Pitchers of the Mikulov (Nikolsburg) Burial Society

The south Moravian town of Mikulov was once inhabited by the most important and largest Jewish community in Moravia. The beginnings of the Jewish community in Mikulov are said to date back to the first third of the 15th century when it was being settled by Jews who had been expelled from Vienna and Lower Austria. The earliest documented sources of the Jewish settlement of Mikulov, however, date back to the 16th century. Eventually, Mikulov became the seat of the chief rabbi of Moravia (Landesrabbiner) and, until the mid-19th century, the most important spiritual centre of Moravian Jewry. In the first half of the 18th century – which is when the oldest of the objects presented here dates from – the Mikulov Jewish community was already by far the largest in Moravia.