Great Synagogue (Erfurt)

Great Synagogue Erfurt

The Great Synagogue was a synagogue in the Thuringian capital of Erfurt .

history

After Erfurt was occupied by the French in 1809, Jews were able to settle in the city again . The Jewish community first built the small synagogue behind the town hall in the old town in 1840 , but after the community grew rapidly in the second half of the 19th century, it became too small.

Therefore, the community acquired a plot of land at today's Juri-Gagarin-Ring (address at that time: Kartäuserring 14), on which they had the Great Synagogue, a historicist domed structure, built between 1882 and 1884 . The building, which offered space for 500 believers, was planned by the Frankfurt architect Siegfried Kusnitzky , who had previously built the highly regarded Börneplatz synagogue in Frankfurt. The synagogue was inaugurated in autumn 1884 by the rabbis Theodor Kroner and Karo. The inauguration was preceded by violent disputes about the installation of an organ , which led to part of the previous community splitting off and setting up separate services outside the “reform synagogue”.

In the following decades it served the community as a place of prayer. There were reports of desecration of the synagogue as early as the 1920s. In 1938 the Great Synagogue was destroyed during the Reichspogromnacht . In 1951/52 the New Synagogue was built on the site - the only new synagogue in the GDR - based on plans by Willy Nöckel .