Heubach State Synagogue

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The Heubach State Synagogue

The Heubach State Synagogue is now a well-preserved and superbly restored structure of this type. It is located in the Heubach district of the Kalbach municipality in the Fulda district in East Hesse .

prehistory

The building was erected in 1843 after the previously used prayer room was no longer deemed sufficient:

“ The synagogue at Heubach is, as I recently had the opportunity to convince myself, in such a bad condition that it appears as a real degradation of the worship service to have such a local, which is more like a stable than a room, for a house of prayer use. In order to name just one quality of this synagogue, I allow myself to note that under it there is a cattle shed from which the voice of the cow in it can be heard so strongly that the lead singer has to be interrupted and overruled very often . "

The site of the former tithe barn was acquired as the building site , which the synagogue placed in a prominent position in the village ensemble: A road leads to the eaves-side front of the building, which forks in front of the building and leads past it on both sides.

architecture

Mikveh (2016)

A two-storey half - timbered house with a basement was built on a stone plinth on a rectangular floor plan. The building contains the prayer room on the right-hand side, two storeys high, which made it possible to install a women's gallery. On the left side of the building there were classrooms, a mikveh and a teacher's apartment. The building shows only a few elements of "Jewish architecture", such as the separate entrances for women and men. Originally there was no connection between the left and right parts of the building on the ground floor. There is nothing left of the original furnishings. The specialty of the mikvah is that it is located in the building near the teacher's kitchen. This made it possible to heat the mikveh water.

history

The synagogue stood empty for years after the Jewish school was abandoned in 1923. The cult objects had been moved to the synagogue in Schlüchtern and were destroyed there in the pogrom of November 1938. The building was owned by the political municipality of Heubach, was heavily rebuilt inside and served as the town hall until the Hessian regional reform in the 1970s, when the municipal administration was relocated to Kalbach. It then fell into disrepair. It was bought by the Hessian Road Construction Office , which intended to use the property for road expansion.

The state synagogue in Heubach is, however, a cultural monument according to the Hessian Monument Protection Act . But it took a number of years before a sponsor was found in the “Friends of the Heubach State Synagogue eV ” who actively carried out the renovation, which then took place from 2003 to 2006. The building was extensively renovated and a cultural meeting place was set up in the building. In 2007, the association received the Hessian Monument Protection Prize for this .

The Heubach State Synagogue is used today as a museum and as an event location and is looked after by the Friends' Association. For her services to the rescue and renovation of the former synagogue, its former chairwoman, Pastor Johanna Rau , received the Obermayer German Jewish History Award .

literature

  • Michael Mott : Preservation of monuments versus cultural community: What will become of Heubach's village synagogue / Kalbach has no money for restoration / Jewish community wants to "move" the building to Gießen. In: Fuldaer Zeitung , March 7, 1987, p. 17.
  • Michael Mott: Heubach synagogue community. In: Buchenblätter Fuldaer Zeitung, Volume 60, No. 31, Dec. 7, 1987, p. 124.
  • Michael Mott: Local history museum for Heubach? / Barn, synagogue, "town hall" - what now? In: Fuldaer Zeitung, February 1, 1990, p. 12 (series: DENK-mal!).
  • 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. 118-121.
  • Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments - Hesse II. Administrative region Darmstadt . (Ed .: Folkhard Cremer et al.), 3rd edition, Munich 2008.
  • Johanna Rau: History of the Jewish community in Heubach .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Application of the provincial rabbi Felsenstein in Hanau of July 29, 1839 to the electoral district office. From: Holdings 180 LA Schlüchtern, No. 449, Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg .
  2. ↑ http://www.synagoge-heubach.de/verein.php Homepage Förderverein

Coordinates: 50 ° 23 '2.2 "  N , 9 ° 43' 4.6"  E