New Synagogue (Berlin)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008) |
The Neue Synagoge ("New Synagogue") was built 1859–1866 as the main synagogue of the Berlin Jewish community, on Oranienburger Straße. Because of its splendid eastern Moorish style and resemblance to the Alhambra, it is an important architectural monument of the second half of the 19th century in Berlin.
The original building was designed by Eduard Knoblauch. Following Knoblauch's succumbing to illness, 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. The present building on the site is a reconstruction of the original, which was badly damaged prior to and during World War II and subsequently razed.
Contents |
[edit] Building
The front of the building, facing Oranienburger Straße, is richly ornamented with shaped 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 sight. 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.
The Neue Synagoge is also a monument of early iron construction. The new building material (iron was previously not used in building construction) was visible in its use for 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.)
[edit] History
The New Synagogue was built to accompany the growing Jewish population in Berlin, in particular, immigrants from the East. As the largest synagogue in Germany at the time, it seated 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.[1]
During the November Pogrom (9 November 1938), colloquially euphemised as Kristallnacht, the Neue Synagoge was set ablaze. Lieutenant Otto Bellgardt, the police officer of the local police precinct on duty that night, arrived on the scene early in the morning of 10 November and ordered the Nazi mob to disperse. He stated that the building was a protected historical landmark and drew his pistol, declaring that he would uphold the law requiring its protection. This allowed the fire brigade access to extinguish the fire, saving the synagogue from destruction.[2] Senior Lieutenant Wilhelm Krützfeld, head of the local police precinct, Bellgardt's superior, later covered up for him. Berlin's police commissioner Graf Helldorf only verbally reprimanded Krützfeld for doing so and he is therefore often mistakenly revered[3] to as the rescuer of the New Synagogue.[4]
The New Synagogue, like the synagogue in Rykestr., stayed intact and continued to be used as synagogue until 1940. In 1940 the Wehrmacht seized both synagogues and used them as storage places. During World War II, on November 22, 1943 the New Synagogue was heavily damaged by Allied bombing during the Battle of Berlin, a series of British air raids lasting from November 18, 1943 until March 25, 1944. The ruins of the building, except of the front section, were finally demolished in 1958. It was not until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that reconstruction began. From 1988 to 1993, the remains of the façade were restored as the "Centrum Judaicum" (lit. "Jewish Center"), without being constructed anew. In May 1995, the synagogue was partly revived, though it failed to regain its 19th century glory. After the renovations, only the front of the building with the restored dome remained.
Together with the New Synagogue, the whole Spandauer Vorstadt neighbourhood (lit. "suburb towards Spandau", often confused with the Scheunenviertel) experienced a revival, with chic restaurants and boutiques opening up in the area, catering to an increasingly bourgeois clientèle.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Rebiger, 26
- ^ Scheer, 77
- ^ Knobloch, passim and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- ^ Scheer, 78. Scheer explains that Heinz Knobloch popularised, that Wilhelm Krützfeld rescued the New Synagogue. Knobloch learned about the rescue by the report of an eyewitness, the late Hans Hirschberg. In 1938 still being a boy and the son of the tailor Siegmund Hirschberg, he later recalled that, his father and the police officer, being one of the tailor's clients and whom Hans assumed to be the head of the police precinct, got into a conversation, while the same police officer was supervising the work of the fire brigade, about their common wartime experiences in the same sector of the front. So when Knobloch researched for his book Der beherzte Reviervorsteher about the rescue of the New Synagogue, he figured out who was the head of the precinct, which was Krützfeld. But Krützfeld was never conscripted in WWI. But after Knobloch's book appeared another neighbour, Inge Held, Hirschberg and his sister in Israel confirmed that the rescuer was Otto Bellgardt. However, it is difficult to do away with the urban myth about Krützfeld being the rescuer.
- 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.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (ed.) (2008). Do Not Stand Silent: Remembering Kristallnacht 1938. ISBN ?. http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/dor/years/detail.php?content=2008
[edit] External links
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: New Synagogue |
Coordinates: 52°31′29″N 13°23′40″E / 52.52472°N 13.39444°E
