Synagogue (Hadamar)
The synagogue in Hadamar is the former prayer house of the city's Jewish community . It was built between 1839 and 1841 in the center of the city opposite the St. Anna Hospital . The simple one-story building is set back from the street. It served as a house of worship until the November pogroms in 1938 .
history
The first evidence of Jewish life in the city dates back to 1641. In 1839, construction of a synagogue began in Nonnengasse . The inauguration took place in June 1841. At that time there were about 130 citizens of the Jewish faith in Hadamar.
On the morning of November 10, 1938, a fire was set in the interior of the synagogue. It is assumed that the arsonists were members of an SS troop from neighboring Limburg . However, neighbors who noticed the fire managed to extinguish the fire. Nevertheless, school children broke into the building that same day and devastated the interior. Jewish life in the city came to a standstill. Some Jews emigrated; the last twenty in the city were deported in 1942.
After the end of the Second World War, the building first came into the possession of the Jewish trust organization JRSO . The organization sold it in 1953 to the Hadamar silhouette artist Ernst Moritz Engert , who used it as a studio for many years. In 1980 the city of Hadamar acquired the increasingly dilapidated house and restored it. A permanent exhibition was opened there on September 6, 1982, providing information on the history of the Jewish community in Hadamar.
In addition to being protected as a historical monument, the synagogue has received war protection status under the Hague Convention .
Building description
The rectangular building with the actual synagogue and the adjoining assembly room is classicist in character, but has individual neo-Gothic elements. The pointed arch windows are additionally emphasized by tracery and external cleaning belts. The women's gallery has been preserved inside. In the front garden is the elaborately designed tombstone of the sea captain Heinrich Reichmann, who died in 1828. Its installation goes back to attempts to set up a local museum in the former synagogue . Today it is the oldest surviving synagogue in the region, which was built specifically for this purpose.
literature
- Thea Altaras : Synagogues and Jewish ritual immersion baths in Hesse - What happened since 1945? 2nd edition, Königstein im Taunus 2007, ISBN 978-3-7845-7794-4 , pp. 224-225.
- Peter Paul Schweitzer: The fate of the Hadamar Jews. The Hadamar Israelite Congregation and its synagogue. Ed .: Hadamar City Council. 2nd edition, Hadamar 1989.
See also
- List of synagogues destroyed in the German Reich from 1933 to 1945
- List of former synagogues in the Westerwald
Web links
- State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.): Synagoge Hadamar In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hessen
- Jewish history and Hadamar synagogue near Alemannia Judaica
Coordinates: 50 ° 26 ′ 56 ″ N , 8 ° 2 ′ 53 ″ E