Worms Hochheim — Guided Tour Jewish Cemetery

Jewish Worms — A SchUM City

Worms, along with Speyer and Mainz, is one of the three SchUM cities declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021. In the Middle Ages, the city was a center of Jewish religious, scholarly, and economic life. The synagogue, the mikveh (ritual bath), and the Heiliger Sand — the oldest preserved Jewish cemetery in Europe — form the core of this World Heritage Site.

The New Cemetery in Hochheim

When the Heiliger Sand reached its capacity limit in the 19th century, a new Jewish cemetery was established on the Hochheimer Höhe, which has served as the burial place for Worms' Jewish community ever since. Unlike the medieval Heiliger Sand, the Hochheim cemetery is characterized by the burial and tombstone culture of the 19th and early 20th centuries — representative family crypts, double gravestones, and the style of the Gründerzeit and early Modernism, which has been sung about many times.

The Mourning Hall in Darmstadt Art Nouveau Style

Architecturally outstanding is the cemetery's mourning hall, a building in the so-called "Darmstadt Art Nouveau" — a special variant of German Art Nouveau shaped by Joseph Maria Olbrich and the Mathildenhöhe. The hall is a rare example of Jewish bourgeois sacred architecture of this era and an impressive testament to how closely the Jewish community of Worms was connected to the bourgeois culture of its time.

The Guided Tour

The public guided tour explains the history of the cemetery, the architecture and significance of the mourning hall, tombstone typology, and the fates of prominent Worms families. It complements the SchUM tours at the Heiliger Sand and the synagogue, making the Jewish heritage visible in its full historical depth.