Friederike Opet Kämpf (1829–1894)

Friederike Opet Kämpf belonged to the generation that helped shape the everyday life of Görlitz’s growing Jewish community in the second half of the 19th century. She was born in 1829, likely in the province of Silesia, at a time when Jewish civil rights were gradually expanding across Prussia.

Friederike married Elias Eduard Kämpf (1817–1883), the community’s Kantor, Religionslehrer und Schächter — the cantor, religious instructor, and ritual slaughterer who served as the only trained Jewish functionary in Görlitz until 1857. Through her marriage, Friederike became part of one of the most respected families in the early Görlitz congregation. Her husband’s work brought daily religious and educational structure to the city’s newly reestablished Jewish population, while Friederike built the home life that anchored this reborn community.

Together, they had several children, most of whom were born in Görlitz:

• Hedwig Gottstein (1854–1919), later of Berlin;
• Ida Kämpf (1855–1873), who died at only 18½ years old;
• Adele Reiss (1856–1901), later of Glogau (Głogów);
• Ludwig Kämpf (1864–1865), who died aged just over one year;
• Emma Kämpf (1867), who died as an infant; and
• Martha Metis (1865–1942), who was later murdered in Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Holocaust.

Friederike’s life was defined by faith, family, and perseverance. She experienced both the joys of family and the deep sorrows of loss — burying several of her children in the Görlitz Jewish Cemetery. Following her husband’s death in 1883, she remained in Görlitz, continuing to represent the stability and strength of the city’s earliest Jewish households.

She died in 1894 and was buried in the Görlitz Jewish Cemetery, alongside her husband, Elias, and several of their children. Their family plot stands as a lasting testament to the first generation that built Jewish communal and family life in Görlitz after its reestablishment.

© Lauren Leiderman