New Synagogue (Berlin)

The New Synagogue (German: Neue Synagoge) on Oranienburger Straße in Berlin is a mid-19th century synagogue built as the main place of worship for the city's Jewish community, succeeding the Old Synagogue which the community outgrew. Because of its eastern Moorish style and resemblance to the Alhambra, the New Synagogue is an important architectural monument in Germany.

The building was designed by Eduard Knoblauch. Following Knoblauch's death in 1865, Friedrich August Stüler took responsibility for the majority of its construction as well as for its interior arrangement and design. It was inaugurated in the presence of Count Otto von Bismarck, then Minister President of Prussia, in 1866. One of the few synagogues to survive Kristallnacht, it was badly damaged prior to and during World War II and subsequently much was demolished; the present building on the site is a reconstruction of the ruined street frontage with its entrance, dome and towers, along with only a few rooms behind. It is truncated before the point where the main hall of the synagogue began.

Building

The front of the building, facing Oranienburger Straße, is polychrome brickwork, richly ornamented with sculpted bricks and terracotta, accented by coloured glazed bricks. Beyond the entrance, the building's alignment changes to mesh with pre-existing structures. The synagogue's main dome, with its gilded ribs, is an eye-catching landmark.^[1]

The central dome is flanked by two smaller pavilion-like domes on the two side-wings. Beyond the façade was the front hall and the main hall with 3,000 seats. Due to the unfavourable alignment of the property, the building's design required adjustment along a slightly turned axis.^{[clarification needed]}

The Neue Synagoge is also a monument of early iron construction. The new building material was visible in the outside columns, as well as in the dome's construction. Iron was also a core component for the now-lost floor structure of the main hall.

History

The New Synagogue was built to serve the growing Jewish population in Berlin, in particular, immigrants from the East. It was the largest synagogue in Germany at the time, seating 3,000 people. The building housed public concerts, including a violin concert with Albert Einstein in 1930. With an organ and a choir, the religious services reflected the liberal developments in the Jewish community of the time.^[2]

One of the concerts that occurred here was a

During the

The New Synagogue, like the

Heer

(German Army), who used it to store uniforms.

The Rykestraße Synagogue was closed and seized by the Heer a week later. The Jewish Community of Berlin continued to use the office rooms in the front section of New Synagogue, including the Repräsentantensaal (hall of the assembly of elected community representatives) below the golden dome. The congregation occasionally held prayers in this hall until September 1942, when it had to evacuate the front section as well.

Battle of Berlin, a series of British air raids lasting from 18 November 1943 until 25 March 1944. The strike on the New Synagogue was recorded in the Berlin police commissioner's bomb damage reports, regularly issued after attacks, for the raid on the night of 22–23 November 1943.^[9]

The building to the left from the New Synagogue, and the second one to the right at Oranienburger Straße 28,[a] also belonged to Berlin's Jewish Community. These buildings survived the war intact, and it was in the latter that surviving Jews formally reconstituted the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin, Berlin's mainstream Jewish congregation, in 1946. In the immediate post-war years, there were the anti-Semitic manifestations in Czechoslovakia (Slánský trial, November 1952), arrests and interrogations of Jews in East Berlin and East Germany (January 1953), and the Soviet Doctors' plot (started on 13 January 1953). Members of the Jüdische Gemeinde in East Berlin, hoping to spare themselves from further persecution, formed a new provisional executive board competent only for the eastern sector, and thus divided the Jewish community into an eastern and a western one (21 January 1953).^[10]

In 1958 the Jewish Community of East Berlin was prompted^[

anti-Semitism, saw no chance to restore it.^[11]

It was not until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that reconstruction of the front section began. From 1988 to 1993, the structurally intact parts of the building close to the street, including the façade, the dome, and some rooms behind were restored as the "Centrum Judaicum" ("Jewish Center"); the main sanctuary was not restored. In May 1995, a small synagogue congregation was reestablished using the former women's wardrobe room.^{[citation needed]} The area behind the restored frontage, formerly the main prayer hall, remains an empty space, and is open to visitors.^[12]

Together with the New Synagogue, the whole Spandauer Vorstadt neighbourhood (lit. "suburb towards Spandau", often confused with the Scheunenviertel) experienced a revival. Chic restaurants and boutiques opened up in the area, catering to an increasingly bourgeois clientele.

In 2007 Gesa Ederberg became the first female pulpit rabbi in Berlin when she became the rabbi of the New Synagogue.^{[13][14][15][16]} Her installation was opposed by Berlin's senior Orthodox rabbi, Yitzchak Ehrenberg.^[13]

Today

Jewish services are now held again in the New Synagogue;^[17] the congregation is the Berlin community's sole Masorti synagogue.^[18] Most of the building, however, houses offices and a museum. The dome may also be visited.

See also

• Religion in Berlin
• Fasanenstrasse Synagogue
• Louis Lewandowski – Choirmaster at the Neue Synagogue and composer of sacred music

Notes

1. ^ odd and even numbers are on the same side of the street

References

1. ^ "Hallelujah! Assemble, Pray, Study – Synagogues Past and Present". Beit Hatfutsot.
2. ^ Rebiger, 26
3. ISBN 3-87024-254-X
   .
4. ^ Knobloch, passim and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
5. ISBN 3-87024-254-X
   .
6. ^
   ISBN 3-8148-0025-7
   .
7. ISBN 3-8148-0025-7
   .
8. ISBN 3-8148-0025-7
   .
9. ISBN 3-8148-0025-7
   .
10. ISBN 3-933471-71-0
11. ^
    ISBN 3-8148-0025-7
    .
12. ^ "Centrum Judaicum – Jewish Community of Berlin". www.jg-berlin.org.
13. ^ ^{a b} "A lone groan for female rabbi in Berlin | Jewish Telegraphic Agency". jta.org. 31 May 2007. Retrieved 21 February 2014.
14. ^ "MERCAZ USA Newsletter". mercazusa.org. Archived from the original on 28 February 2014. Retrieved 21 February 2014.
15. ^ "After Long Path Female Rabbi Installed in German Community – InterfaithFamily". interfaithfamily.com. Archived from the original on 28 September 2011. Retrieved 21 February 2014.
16. ^ "Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue | The team of the Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue". or-synagoge.de. Archived from the original on 4 March 2014. Retrieved 21 February 2014.
17. ^ Group, Berlin Information. "Synagogues in Berlin". www.berlinfo.com. Retrieved 21 February 2018.
18. ^ e.V., Masorti. "Masorti e.V. Berlin". www.masorti.de. Retrieved 21 February 2018.

Sources

• Knobloch, Heinz (1990). Der beherzte Reviervorsteher: ungewöhnliche Zivilcourage am Hackeschen Markt. Berlin: Morgenbuch-Verlag.
  ISBN 3-371-00314-0
  .
• Rebiger, Bill (2005). Jewish Berlin: Culture, Religion, Daily Life Yesterday and Today (1st ed. 2000 in German ed.). Berlin: Jaron Verlag GmbH.
  ISBN 978-3-89773-099-1
  .
• Scheer, Regina (1993). "Im Revier 16 (In precinct No. 16)". Die Hackeschen Höfe. Geschichte und Geschichten einer Lebenswelt in der Mitte Berlins (Gesellschaft Hackesche Höfe e.V. (ed.), pp. 74–79 ed.). Berlin: Argon.
  ISBN 3-87024-254-X
  .
• "Do Not Stand Silent: Remembering Kristallnacht 1938 [poster]". Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education Documents. 1 May 2008. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
• Mausner, Ellen Weinberg (2020). Jacob Weinberg : musical pioneer. [United States].
  OCLC 1268472159.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
  )

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to New Synagogue.

• Centrum Judaicum
• Interior image c1870
• 2nd interior image c1870

52°31′29″N 13°23′40″E / 52.52472°N 13.39444°E / 52.52472; 13.39444