Old Synagogue (Wiesbaden)

The Old Synagogue was a synagogue on Michelsberg in the city of Wiesbaden , which was built for a moderately liberal community in the years 1863-69 based on the type of a Greek cross , with a raised central wing, lower gusset buildings and short, wide, domed side towers . The building was set on fire on November 10, 1938 during the Reichspogromnacht and destroyed as a result. The remaining outer walls were demolished in 1939. The base of the synagogue was initially preserved and served as an extinguishing water reservoir during the war; later it was used as a parking lot for city officials. In the course of the expansion of Coulinstrasse in the 1950s, the base and thus the last remaining fragment of the Old Synagogue was finally torn down. In 1969 the former site was built over with a concrete elevated road, which was demolished again in 2001 for urban planning reasons. The position of the foundation walls in the pavement of Coulinstrasse was then marked in color; since then the cars have been driving through the prayer hall, so to speak. Since January 27, 2011, the name commemorates the Wiesbaden Jews murdered during National Socialism.

architecture

The Jewish sacred building was built in the Moorish - Byzantine style according to plans by Philipp Hoffmann in the years 1863 to 1869 on the Wiesbaden Michelsberg. The floor plan was a Greek cross which, unlike many other “oriental-Byzantine” synagogues, was not set in a square. The "gusset" structures between the cross arms, which were not framed in a square and were lower than the cross arms, could therefore also be seen from the outside. In front of the lower "gusset" buildings, wide towers were placed, which were provided with a slightly curved, bulbous cupola divided by ribs.

The cross arms were designed according to the type of construction of the two "pillars" designed by Ludwig Förster in Vienna. The “pillars” appeared in the form of narrow, low turrets with small domes, which flanked the central wing at the corners, whereby the impression of a two-tower facade was in no way created here. The rose window above the portal was framed in a square similar to the Great Synagogue in Budapest . The rosette frieze below the eaves and the battlements were also similar to the Budapest synagogue.

The large, bulbous, ribbed drum dome was reminiscent of the Mughal architecture of the Friday Mosque in Delhi .

The Old Synagogue Wiesbaden
The Torah shrine in the old synagogue in Wiesbaden
November 9, 1938

literature

Hannelore Künzl: Islamic style elements in synagogue construction of the 19th and early 20th centuries . Publishing house Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1984, ISBN 3-8204-8034-X (Judaism and Environment, 9). P. 298 ff.