Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

400-Year-Old Mikveh Unearthed on German Town’s ‘Jews Lane’

Archaeologists discovered a centuries-old mikvah underneath a vaulted cellar in the former East Germany.

The ritual bath in the town of Schmalkalden is located near “Judengasse,” or “Jews’ Lane,” where a 17th-century synagogue stood until it was destroyed in the Kristallnacht pogrom exactly 77 years ago on Monday, the day the discovery was announced.

The State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology reported that the mikvah, which was found recently beneath a half-timbered building in a zone slated for urban housing construction, may have been built in the late 16th or early 17th century, when the local Jewish population peaked.

Experts have already determined that it had not been used since the 18th century at the latest.

The first records of Jews in Schmalkalden date back to the 14th century.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library online, the oldest mikvah in Germany is in Cologne and dates back to 1170.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.