Main Synagogue (Frankfurt am Main)

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The main synagogue on Börnestrasse, 1885
( photochrom )

The main synagogue on Börnestrasse, the former Judengasse in Frankfurt am Main , was the center of the liberal Jewish reform movement in the city. It was inaugurated on March 23, 1860 and was the third synagogue on this site after the previous buildings of 1462 and 1711 .

During the November pogroms of 1938 the main synagogue as well as the Börneplatz synagogue built in 1882 , the Orthodox synagogue built in 1907 on Friedberger Anlage and the Westend synagogue built in 1910 were set on fire . The burned out ruins of the main synagogue were demolished in January 1939 and their stones were used to build a wall to enclose the main cemetery . Today only a plaque on Kurt-Schumacher-Straße reminds of them. The Westend synagogue was the only synagogue in Frankfurt to survive the Nazi era and World War II .

Location and surroundings

Location of the main synagogue on the Ravenstein plan from 1861
( chromolithography )

The main synagogue was on the east side of Börnestrasse. At its rear, the synagogue bordered Allerheiligengasse. Since the two streets were not exactly parallel, the rear of the synagogue was rotated about 15 degrees from the longitudinal axis. On the north side of the synagogue ran the narrow Synagogenstrasse, on the south side the dead end behind the cold bath.

Its predecessor buildings had already been on the same property: the so-called Altschul, the first synagogue inaugurated shortly after the construction of Judengasse in 1462, was destroyed in the great Jewish fire in 1711 . The second synagogue was one of the first to be rebuilt immediately after the fire. Even after the ghetto was lifted in 1796, it remained the spiritual center of Frankfurt's Jews.

architecture

The Frankfurt architect Johann Georg Kayser (1817 to 1875) was the builder of the main synagogue, which was built between 1855 and 1860. He was a student of Friedrich Maximilian Hessemer and Friedrich Ziebland and worked as a teacher for architecture at the trade and Sunday school from 1844.

Synagogue floor plan, around 1880

The representative new building made of red Main sandstone corresponded to the historicizing spirit of that time. He took up Gothic , Moorish and Byzantine style elements (cf. orientalizing architecture ). The main front facing Börnestrasse was 24.50 meters wide, the building 26.50 meters long. The west facade consisted of a central section and two four-storey, tower-like and domed structures that flanked the central section. The facade of the central wing consisted of a smaller main entrance in the basement, a mighty Gothic long tracery window with a pressed keel arch on the upper floor and a stepped gable as the upper facade. The stacking of the portal and window was reminiscent of the English neo-Gothic church architecture, while the stepped gable was derived from the late Gothic secular architecture and the tracery of the window showed Islamic horseshoe arches that were located above the thin measuring rods that divided the window.

Inauguration of the main synagogue on March 23, 1860, in the background the Torah shrine , bima and pulpit
(chromolithography)

The two towers only slightly protruded from the central part of the facade, which lessened the impression of a two-tower facade and a similarity to the church building. The end with a curved onion dome , with little bowls at the corners, reminded of the playful minaret closings of the Mameluk period in Cairo , for example the minaret of the Sultan Hassan mosque, the madrasa and the tomb of Sultan Qalawun or Sultan Kait-Bay .

The interior design of the Frankfurt synagogue was determined by the horseshoe arch and therefore oriental. The horseshoe shape was evident on all arches, such as the arcade arches in the basement and on the galleries on the first and second floors. They were also found both on the belt arches and on the triple narrowing vault that enclosed the two-part horseshoe-arched blind window with the large rose window in the east . Finally, the horseshoe arch was still to be found on the three-part Torah shrine and on the blind arcade frieze on the middle barrier and on the pulpit. The capitals of the columns could be compared with the plant capitals in the Mezquita in Cordoba .

The interior decoration corresponded to the liturgical characteristics of the reform movement. For example, there was a pulpit and an organ . In the main nave and the two side aisles of the synagogue there were 514 seats reserved for men. In the galleries above the side aisles there were a total of 506 seats for the women. In the rear part of the building along Allerheiligengasse there was, among other things, a small assembly hall and an archive.

history

The Judengasse with its oldest synagogue, 1628
( copper engraving by Matthäus Merian )

The oldest synagogue in Frankfurt's Judengasse was built as one of the first buildings shortly after this ghetto was established in 1462. As the Jewish community grew , it was expanded several times over the years. During the so-called Great Jewish Fire of January 14, 1711, the synagogue also burned down. But it was one of the first buildings to be rebuilt after the fire. Even after the ghetto was lifted in 1806, it remained the spiritual center of the Jewish community.

In the 19th century, tensions between the Orthodox Jews of Frankfurt and the supporters of Reform Judaism under Rabbi Abraham Geiger grew . In 1844 the community council appointed Rabbi Leopold Stein to Frankfurt, a moderate representative of the reform wing. The appointment split the community, as the incumbent Chief Rabbi Salomon Abraham Trier was a staunch opponent of Stein. In 1851 the Orthodox Association separated from the Israelite community under the leadership of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch , in which an Orthodox wing remained in addition to the liberal wing.

The old synagogue from the early 18th century, 1845
( steel engraving by Wilhelm Lang based on a model by Jakob Fürchtegott Dielmann )

Leopold Stein played a key role in the long-planned demolition of the old synagogue in the former Judengasse and the construction of a representative new building at the same location. Construction was delayed, however, as Baron Amschel Mayer Rothschild , angry about Stein's employment, withdrew his funding commitment. In 1854 Stein nevertheless achieved his goal: the old synagogue was demolished. The new building was built in its place from 1855 to 1860.

The speech at the inauguration of the main synagogue on March 23, 1860 was given by Rabbi Stein in the presence of the two mayors and the Senate of the Free City of Frankfurt . In it he emphasized that the new synagogue was a symbol of the solidarity of the Israelite community with the old religion and belonging to the German nation. As a result of this speech there was a scandal in the community council, which two years later led to Stein's resignation from his office as rabbi.

In 1864 the Frankfurt Jews received civil equality .

Rabbi Caesar Seligmann , who was called to Frankfurt in 1903 , became the leader of the religiously liberal movement in Germany. He created a new reform prayer book for the Frankfurt Israelite Congregation and on this basis a unified prayer book for the liberal German-Jewish cult. He founded the journal Liberales Judentum and was instrumental in the liberal-Jewish unification in Germany.

On the night of November 9-10 , 1938 , the main synagogue was set on fire by marauding SA troops. The last chief cantor and rabbinical administrator, Nathan Saretzki , penetrated the burning synagogue and saved historically valuable liturgical compositions, which he subsequently secured in the Philanthropin . The alerted fire brigade quickly came to the scene of the fire, but did nothing to put out the fire. The building burned down to the outer walls. In January 1939, the city commissioned a building contractor to demolish the ruins of the main synagogue and the nearby Börneplatz synagogue. A 165-meter-long wall was built from the stones that were still usable along the Eckenheimer Landstrasse to enclose the expansion areas of the main cemetery that had been laid out a few years earlier . On April 1, 1939, the National Socialist Lord Mayor Friedrich Krebs forced the Israelite community to sign the so-called Jewish Treaty. In it, the community ceded all its properties, including the property of the main synagogue, which had already been demolished, to the city for a small amount of compensation.

In 1944, Frankfurt's old town was largely destroyed in several heavy bombing raids . The area around the former main synagogue also burned out completely. During the reconstruction in the fifties , the former Börnestrasse disappeared under a road break . The wide Kurt-Schumacher-Straße cuts the former course of the Judengasse at an acute angle and thus covers a large part of the former ghetto district. The main synagogue was located where today Allerheiligenstrasse joins Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse. Only a granite memorial plaque erected in 1946 on the facade of the house at Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse 41 reminds of the synagogue today. It bears the inscription: This is where the main synagogue Börnestrasse was located, which was destroyed by Nazi criminals on November 9, 1938.

See also

literature

  • Frankfurt Historical Commission (ed.): Frankfurt am Main - The history of the city in nine contributions. (=  Publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XVII ). Jan Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1991, ISBN 3-7995-4158-6 .
  • Eugen Mayer: Die Frankfurter Juden , Frankfurt am Main 1966, Waldemar Kramer Verlag.
  • 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. 260 ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Künzl, p. 261 and p. 262.
  2. ↑ Künzl, p. 262.
  3. ↑ Künzl, p. 263.
  4. ↑ Heidy Zimmermann: “Schir Zion. Music and singing in the synagogue ”. In: Eckhard John, Heidy Zimmermann (Ed.): “Jewish Music? External images - self-images ". Pp. 53-75
  5. ^ Historical Museum Frankfurt am Main. Documents on Nathan Saretzki. In: Library of the Ancients.
  6. ^ Institute for Urban History Frankfurt am Main: S2, Sign. 17.164: Saretzki, Nathan.
  7. ^ European Center for Jewish Music, Hanover: Collection of Oberkantor Nathan Saretzki (Nathan Saretzki's sheet music collection with his handwritten notes). o. Sign.

Web links

Commons : Main Synagogue  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 49 ″  N , 8 ° 41 ′ 16 ″  E