery of the Benedictine Church was expanded, and much of the excavation work involved the excavation, documentation and recovery of the graves. Because it had been used so intensively, only a few skeletons could be recovered completely; the others had already been broken up and destroyed by more recent graves. The bones from these graves have already been reburied in the municipal cemetery, since their scientific evaluation would probably not produce any usable results.
When the Mikwe was uncovered, another part of the puzzle was added to the jigsaw that makes up the picture of the Jewish community in Erfurt. For the planned exhibition in the Old Synagogue, there will be many other attractions, which can be viewed during a visit to the synagogue, once they have been conserved. However, decisions can only be reached on these after excavation and documentation have been completed.