Synagogue (Bad Nauheim)

Facade to Karlstrasse

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The Synagogue of Bad Nauheim is a striking example of the style of New Objectivity in the 1920s and one of the last built in Germany synagogues before the Holocaust .

local community

The beginnings of Jewish community life in Nauheim date back to the end of the Middle Ages , as in many places in the Wetterau , probably in the 14th century. From 1468 to the first half of the 16th century, a few Jewish families lived in the then still insignificant village. In the 18th century a small Jewish community settled again. The number of Jews living in Bad Nauheim only increased sharply from the middle of the 19th century when the city began to rise to an international status: numerous Jewish doctors and business people settled in the up-and-coming bathing city. In the decades before the First World War , a particularly large number of Orthodox Jews from all over Europe came to Bad Nauheim for spa stays. The establishment of a Jewish children's sanatorium and Israelite men's and women's sanatoriums met the needs of the guests.

In 2016, a Holocaust memorial for the 270 murdered Jews of the Nazi regime was erected in Parkstrasse.

building

The first prayer room was at Burggasse 20. It was replaced in 1867 or 1886 by the first synagogue . It was on Karlstrasse. Due to the popularity of the city with Jewish spa guests and the growth of the local Jewish community, they decided to build a new synagogue in the 1920s. The representative church, completed in 1929, also in Karlstrasse, but further south, was designed in the then extremely progressive architectural forms of the New Objectivity - for example with a flat roof on the street-side wing - and largely renouncing the Moorish - Romanesque architectural forms in the Synagogue building - only the arched windows remind of it. The architect was Richard Kaufmann from Frankfurt am Main . The building stands on a T-shaped floor plan and also integrates a mikveh and an apartment. It was one of the last synagogues built in Germany before the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship.

use

After Hitler came to power, the number of Jewish residents in Bad Nauheim quickly fell after a brief increase, as repression and the boycott of local Jewish retail stores forced many families to emigrate. During the November pogroms on November 9 , 1938 , the synagogue was desecrated, the windows smashed and the interior badly damaged. A fire that was set was extinguished and the nine-year-old building was preserved. It was used as a warehouse in the following years. 1942 took place the deportation of the last, still about 100 remaining in the city of Jews in extermination camps .

Immediately after the city was occupied by American troops on March 29, 1945, before the end of the war, the first Jewish service in the Allied occupied part of Germany took place in the temporarily restored synagogue under the direction of an American military chaplain. Ralph Baum , who was a citizen of Bad Nauheim before the Nazi terror, was among the participating soldiers . With the support of the American occupation agencies, a new Jewish community was created with the help of US soldiers, displaced persons and returning emigrants.

The synagogue was initially poorly renovated after 1945 and extensively renovated in 1960 and in the 1980s. In the decades after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Jewish community of Bad Nauheim developed into an important factor that helped shape the city's culture in many ways. In 2018, it had 252 members.

Worth knowing

Bad Nauheim is the seat of the German Coordination Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation and the Buber-Rosenzweig Foundation .

literature

• Thea Altaras : Synagogues and Jewish ritual immersion baths in Hesse - What happened since 1945? 2nd edition, Königstein im Taunus 2007, ISBN 978-3-7845-7794-4 , pp. 373–374.
• Folkhard Cremer: Bad Nauheim . In Georg Dehio (abbreviation): Hessen, Bd. 2: Administrative region Darmstadt ( manual of German art handbooks ). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03117-3 , p. 45.
• Stephan Kolb: The history of the Bad Nauheim Jews. A failed assimilation . Verlag der Wetterauer Zeitung, Bad Nauheim 1987, ISBN 3-924145-09-1 .
• Carola Nathan: Jewish life in Bad Nauheim . In: Monumente , Vol. 24 (2014), No. 1, p. 36f. ISSN  0941-7125
• Heinz Wionski: Cultural monuments in Hessen. Wetteraukreis II, Part 2, Friedberg to Wöllstadt ( monument topography Federal Republic of Germany ). Vieweg, Braunschweig 1999, ISBN 3-528-06227-4 , p. 148f (on behalf of the Hessian State Office for Monument Preservation ).

Web links

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

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Holocaust memorial on Parkstrasse in Bad Nauheim
2. ↑ Sun: Wionski.
3. ^ So: Altaras.
4. ↑ Petra Ihm-Fahle: Nice old synagogue . In: Wetterauer Zeitung , number 277 of November 28, 2015, p. 34.
5. ↑ Nathan.
6. ↑ Bad Nauheim Jewish Community In: centralratderjuden.de , accessed on March 13, 2020.
7. ↑ Named after Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig .

Coordinates: 50 ° 21 ′ 47.3 "  N , 8 ° 44 ′ 21.7"  E