Synagogue (Ober-Seemen)
The synagogue in Ober-Seemen , a district of Gedern in the Wetterau district in Hesse , was built in 1900/01. The secular synagogue at Mittelseemer Straße 4–6 is a protected cultural monument .
history
The old synagogue of the Jewish community in Ober-Seemen had become too small due to the increase in membership in the 1880s. However, there was no money for a new building; only after Leopold Zimmermann from New York had made an amount of 20,000 marks available, the construction of the new synagogue could begin. The new synagogue was built on the same site after the old one was demolished. The inauguration took place from August 9th to 11th, 1901. In addition to a prayer room with a gallery , the synagogue building also housed the school and a teacher's apartment.
At the beginning of 1938, after most of the community members had left , the Jewish community decided to dissolve it and sell the synagogue to the bourgeois community. In the November pogrom of 1938 , however, the interior was completely destroyed. During the Second World War the building was used as accommodation for prisoners of war.
After 1945 the synagogue building served different purposes. For some time the mayor's office was in the former synagogue. Part of the school was housed here in the 1950s. At times it was the warehouse for a grocery store and then the seat of a leather goods factory. In 1978 the synagogue building came into private ownership and was completely restored in the following years. A psychotherapeutic institute and a conference center have been housed in the former synagogue since the mid-1980s.
description
The two-storey corner building stands at a fork in the road with a large forecourt. It consists of basalt rubble , the central and corner pilasters , the window frames and the portal are made of red sandstone . The building obtained up to now in the initial state is from a pitched roof covered while on the rear side a small partial hip has. The partially basement building is built on a slightly ascending base facing north. On the portal side, the entrance is reached via several steps. It is an eclectic building with Romanesque and oriental style elements. A 2017 coffee cornice runs beneath the arched windows on the upper floor . The round arches sit on large corbels and have a keystone . The Arabic-Moorish style element can be seen above all in the keel-arched cartridge attachment of the portal. The cartouche with Carnies arch forms the frame of a small round window above the entrance. At the level of the capitals of the corner pilasters there is a larger round window, a former rose window . The tablets of the law stood on the top of the gable on the portal side . The gable is provided with a wide frieze of straight arches.
State in 2017
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of November 22, 2017 reported on the current condition of the synagogue and the villagers' memories of their former roommates.
See also
literature
- Klaus-Dieter Alicke: Lexicon of the Jewish communities in the German-speaking area. 3 volumes. Gütersloher Verlagshaus , Gütersloh 2008, ISBN 978-3-579-08035-2 . ( Online edition )
- Thea Altaras : Synagogues and Jewish ritual immersion baths in Hesse - What happened since 1945? . Second updated and expanded edition, edited from the estate, Die Blauen Bücher , Königstein im Taunus 2007, ISBN 978-3-7845-7794-4 , pp. 390–391.
Web links
- Synagogue Ober-Seemen near Alemannia Judaica (with many photos)
- Former synagogue conference center
Coordinates: 50 ° 25 ′ 5.5 ″ N , 9 ° 14 ′ 10.5 ″ E