The first known Jewish residents of Wiesbaden lived in the German spa town beginning around the 1300s or 1400s. Many earned a living running therapeutic bathhouses or serving kosher food to Jewish visitors. Despite restrictions on Jewish life and a temporary ban on Jews in 1620, by the early 1700s the Jewish community of Wiesbaden had established a synagogue, cemetery and mikvah (ritual bath).

The Jewish population of Wiesbaden grew from 11 families in 1747 to about 150 individuals in 1825. A synagogue large enough for 200 worshippers was built the next year. Although a Jewish school offered religious instruction, Jewish children were required to attend German public schools for their general education. Many members of the community worked as traders or in professional roles such as doctors and lawyers.

Construction on the Great Synagogue in the center of Wiesbaden began in 1863. Completed in 1869, the 155-foot building was topped with a prominent dome. Like other communities in Germany, rabbis generally followed Reform practices. For example, they delivered sermons in the everyday language of German rather than Hebrew. Orthodox Jewish members of the community who preferred more traditional worship styles responded by forming their own congregation.

As German citizens, some 57 Jewish men from Wiesbaden died fighting for the country during World War I (1914-1918). The father of Survivor Charlotte Opfermann returned a decorated lieutenant of the German Air Force. However, many suffered in the struggling economy of the 1920s. As a child, Opfermann remembered seeing veterans “in the streets on little roller platforms.” A number of Jewish organizations organized relief efforts for members of the community, including a kosher soup kitchen and a hospital and clinic.

The Orthodox community of Wiesbaden grew as more and more Jewish families immigrated from eastern Europe. By 1925 these new arrivals made up an estimated third of the Jewish population. Opfermann remembered that, in contrast to the more assimilated German-Jewish population, these more recently arrived immigrants wore side curls and what as a child she saw as “strange Medieval clothing.”

Alarmed by the rise of antisemitism and the Nazi party in Germany, some Jews became followers of the Zionist movement that fought for the creation of an independent Jewish state. In 1930, a group of around 300 Nazis staged a riot against the Jews. Opfermann recalled “constant street battles” between Nazis and other political parties.

Local Nazi groups were especially emboldened by the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933. After the passage of the 1935 Nuremberg laws, Jews and other minorities lost their citizenship and were barred from working in government or professional positions. Jewish children were expelled from public schools and Nazi authorities in Wiesbaden distributed a handbook listing the names, businesses and personal addresses of Jews in the town.

Antisemitic violence reached a peak during the Kristallnacht pogrom on November 10, 1938. The Great synagogue was set on fire while the fire brigade monitored to ensure the flames did not spread to neighboring buildings. Charlotte Opfermann remembered how her father’s law office and the upstairs apartment where the family lived were “ransacked and destroyed.” Hundreds of Jewish men, including Opfermann’s father, were arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Mass deportations to concentration camps and the killing centers began in 1942. Opfermann and her family were among those sent to the Theresienstadt camp outside Prague. From there most were deported to Auschwitz. By 1943, no Jews remained in Wiesbaden.

In the decades after the war a small Jewish community of a few hundred slowly re-established itself in Wiesbaden. In 2004, about 700 Jews lived in the town.