Mikveh (worms)

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Modern access to the anteroom
Window between anteroom and bath shaft, right: southwest column of the anteroom. The window and column were added in the course of the restoration between 1958 and 1961.
Access to the lower staircase from the anteroom. The right column is an original from the time of construction, the left an addition from museum holdings.
Plunge pool, right end of the lower stairs

The mikveh in Worms dates back to the Middle Ages .

Geographical location

The mikvah is located in the middle of the former Jewish quarter, where the Worms synagogue forms the center of an ensemble of Jewish cult buildings. To the south of the synagogue is the synagogue garden, which is now the entrance to the mikveh.

history

The mikveh was a private foundation. It was completed in 1185/86. The donor's inscription has been preserved, even if not in the original place. The inscription consists of two plaques, which were probably attached to the door of the bathhouse from which the descent into the bath was made. During structural changes in 1876, the two panels were set into the wall of the synagogue courtyard. After the synagogue was destroyed and the mikveh was damaged during National Socialism, they were placed in the care of the municipal museum in 1946. With the reconstruction of the synagogue complex up to 1961, the panels with the donor's inscription were again built into the wall of the synagogue courtyard.

The bathhouse was still in ruins in the middle of the 19th century. The mikveh was used by men and women until the beginning of the 18th century, when a second - no longer existing - facility was built for men only. The medieval complex was used by women until the 19th century and was abandoned as a cult bath by the Jewish community after 750 years . It threatened to deteriorate. At the end of the 19th century it was restored as a sight and has been open to visitors since 1895. During the November pogrom in 1938 , the window wall between the vestibule and the bath shaft was smashed and plunged into the shaft. In the late 1950s, the facility was restored. The light shaft was then initially covered with glass blocks , which was replaced by an open cover in 2007 for climatic reasons.

Description of the structure

The underground system extends almost nine meters deep down to the groundwater there . The building material is mostly red sandstone , a few parts that were probably bricked at the end of the construction work consist of sintered lime . The layout of the complex is Romanesque . Due to the lack of structural maintenance, numerous findings from the construction period have been preserved, including plaster residues. However, the low maintenance of the building has also meant that the condition of the building has not allowed it to be kept accessible to the public for some time now (2018).

Upper stairs and entrance situation

Today's entry from the synagogue garden leads to the anteroom via a staircase. This entrance situation does not correspond to the medieval one. The current staircase was only installed after it was destroyed in the first half of the 20th century, when the structure was subsequently restored. The "new" staircase leads directly into the anteroom. The historical, medieval staircase leading to the anteroom was probably made from the east from a building directly adjacent to the synagogue, which was demolished in the middle of the 19th century.

Vestibule

The anteroom has a trapezoidal floor plan and is covered with a barrel vault. Originally, all four corners of the room were emphasized by a column position each. But this only exists on the west wall. At the corresponding points on the east wall, pillars were later built up. Of the two columns on the east wall, only the right one with a double neck ring is an original; the other was replaced after the destruction under the National Socialists during restoration in the 1950s from the holdings of the Museum of the City of Worms. The columns bear cube capitals . The passage to the lower staircase is in the east wall.

The south wall is dominated by a two-part window with a skylight. This window layout is a free new version from the 1950s, after the existing window wall was pushed into the bath shaft during the destruction in 1938. The destroyed windows were smaller, but also had to be retrofitted. How this breakthrough was designed at the time of construction is not known.

There is a vaulted niche on the narrow eastern side of the room. Often referred to as a “cloakroom” or “changing room”, there is no evidence of this function, in fact it is assessed as implausible. The changing room was probably located in the above-ground access building, which was demolished in the mid-19th century. Perhaps a brazier was temporarily set up in the niche as a heater - massive traces of soot indicate this - and at other times the small room was separated from the anteroom by a door that is no longer available today.

Lower stairs

The vestibule and the cult bath are connected by another staircase. It is also covered with a barrel vault and leads seamlessly into the immersion bath. In the lower part the staircase is semicircular, in the upper part it is more straight and diagonal to the geometry of the anteroom. Construction investigations were able to demonstrate a planning error in the floor plan geometry, which was pragmatically compensated for during the construction process. A second construction-time measurement error could be detected on the occasion of the construction investigation in the area of ​​the vault above the central shaft.

Bath shaft

The immersion bath, at the bottom of the bath shaft, is surrounded by steps on three sides. The bathing shaft measures 2.85 × 2.85 cm in cross section. Since work had to be carried out in the groundwater here , settlement already occurred during the construction period, which was evened out, but left an irregular pattern on the steps and the rising masonry.

The lower layers of the bathing shaft are made of large, but not very uniform blocks - analogous to a shaft well . This argues against the occasional balanced participation of Bauhütte of Worms cathedral in the construction of the mikvah. The lower layers are dry masonry ( i.e. carried out without mortar ), even if the system is in the water here and is anything but dry. On the one hand, this serves to improve the flow of the ritually required groundwater and also prevents mortar from being washed out. According to the construction studies, this base masonry is about 1.2 to 1.3 m thick and consists of three layers of stone placed one behind the other.

The layers of the wall above the groundwater area, on the other hand, show smaller house stones in the mortar bond. The building investigations have shown shell masonry here . The shells are about 30 cm thick, the filling layer between them is about 70 cm thick.

The approximately eight meter high shaft is covered by a barrel vault that is just below the surface of the earth. Here there is a shaft leading to the surface, with which additional rainwater was fed into the mikveh.

Current situation

The mikvah in Worms is, along with the mikveh in Speyer, the most important from the Romanesque period in the German-speaking area and is also classified as one of the most culturally and historically important buildings in the Rhineland. While the mikveh in Speyer is somewhat older - and the Worms probably also served as a structural model - the findings from the time of construction in Worms are better preserved. There are even Romanesque plaster residues here - which is very rare. The Worms Synagogue is a cultural monument due to the Rhineland-Palatinate Monument Protection Act . The Worms synagogue complex is a central component of the plan to have the historical monuments of Jewish culture in the ShUM cities recognized as World Heritage by UNESCO . This also includes the mikveh.

Since the restoration in the 1950s, the mikvah - along with the synagogue and the medieval Heiliger Sand cemetery - has been one of the outstanding sights in Worms. Orthodox Jews occasionally use the mikveh for ritual immersion. Since 2004, the structural condition of the facility has been considered critical. It has been closed to visitors since 2018, as stability is no longer guaranteed. In order to give interested people and visitors an insight into the medieval monument, a stele with information and a QR code was installed at the entrance to the mikveh , which leads to the mikveh website.

literature

in alphabetical order by authors / editors

Web links

Commons : Mikveh in Worms  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Caspary claims that the mikveh was undamaged in 1938, which is not the case.
  2. ↑ Older reproductions of the floor plan actually depict the staircase as a semicircle (cf. Böcher: Die Alte Synagoge , Fig. 26). In fact, it is elongated in its upper half compared to a geometrically exact semicircle. Likewise, the floor plan of the anteroom - in contrast to these reproductions - is not rectangular, but rather trapezoidal.
  3. ↑ This indicates a dimension of 10 × 10 feet .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Spille: Monument topography , p. 68.
  2. ↑ Reproduced and translated into German by Böcher: Die Alte Synagoge , p. 103 f. and in Kayser, p. 10f.
  3. ↑ a b Otto Böcher: The old synagogue in Worms . Worms 1961, p. 104 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ↑ Otto Böcher: residential wing and Romanesque bathhouse. Two buildings in the synagogue district of Worms that have disappeared . In: Der Wormsgau 6 (1963/64), p. 80 f.
  5. ^ Bormann: possibilities , p. 61.
  6. ↑ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 12.
  7. ↑ Kayser: A well , p. 7.
  8. ^ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 14.
  9. ↑ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 15.
  10. ↑ Böcher: The Old Synagogue , p. 49.
  11. ↑ Caspary.
  12. ↑ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 17 f.
  13. ↑ See: Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 18.
  14. ↑ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 18 f.
  15. ↑ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 20.
  16. ↑ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 27.
  17. ↑ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 23.
  18. ↑ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 24.
  19. ↑ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 22.
  20. ↑ Kayser: Eine Brunnen , p. 22 f.
  21. ^ Bormann: possibilities , p. 61.
  22. ↑ Bormann: possibilities , p. 64 ff.
  23. ↑ Spille: Monument topography , p. 68 f.
  24. ↑ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - district-free city of Worms. ( Memento from June 13, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Mainz 2018 [ Version 2020 is available. ] , P. 4 (PDF; 5.0 MB).
  25. ↑ Entry of the ShUM cities in the tentative list of UNESCO .
  26. ↑ Bormann: possibilities , p. 63.
  27. ↑ Kayser: A well , p. 7.

Coordinates: 49 ° 38 ′ 1.1 ″  N , 8 ° 21 ′ 58.8 ″  E