Old Synagogue (Barmen)
The old synagogue of the city of Barmen , part of Wuppertal from 1929 , served the Jewish community of Barmen as a place of worship from 1897 to 1938 .
Until 1984, the Jews in Barmen were part of the Elberfeld-Barmen synagogue community founded in 1852 under Prussian law and visited its prayer houses in Elberfeld, from 1865 the Elberfeld synagogue . Because of the long way to Elberfeld or Schwelm, meetings were held in a private apartment between 1830 and 1840; at that time fewer than 50 Jews lived in Barmen. In the second half of the 19th century, the number of Jews from Barmen rose rapidly in line with the growing city; in 1890 there were already 416. In 1894, a community was founded in Barmen and immediately acquired a building site on Scheurenstrasse (today Zur Scheuren ). The Karlsruhe architect Ludwig Levy was commissioned with the planning .
The Barmer synagogue followed the so-called Moorish style , i.e. a historicism characterized by Islamic architectural elements like the New Synagogue in Berlin, which was widespread in synagogue buildings in the second half of the 19th century. The outside of the building was faced with white and red sandstones that ran in horizontal stripes, structured architectural elements were made of dark granite. In front of the actual assembly room there was a 21 m wide porch. Above the portal as an essay in front of the tower was a verse from the Bible by the prophet Isaiah in golden (Hebrew) script: ביתי בית תפלה יקרא לכל העמים - "For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples" ( Isa 56.7 EU ) . The three-door entrance led into a square vestibule, above which a round tower tower with an onion-shaped dome and a gold star rose up to 40 meters. On either side of this hall there was a stairwell, rooms for the rabbi and a meeting room. At the left corner of the façade was the staircase to the women's gallery in a slender square tower in front of it, which was crowned by an open lantern with an onion helmet.
The elongated three-aisled hall inside measured around 21 × 11.2 m and had around 400 seats. It was surrounded on three sides by wooden galleries, the columns of which extended upwards to support the wooden roof structure. Above the vestibule, the room opened into a deep singing and organ gallery. Opposite was the Torah shrine in a raised apse behind a curtain . The hall was painted in color and illuminated through colored glass windows.
According to the inviting motto on the facade, the inauguration of the synagogue was opened on January 22nd, 1897 with the participation of numerous important representatives of the city, administration and society as well as Catholic dignitaries.
During the November pogroms in 1938 , the synagogue and numerous other buildings owned by Jews were destroyed. As a result of arson, the building, supported by wooden structures, burned down completely in the morning of November 10th.
After the Second World War, Barmen was long without a Jewish prayer house. It was only with the construction of the Bergische Synagoge in 2002, not far from the place where the old synagogue was located, that Barmen, and with it Wuppertal, received a representative church again for the Wuppertal Jewish community, which has now grown to over 2,000 believers.
See also
literature
- Ulrike Schrader : Torah and textiles. On the history of the Jews in Wuppertal. Wuppertal 2007, ISBN 978-3-9807118-9-0 .
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 16 ′ 31 ″ N , 7 ° 12 ′ 8 ″ E