Old Synagogue (Bückeburg)

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Today's appearance of the building Today's appearance of the building
Today's appearance of the building

The old synagogue in the Lower Saxon town of Bückeburg is on Bahnhofstrasse. The building was converted in the 1950s and served as a meeting place for Jehovah's Witnesses until 2017 .

history

The predecessor of this building of the Jewish community of Bückeburg was a house on Langen Strasse since the 17th century. However, it was not acquired until 1832. The lengthy delays and difficulties in setting up and acquiring a place of prayer reflect the difficult status of Judaism in the Bückeburg citizenship. After the number of members of the community increased in the course of the 19th century - probably mainly due to the expansion of the community area - the plan was made to build a separate synagogue building. The capital required for the new building has been saved since 1854. The construction costs were 10,000 Reichstaler estimated amounted probably to 9000 Reichstaler and were partially financed through a loan of 7000 Reichstalern.

The building on Bahnhofstrasse was inaugurated on August 29, 1866. Representatives of the schaumburg-Lippe government were also present at the inauguration ceremony .

In 1911 the municipality became a corporation under public law . From now on, leaving the community also meant leaving the religion .

time of the nationalsocialism

Since the late 1920s, community life had almost come to a standstill. The final end of the Jewish cult in Bückeburg was the November pogroms of 1938 , during which an arson attack was carried out on the prayer room of the synagogue on the night of November 10th. The fire was only put out by the Bückeburg fire brigade after an hour, when the prayer room was completely destroyed. On the same night, several Jewish families were attacked, their homes destroyed and the men subsequently taken to concentration camps. From 1939 "Jews" who had previously been robbed of their apartments were quartered in the building . The building was the first stopover for the expropriated and disenfranchised Jews on their way to deportation to concentration camps and to death.

As early as March 26, 1933, the community had lost its status as a public corporation. On May 27, 1941, it was incorporated into the " Reich Association of Jews in Germany ".

Conversion of the building

The plans for the toilet facilities of the planned army music school. They were never implemented.

While the Bückeburg Jews were being deported, the National Socialist Mayor Albert Friehe , who had been in office since 1935, planned to convert the building into an army music school. Plans for a toilet facility to be built behind the building have been preserved, but have never been implemented. After the religious community was incorporated into the “ Reich Association of Jews in Germany ”, the synagogue building was owned by them. According to the plans of the mayor and by order of the SD , the church, estimated to be worth 22,000 Reichsmarks, was to become the property of the city for 8,300 Reichsmarks. By the time the building had been valued, a purchase price had been fixed and the necessary permits for expropriation and transfer to the city of Bückeburg had been obtained, the Reichsvereinigung was close to being dissolved in the first quarter of 1943. The exact facts why the transfer to the city did not take place cannot be found in the sources. However, it is noted in the land register in 1950 that the land registry had "not received any action" regarding the transition of the building to the city.

On May 20, 1952, the building was transferred to the Jewish Trust Corporation . The Bückeburg citizen Wortmann, who belonged to Jehovah's Witnesses, bought it from her in February 1954 for DM 16,500 . In July 1955, the old synagogue was transferred to the “ Kingdom Hall ” association. The changes to the building facade were completed by 1957. The minarets , which until then had adorned the facade for purely stylistic reasons and had no religious purpose, were removed and the facade made more simple.

In 1997, after long efforts by a group of students from Bückeburg, a plaque was attached to the front of the building. It reads: “This building served as a synagogue from its construction in 1866 until November 9, 1938.” The plaque was to be installed as early as 1988, but the Jehovah's Witnesses refused to do so “for reasons of political neutrality”. The text was also coordinated with the religious community and formulated accordingly soberly. With a notification dated September 17, 2013, the Jehovah's Witnesses now also internally recognize the building as a “memorial site”.

In 2017 the Bückeburg real estate and project developer Dennis Roloff bought the building. He wants to carefully restore it to its old state.

architecture

The architect of the building is unknown, but structural similarities allow the conclusion that the Old Synagogue in Minden, built a year earlier, was also designed by the same architect. The synagogue in Bückeburg was built in the “ neo-Islamic style”, but its facade was changed considerably when the building was converted by the Jehovah's Witnesses. The neo-Islamic style is one of three architectural styles used in synagogue construction at this time. In contrast to the neo-Romanesque or various regional styles, which wanted to express the alignment of the building and the community with the Christian majority society, this style aims to emphasize the oriental origin of Judaism through orientalizing forms.

The free-standing building can be divided into a street-side, transverse structure for residential and school purposes and a narrower, elongated structure, the actual prayer room. Today it joins the line of equally-sized houses. The front structure was characterized by minarets at the corners, which protruded over the eaves . The street facade was divided into three parts by two further minarets. In the middle there was a portal as the main entrance to the building. A minimal cornice separated the first and second floors from each other, while the top of the facade was closed off by a raised mezzanine.

The rear, lower part of the building was sparingly structured on the outside. Simple arched windows on the ground floor and pilaster strips and pointed arch windows on the upper floor can still be seen today . The interior, designed as a gallery basilica with a bima pushed to the east , can be assigned to the " Alhambra style ". There were arches and arch halves set into the wooden skeleton, which were probably also painted in an oriental style. Overall, the architecture of the Old Synagogue can be considered typical of the time. The neo-Islamic style was chosen as a visible expression of Jewish emancipation . The Jews had arrived in society and expressed this architecturally self-confidently.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Elmar Mittler (ed.): Jewish faith, Jewish life, Jews and Judaism in town and university. Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-89244-228-2 , pp. 11-14.
  2. ^ Carolin Weichselgartner: The synagogue in Bückeburg. In: Schaumburg-Lippische Heimatblätter 4/1986, ISSN  2365-872X .
  3. ↑ a b Rotraut Ries: Bückeburg. In: Herbert Obenaus et al. (Ed.): Historical manual of the Jewish communities in Lower Saxony and Bremen. Göttingen 2005, Wallenstein, ISBN 3-89244-753-5 , p. 368.
  4. ^ Rotraut Ries: Bückeburg. In: Herbert Obenaus et al. (Ed.): Historical manual of the Jewish communities in Lower Saxony and Bremen. Göttingen 2005, Wallenstein, ISBN 3-89244-753-5 , p. 370.
  5. ↑ a b Bückeburg District Court, Land Register of the City of Bückeburg, Volume 47, No. 922.
  6. ^ Rotraut Ries: Bückeburg. In: Herbert Obenaus et al. (Ed.): Historical manual of the Jewish communities in Lower Saxony and Bremen. Göttingen 2005, Wallenstein, ISBN 3-89244-753-5 , p. 371.
  7. ↑ Mindener Tageblatt of September 17, 2013, p. 21.
  8. ^ Schaumburger Nachrichten, Stadthagen, Lower Saxony, Germany: Old synagogue has been sold. Retrieved November 16, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Marc Grellert: Intangible certificates: Synagogues in Germany. Potential of digital technologies for remembering destroyed architecture. Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-8394-0729-5 , p. 79.

Web links

Commons : Alte Synagoge (Bückeburg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 52 ° 15 ′ 41.8 "  N , 9 ° 2 ′ 47.2"  E