Jacob's temple

Jacobson School (left) and Jacob's stamp (right). Historic postcard, around 1900.

The Jacob temple in Seesen was inaugurated in 1810 and was the world's first synagogue to be built by Reform Judaism . It was located on the grounds of the Jacobson School and was destroyed during the November pogroms in 1938 .

Surname

The merchant and banker Israel Jacobson (1768–1828), an early representative of Reform Judaism in Germany, gave the synagogue he founded the name Jacobstempel . He wanted to honor the memory of his father Israel Jacob (1729–1803) on the one hand, and on the other hand to use the name temple to express that the synagogue had replaced the Jerusalem temple as a house of prayer .

inauguration

The inauguration took place on July 17, 1810 with a joint Christian-Jewish service. A contemporary wrote:

“The festival was original and unique of its kind. Where has there been a similar day in the past, on which Christians and Israelites celebrated a communal service in the presence of more than forty clergymen of both religions? It has only been left to the tolerance of our day to bring about all of this. "

Model of the Jacob's temple in Museum Seesen (2010).

architecture

The Jacob temple was a rectangular, free-standing half-timbered building in the style of a Rococo pavilion. In the west there was a vestibule , from where the women reached the gallery via a staircase. Above the entrance was a verse from the Bible: “Don't we all have a father? Didn't a God create us? ”( Malachi 2:10).

inner space

Inside, the Jacob's temple resembled a Protestant church. The lectern ( bima ) was not in the middle of the room, but in front of the steps to the Torah shrine on the east wall. The eye-catcher in front of the Torah shrine was the pulpit under its canopy; here the Andreaskirche (Seesen) was exemplary. The benches for the men were lined up like church pews to the left and right of a central aisle.

On the long walls, supported on columns, were the women's galleries; there was an organ gallery on the west wall . This was the first organ in a synagogue.

Idol

Following the example of the Jacob temple, the new ideas were soon adapted in Berlin and other cities, so that a separate typology of reform synagogues emerged.

destruction

Since the 1920s, the Jacob's temple was rarely used for church services. The schoolyard was a parade ground for Nazi formations, which is why "national comrades" penetrated the building several times, demolished it and painted over Hebrew lettering and Jewish symbols. On the evening of November 9, 1938, the Jacob temple was completely destroyed by arson; the synagogue guard Nussbaum died on November 14, 1938 under unexplained circumstances, presumably as a result of mistreatment.

See also

• List of synagogues destroyed in the German Reich from 1933 to 1945

literature

• City of Seesen (ed.): Der Jacobstempel. The synagogue of the Jacobson School in Seesen , Alfeld 2010

Web links

• Stübig architecture and design: historical photos, models and visualizations of the Jacob temple
• Jacobson House: Synagogue
• Miriam Magall: The world's first liberal synagogue , in: Jüdische Rundschau, September 15, 2015
• Gerald Beyrodt: Under the sign of the organ. The Seesen Temple of Jacob as the origin of liberal Judaism

Individual evidence

1. ^ Israel Jacobson. A Jewish reformer who went to school. Retrieved January 2, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Katrin Keßler, Ulrich Knufinke and Mirko Przystawik: Architecture and musical-liturgical practice - organ synagogues between classicism and early modernism ; in Rebekka Denz and Dorothea Salzer: A prayer without song is like a body without a soul - aspects of synagogal music , Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2014, ISBN 978-3869562902 , p. 13