Old Synagogue (Dortmund)
The Old Synagogue Dortmund was the central place of worship and prayer for the Jewish community in Dortmund .
history
The settlement of Jews in Dortmund is documented as early as the Middle Ages . At that time people prayed with a mikvah in their own prayer house . At the end of the 16th century, Lutheran preachers called for the expulsion of Jews from Protestant cities and territories, which was carried out in Dortmund in 1596. Only in the first half of the 19th century Jews settled again in large numbers. The first house of prayer was at the Wüstenhof. After the congregation had grown to more than 2000 members by 1870, the desire for a large representative building was expressed.
A plot of land in a central location was acquired on Hiltropwall, the current location of the Dortmund theater . In contrast to many other communities, the synagogue was not built in the Moorish style , but based on the architecture of the Oberpostdirektion opposite, which was built in 1895 in the neo-Gothic style . In an architecture competition, the architect Eduard Fürstenau , who worked as a government master builder in the Prussian building administration in Berlin, prevailed with his design. The furnishings, which were perceived as very colorful at the time, came from the church painter and mosaicist August Oetken .
The opening of the synagogue was celebrated in June 1900. The then Lord Mayor of Dortmund, Karl Wilhelm Schmieding , spoke in a greeting of "an ornament for the city, built for centuries". With 1,300 seats, 750 of which were reserved for men on the ground floor and 450 seats for women in the galleries of the domed building, the synagogue was one of the largest Jewish prayer houses in Germany at the time. The mayor's greeting, however, should not come true.
After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in 1933, Dortmund believed that it was on the way to becoming the capital of a Gaus Westphalia with corresponding magnificent buildings in line with the National Socialist ideology. The local leadership of the NSDAP moved into quarters across from the synagogue and forced the Jewish community to sell the property for allegedly urban planning reasons. The purchase price was confiscated after the supposed purchase. Dismantling began even before the November pogroms in 1938 . On September 21, the gold-plated ball on the dome was removed during a "ceremony" and in December 1938 the demolition was completed.
Since 1998 the theater forecourt has been officially called the Platz der Alten Synagoge . A memorial stone and a plaque were erected.
In Dortmund's urban area there were two more representative synagogues in the districts of Hörde and Dorstfeld . Both were desecrated and destroyed during the night of the pogrom.
See also
Web links
- About Benno Jacob - Rabbi in Dortmund 1906–1929
- Model - virtual 3D reconstruction of the historic Dortmund synagogue (and other former German synagogue buildings), TU Darmstadt
Individual evidence
- ↑ Arno Herzig: Jewish history in Germany: from the beginnings to the present. CH Beck Verlag , Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-39296-2 , p. 77.
- ↑ Wolf Arno Kropat: Reichskristallnacht. Commission for the History of the Jews in Hessen , Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 978-3-921434-18-5 , p. 447.
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 39 ″ N , 7 ° 27 ′ 42 ″ E