Synagogue (Vidin)
Coordinates: 43 ° 59 '28.7 " N , 22 ° 53' 2.2" E
The synagogue ( Bulgarian Видинска синагога ) in the city of Vidin in northwestern Bulgaria was the second largest synagogue in the country when it opened in 1894 . After destruction in World War II , reconstruction was planned in the 1970s. After some static maintenance measures in the mid-1970s and 1980s, the work that had begun was canceled due to lack of money after the political upheaval in 1989. The shell, which had been freed from rubble and gutted, remained without a roof.
location
The ruins of the synagogue stand a good 100 meters from the bank of the Danube on a triangular piece of land on Baba-Wida-Strasse around 200 meters southwest of the Baba Wida fortress . The property is fenced, but freely accessible. To the east, the area is framed by a park on the banks of the Danube and to the south by apartment blocks from the mid-20th century. Knias-Boris-I.-Straße runs behind simple single-family houses in the northwest. A few 100 meters south are the Sweti Nikolaj church, founded in 1643, and the mosque of the Turkish governor Osman Pazvantoğlu , built around 1800 .
history
Between the 11th and 13th centuries Ashkenazi Jews settled in Widin, Ruse and other places on the lower Danube. During the Ottoman period , Jews from Hungary lived in Vidin; in the 16th century, Sephardic Jews were added after their expulsion from Spain in 1492 . At the end of the 17th century there were probably four synagogues in Vidin, all of which have disappeared. The synagogue, which is now in ruins, was built between 1878 and 1894 - made possible by the new religious freedoms after the Bulgarian Revival . During this time the Serbian-Bulgarian War (1885/86) took place, in which Serbs bombarded the city with artillery and the Jewish population brought themselves to safety on the northern bank of the Danube to Calafat . An extensive collection of donations was made to finance the construction. The chief rabbi Mordechai Grunwald inaugurated the second largest synagogue in Bulgaria after the main synagogue in Sofia on September 28, 1894 . It was the main synagogue for the 1780 members (at the 1900 census) Jewish community. The Jews of this time were grain traders, artisans, and processed cotton fabrics. A Jewish school was run in the synagogue. Valuable cult objects belonged to the synagogue.
Of the roughly 25 synagogues that survived in Bulgaria at the end of World War II, only three were carefully restored, others were rebuilt and repurposed, and half were demolished during communist rule . The city administration declared the Vidin synagogue to be state property, used it temporarily as a warehouse and otherwise left the empty building to its own devices. The building, which had been damaged by the misappropriation, suffered further destruction in the event of an earthquake.
From 1974 the Ministry of Culture and the National Institute for the Preservation of Monuments developed a plan to rebuild it as a concert hall, the implementation of which began in 1983. The collapse of the Bulgarian People's Republic in 1989 also meant the abrupt end of construction work. The property and the building returned to the property of the Jewish community, which could not manage to restore it without external financial help.
After the city administration of Vidin and the organization of Jews in Bulgaria, Shalom , tried in vain for foreign funding from the turn of the millennium, Shalom handed responsibility for the planned reconstruction of the building to the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture. In 2012, this declared the intention to rebuild the building as a museum and to name it after the Jewish painter Jules Pascin (1885–1930), who was born in Vidin . Accordingly, rooms for a library and to commemorate the Holocaust will be set up there.
architecture
The proportions of the monumental building are reminiscent of a basilica on the outside and the entrance facade of the older Great Synagogue of Budapest . As with the Sarajevo synagogue completed in 1902, the structure is essentially characterized by four protruding corner towers, the tapered upper floors of which protrude over the eaves. The entrance facade in the northeast is characterized by classicist double columns that support a mighty, semicircular arched frieze. They frame the portal and a large round window above it. Other shapes are eclectic and borrowed from contemporary Art Nouveau and Neo-Gothic . The long sides are divided on both floors by four pairs of arched windows. The 16 windows on each long side and the windows of the corner towers were structured by colored glass and floral, wrought-iron ornaments. An apse, which is round on the inside and polygonal on the outside, protrudes from the south-eastern end to the level of the first floor. The walls and ceilings are made of bricks.
The prayer hall, measuring 21 × 10 meters inside, was spanned by a barrel vault with rib arches. The two-storey preserved galleries of the aisles are closed with a series of groin vaults . These are supported on the side of the room by round arches on cast iron pillars, the cube capitals of which are mostly in relief on all four sides. Marble slabs and two bronze reliefs with Hebrew inscriptions are embedded in the walls .
Structural condition
All four outer walls up to the eaves as well as essential details of the facade design have been preserved. The external plaster is only present in smaller areas. The roof is completely missing, the rubble of the collapsed roof and the partition walls have been removed. The restoration attempts in the 1980s concentrated on the static protection of the lateral false ceilings and the outer walls. For this purpose, the vaulted ceilings were poured over with a layer of concrete and the brick vaults were each hung with a dozen tie rods. Diagonal iron struts over the vaults are intended to counteract horizontal shear forces. A similar procedure was followed for both ends, the walls of which are anchored to concrete shells in front of the inside. The two stairwells in the corner towers on the entrance side had apparently collapsed. They have been replaced by concrete steps that lead to the upper floor. The open main room is overgrown with bushes. The surrounding property has been freed from wild growth (as of the end of 2016).
See also
Web links
- Jewish Historic Monuments and Sites in Bulgaria. United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, 2011, pp. 14-17.
Individual evidence
- ^ Keyword Vidin (ancient Bononia). In: Jewish Encyclopaedia: An Aggregation of Knowledge on the Jews, Their Culture in the Past and at Present. 2nd Reprinted Edition. Vol. V. Moscow 1991 (in the original Russian); based on: Jacques Eskenazi, Alfred Krispin: Jews in the Bulgarian Hinterland. An Annotated Bibliography. (Judaica Bulgarica) International Center for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, Sofia 2002, p. 37.
- ^ Elko Z. Hazan: Synagogues in Bulgaria: A testimony of eighteen centuries of Jewish presence in the Balkans . Paper presented at the international conference Jewish Architecture in Europe , Technische Universitat Braunschweig, 8. – 11. October, 2007, p. 8.
- ↑ Borislav Levashki: Plea to Restore Synagogue. In: Jewish Magazine. June 2007.
- ^ Vidin Synagogue. World Monuments Fund