Old Town — the northern segment of Corneliusstraße from Blumenstraße to Prälat-Zistl-Straße is henceforth called Fritz-Neuland-Straße. As the Munich administration reported, with this renaming, the city marks the courage and determination of a man who made a decisive contribution so that after the Shoah, Jewish life in Munich could flourish again. Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) during the grand opening emphasized that Neuland, despite the devastation brought by Nazi terror, found the strength to maintain faith in the ideals of a just, peaceful, and humane world and rebuilt the Jewish community in post-war Munich.
Revival of the Jewish community: Munich honored Fritz Neuland with a street name
Fritz Neuland was born on January 30, 1889, in Bayreuth and studied law at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. After the National Socialists came to power, he, as a Jewish lawyer, was deprived of his license. During the years of the Second World War, Neuland was forced to perform forced labor at a defense plant. His mother Albertine was deported in 1942 to Theresienstadt, where she died of hunger in 1944. He was able to hide his daughter Charlotte Knobloch, who later succeeded him as president of the Jewish Religious Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, in the countryside.
After the end of the war, Neuland achieved the restoration of his law license and decided to stay in Munich. He took an extremely active part in the restoration of Jewish life in the city together with pediatrician Julius Spanier. On their initiative, on July 15, 1945, the Jewish Religious Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria was re-founded. Spanier became its first president, and Neuland — the first vice-president, and from 1951 until his death in 1969, he held the post of community president. From 1953 to 1957, Neuland also headed the state committee of the Association of Jewish Communities of Bavaria, and from 1952 to 1963 was a member of the Bavarian Senate.
The street leads to the main synagogue on Sankt-Jakobs-Platz: Knobloch expressed gratitude for the recognition of her father’s merits
It was on the initiative of Neuland in 1969 that a memorial stone was installed on the site of the former main synagogue of Munich on Herzog-Max-Straße. The Lord Mayor noted at the ceremony that by naming a street leading to Sankt-Jakobs-Platz with the new main synagogue and Jewish community center, the city seeks to secure a permanent and public place for the memory of Fritz Neuland. In addition, the city thereby demonstrates which values are important to it — the manifestation of courage and humanity even in the most difficult conditions.Charlotte Knobloch thanked the city for renaming the section of the street at Jakobsplatz in honor of her father, calling him a patriot in the best sense of the word and an example of moral rectitude. Anne Riethmüller, president of the Munich Bar Association, in her speech highlighted Neuland’s faith in the power of law even after the National Socialists used it for criminal purposes. In the grand opening ceremony of Fritz-Neuland-Straße, besides Charlotte Knobloch and her children Iris and Bernd Knobloch, representatives of the Jewish community, chairmen of Munich courts, and numerous members of the Munich City Council took part.
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