Colmar - Collégiale Saint-Martin

Colmar was first mentioned by Charlemagne in his chronicle of the Saxon Wars. Emperor Charles the Fat held a Diet here in 884. In 1226, Emperor Frederick II granted Colmar the status of a free imperial city. In 1575, the city adopted the Protestant Reformation. During the Thirty Years' War, it was conquered by the Swedish army in 1632, which held it for two years.

The city is known for its old town, its numerous sights and its museums, including the Unterlinden Museum.

The "Collégiale Saint-Martin" serves as a parish church today. After the French Revolution, it was briefly the cathedral of a bishopric and is sometimes still referred to as the "Cathédrale Saint-Martin". The current building was erected between 1234 and 1365.
One of two "Judensau" ((German for "Jews' sow") on this church. This is an image of Jews in obscene contact with a large sow, which is an unclean animal in Judaism.

These icons are considered the earliest form of anti-Semitic caricature. They exposed the Jews to general ridicule by pointing out their supposedly typical behavior, they reinforced anti-Jewish prejudices of the viewer and to encourage them to distance themselves from Jews, and thus indirectly to act against them and they attacked and harmed the Jews in their religious self-image.