Vilnius Great Synagogue
The Great Synagogue or City Synagogue in Vilnius , the “Jerusalem of the North”, was the largest synagogue in Vilna before the Second World War . It was built in the 16th or 17th century as the nine-field synagogue (also known as the four-pillar synagogue ) and redesigned in the 18th century. It was one of the "great synagogues in Eastern Europe". The Great Synagogue and the Synagogue Courtyard were badly damaged in World War II and completely demolished by the Soviet authorities in the 1950s .
history
The construction of the Great Synagogue is often dated to the year 1573, around 1633 it is said to have been extended or rebuilt. Carol Herselle Krinsky thinks it is more likely that the synagogue was not built until after 1661, when the Jews were allowed to return to the city after their expulsion from Vilna. In the middle of the 18th century, the synagogue was redesigned in the style of the Italian Renaissance by Johann Christoph Glaubitz , who was of German origin from Vilna . The refurbishment of the Bima is said to have been a gift from Judah ben Eliezer (called "Jesod", died 1762).
The Jews of Vilna were known for their erudition, as well as for their anti-Hasidic and anti- mystical attitudes. The well-known library of Matitjahu Straschun (1817–1885) with an estimated 35,000 books was located in a porch at the entrance to the synagogue, completed in 1901. After the Second World War, 25,000 of these, along with 15,000 books, were brought from the YIVO library to New York , where the YIVO , which was created in Vilnius, is located today.
Between the two world wars, more than 56,000 Jews lived in Vilnius, who made up over 40% of the city's population. There were over a hundred synagogues, many of them mostly built during the 19th century and financed by the newly emerging class of Jewish industrialists. As the most important of all Vilna synagogues, the Great Synagogue bore the title "Small Shrine" , based on the ancient temple in Jerusalem .
During the Second World War, the synagogue burned down during the Battle of Vilnius in July 1944. The burnt-out parts that were left over after the war were removed. The synagogue complex was built over with residential buildings. Three original parts of the synagogue survived the destruction and were placed in the Jewish Museum named after Elijah ben Salomon Zalman .
description
The synagogue was built as a nine-field synagogue (also known as a four-pillar structure ) with a cross vault over a central floor plan. The building was about five stories high, the floor was below street level, the windows were set high up in the wall. The main room measured 22.5 × 21 meters. In the center of the synagogue was the bima , which was surrounded by four massive Tuscan columns. The columns standing close together in the middle of the room formed a small, central central vault. The middle vault was framed by eight larger vault fields. The apex reached the same height in all eight vault fields, which emphasized the vault field of the smaller ninth central field and looked like a special dome shape. The floor plan with nine vaulted fields resulted in three vaulted fields touching the outer wall on each of the four sides. In each field of the outer wall there was a window, a total of twelve windows. The interior was concentrated on the four pillars with the bima. In the second half of the 18th century, the Bima was refurbished with magnificent facilities in the late rococo style . These consisted of a superstructure that rested on twelve columns. The Torah shrine was also redesigned. This received cornices , reliefs carved in stone with blown gables and other formal elements from the late Rococo style.
Around 1800 a multi-storey wooden gallery in Russian style was added to the outside, possibly as a passage to the newly built women's extension.
The courtyard to the main synagogue was surrounded by several small synagogues and teaching houses, the ritual bath , fountain, slaughterhouse and community offices. Until the 20th century there was a pillory in the vestibule of the synagogue , which was used for rabbinical justice.
Rediscovery
Using ground penetrating radar, experts from the Israel Antiquities Authority discovered underground remains of the Great Synagogue and the Synagogue Courtyard in June 2015. The remains are now partially under a school and are to be uncovered in an excavation from the following year. A building file from the late 19th century containing plans to renovate the bathhouse was found in the Vilnius City Archives. The bathhouse had two floors, many rooms and a large outbuilding. There were two mikvahs. The archaeologists, led by Jon Seligman ( Israel Antiquities Authority), Mantas Daubaras (Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Organization) and Richard Freund (Hartford University) were able to use this information as a guide during the 2017 excavation. In July you came across the two tiled ritual baths, which show the state of the early 20th century.
See also
literature
- Carol Herselle Krinsky: Europe's synagogues. Architecture, history and meaning . Fourier, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-925037-89-6 , especially pp. 99-100, 196-198 and 214-217.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Carol Herselle Krinsky: Europe's synagogues. Architecture, history and meaning . Fourier, Wiesbaden 1997, p. 99-100 .
- ↑ Carol Herselle Krinsky: Europe's synagogues. Architecture, history and meaning . Fourier, Wiesbaden 1997, p. 214 .
- ↑ A Brief History of the Strashun Library ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. YIVO (English)
- ↑ Romuald Twardowski: Było never Mielo. Wspomnienia kompozytora . Warszawa 2000, p. 25 (Polish).
- ↑ Newsletter of the Embassy of the State of Israel of July 30, 2015
- ↑ Two Ritual Baths (Miqva'ot) of the Great Synagogue of Vilna are Exposed Seventy Years after Their Destruction in the Holocaust. In: Israel Antiquities Authority. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
Coordinates: 54 ° 40 ′ 47 " N , 25 ° 17 ′ 5.1" E