Synagogue (Graz)

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Newly built synagogue in Graz (March 2006)

The synagogue in Graz is located at the David Duke -Platz on the right bank of the Mur in the 5th Graz district Gries . The synagogue of the Jewish Community of Graz, as the successor to the former Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Graz  (IKG Graz) and now a subsidiary of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien , primarily looks after Jews from Graz, but also from Styria , Carinthia and southern Burgenland . It is next to the Graz Beth HaMidrash - Little Synagogue Graz one of two Jewish places of worship in the Styrian capital.

History of the cultural community in Graz

Jews were resident in the capital of Inner Austria in the Middle Ages and were mainly traders, who also had an important settlement in the area with Judenburg .

From 1497 to 1848 there was a blockade of Jews stubbornly defended by the Styrian estates, which was only broken in the wake of the revolution of 1848 and ultimately only finally overcome through the civic equality of the Jewish population through the constitutional law on the general rights of citizens in 1867.

Old synagogue

Old Synagogue (1915)
Model of the old synagogue

As early as 1863, the Jews who had previously settled in Graz founded the Israelite Corporation. The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Graz was founded in 1869.

The original Graz synagogue, like the office building, was built between 1890 and 1892 according to the plans of the architect Maximilian Katscher (1858-1917). Katscher, who had attended the Technical University in Vienna, also designed the Herzmansky department store in Vienna and the Kurhaus in Baden near Vienna. The model for the construction of Katscher was the synagogue in Dresden built by Gottfried Semper at the end of the 1930s . Both the structure of the temple as a domed central building and the formal design using a Byzantine-Romanesque repertoire of forms were based on the Dresden model, but were further developed by Katscher independently. The building finally realized, which also included the aforementioned adjoining office building with school, which were formally uniform, offered an imposing sight with its free location on the banks of the Mur.

The synagogue with its 30-meter-high outer dome formed the heart of the Graz Jewish community until 1938, with around 2500 members at last. During the November pogroms on November 9 and 10, 1938, the synagogue was set on fire by the mayor of Graz, Julius Kaspar , and was subsequently destroyed and the entire area leveled in order to erase the memory of the synagogue. The office building of the Jewish community, however, was spared from pillage. All Graz Jews were subsequently deported to Vienna and Graz was declared the first “Jew-free” city in the Ostmark .

After the war, only around 150 Jews settled back in Graz. In 1952 the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Graz, which was dissolved in 1940, was reestablished. Its district comprised the federal states of Styria, Carinthia and the Burgenland political districts of Oberwart, Güssing and Jennersdorf. Until 1988 there was only a lawn on the site of the destroyed synagogue, then the City of Graz erected a memorial stone in the form of a black obelisk, which was included in the architectural concept when the new synagogue was built.

New synagogue / presence of the Jewish community

As early as 1983, the artist Fedo Ertl approached the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde to expose the foundations of the old synagogue. However, the request was refused by the community leadership at the time for fear of anti-Semitic actions. Ertl had researched that part of the bricks from the old synagogue had been used in 1939 for the construction of a garage on Grazer Alberstrasse.

On October 21, 1998, all parties represented in the Graz city parliament decided unanimously to rebuild the Graz synagogue. On behalf of the City of Graz, the construction of the synagogue was made possible primarily through the commitment of Kurt David Brühl, then President of the Graz Jewish Community.

The architect couple Jörg and Ingrid Mayr from Graz, who had been commissioned with the planning of the destroyed ceremonial hall at the Jewish cemetery in Graz, took up Ertl's plans. Around 9,600 bricks from the old synagogue were reused for the new building after they were cleaned by students from the Lichtenfelsgasse federal high school, the technical college and the Grazbachgasse commercial school. The obelisk, which was erected on the former synagogue site in 1988, is now located below the glass bima .

Bricks, reinforced concrete and glass were the main materials used for the new synagogue. The geometric base cube and ball describe the central / sacred space of the synagogue and also determine the external appearance. The new synagogue follows the layout of the old one, but is smaller than the old one, since the Jewish community in Graz only has a good 100 members - a fraction of the number of members before the Second World War - and was opened on November 9, 2000.

In the middle of the interior is a glass almemor (also called bima ), the place where the Torah is read. The Torah scrolls are kept in the Torah shrine directly behind . The room is dominated by a glass dome with twelve supports, which stand for the twelve tribes of Israel and form a Star of David , and is reminiscent of the construction of the destroyed synagogue. The color blue characterizes the prayer room as a symbol of heaven. Jewish prayers are written in the glass using sandblasting .

Today the David-Herzog-Platz 1 building is a listed building .

In the basement of the synagogue with multimedia equipment , the exhibition “Judaism in Graz - Heritage Present Future”, designed by President Elie Rosen , has been installed since 2017 . It comprises a total of 65 photographs, one part depicting the Jewish history of the city of Graz and the other part is devoted to Jewish religious practice. There are also showcases containing ritual objects for the synagogue, cemetery, prayer and home as well as mementos from special events in community life, community organizations or the old synagogue. The exhibition also presents the oldest Jewish gravestone in the city of Graz, Zipporah's gravestone from 1304.

In 2013 the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Graz was dissolved after long-lasting internal conflicts and its district was assigned to that of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Vienna. The synagogue, the office building and the other assets of the dissolved religious community were transferred to the Jewish Foundation for Styria, Carinthia and southern Burgenland. Today the community exists under the name of the Jewish Community of Graz as a subsidiary of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien and the area of ​​responsibility covered by the foundation. It has been administered by a Chargé d'affaires with the title of President since 2016. For the first time Elie Rosen, an exposed representative of Austrian Jewry, was entrusted with this position. He also acts as a board member of the Jewish Cultural Foundation.

At the suggestion of Rosen and finally with the concurring orders of the President of the Jewish Community of Graz, the President of the Jewish Religious Society and the Chief Rabbinate of the Jewish Community of Vienna on December 1, 2016, the Styrian Regional Rabbinate, which was dissolved in 1938, was also responsible for Styria, Carinthia and Burgenland rebuilt. On the same day, the Viennese rabbi Schlomo Hofmeister was appointed as the first Styrian regional rabbi since 1938 and chief rabbi of Graz .

On August 22, 2020, Rosen was attacked by an unknown person with a baseball bat in front of the parish hall and was able to escape into his car at the last second. A few days earlier, the east wall of the synagogue and the Jewish community center had been smeared over a large area with propalestinian slogans and several windows had been smashed. One day later, the police arrested a Syrian citizen who, in addition to the attack, was charged with six other acts and who, after researching the press, confessed.

literature

  • Stefan Karner: Graz in the Nazi era 1938-1945. Volume I of the publications of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War. Association for the promotion of research into the consequences of conflicts and wars, 1999, ISBN 978-3-90166104-4 .
  • Alois Kölbl, Wiltraud Resch: Paths to God. The churches and synagogue of Graz. 2nd, expanded and supplemented edition. Styria, Graz 2004, ISBN 3-222-13105-8 , pp. 170-172.
  • Gerald Lamprecht (Ed.): Jewish Life in Styria: Marginalization - Extinction - Approach. Volume 5 of the series of writings of the Center for Jewish Studies. Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck / Vienna [u. a.] 2004, ISBN 978-3-7065-1794-2 .
  • Wolfgang Sotill: There is only one God and one humanity. Graz and its Jewish citizens. Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-222-12838-3 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Contact. IKG Graz, accessed on September 21, 2012 (link no longer available, 2016).
  2. ↑ Beth Hamidrash - Jewish Community Graz. Retrieved March 26, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Gerald Lamprecht: The becoming of the community. From the first Jewish traders in Styria to the founding of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Graz in 1869. In: Lit. Lamprecht: Jüdisches Leben in der Steiermark.
  4. ↑ Karen Engel: Between Assimilation, Multiculturalism and Religion: Jewish Life in Graz Today. david.juden.at, accessed on May 13, 2016 .
  5. ↑ warning sign 1938/83 . Project documentation at KulturServerGraz. Retrieved September 16, 2012.
  6. ^ Dieter A. Binder: Jewish Graz - Graz Jews? - A search for clues in the Second Republic. In: Antje Senarclens de Grancy, Heidrun Zettelbauer (ed.): Architecture. forgotten - Jewish architects in Graz. Böhlau Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-20578472-2 , p. 66.
  7. ↑ Visit the exhibition: Heritage - Present - Future. Retrieved March 25, 2019 .
  8. ^ Jewish community Graz: After 78 years - New Styrian regional rabbi . In: Press release from the Jewish Community of Graz from December 1, 2016 . December 1, 2016.
  9. ^ Attack on the mayor. In: Jüdische Allgemeine , August 22, 2020.
  10. ↑ Colette M. Schmidt: Suspect arrested after attacking synagogue in Graz. In: derstandard.at , August 24, 2020.

Coordinates: 47 ° 3 ′ 50.9 ″  N , 15 ° 26 ′ 1.2 ″  E