Mühlhausen synagogue (Thuringia)
The Mühlhausen Synagogue is a synagogue and a cultural monument in the city of Mühlhausen in Thuringia . It is located in the center of the city in a courtyard on Jüdenstrasse. Consecrated on August 6, 1841, the building was consecrated after extensive renovation in 1998 and is now primarily used as an event location and meeting place.
history
Jewish community
Presumably since the 13th century a Jewish community existed in the then Free Imperial City of Mühlhausen. An outbreak of the plague in 1349 triggered a pogrom against the city's Jewish population. A first synagogue is mentioned in 1380, it was expanded in 1474 and sold in 1513, it was empty in 1560. After another pogrom in autumn 1452, the majority of the Jews left the city, the last in 1517. In 1561 the Jews were banished from the city “for all time”; only from 1774 onwards are Jews found in Mühlhausen again.
A continuous settlement of Jewish citizens in Mühlhausen took place from the end of the 18th century. In 1793, 78 Jews were registered in the city. The Jewish community was founded in 1806. In 1808, the community applied for church services to be held and, on May 2, 1839, the construction of the synagogue, which was built from 1840 onwards. In 1881 Mühlhausen had 196 inhabitants of the Jewish faith, in 1924 there were 170 (0.5% of the population of Mühlhausen), in 1933 203. The Jewish community existed until 1943.
Until the end of the 1980s, the Erfurt Jewish Community still had a branch in Mühlhausen. Citizens of the Jewish faith still live in Mühlhausen today, but there is currently no Jewish community in the city (as of 2016).
synagogue
The synagogue on Jüdenstrasse was consecrated on August 6, 1841. The foundation stone was laid on September 7, 1840 in the back yard of the Jewish community center at Jüdenstrasse 24, which the community had acquired in 1840. The building costs were borne by the local Jewish families, who had also built a religious school , a ritual bath and a cemetery . The first rabbi and teacher at the time of the inauguration of the synagogue was Gerson Cohn. From 1861 Michael Fackenheim (* 1828 in Lispenhausen ) worked as a preacher and teacher in the city.
The Mühlhausen synagogue was also devastated during the Reichspogromnacht . One of the rioters was the later district administrator of the Mühlhausen district , Paul Vollrath . This shot Rabbi Max Rosenau in the chest and seriously injured him. For this, Vollrath received a two-year prison sentence from a Bayreuth court in 1958.
When the Jewish community died out, the synagogue was handed over to the Jewish state community of Thuringia in 1947 . Since 1987 there have been efforts to restore the building. In the 1990s the parish hall and the synagogue were renovated and on November 9, 1998 the church was consecrated as a synagogue again. Besides the New Synagogue in Erfurt, it is currently the only consecrated synagogue in Thuringia. Since there is currently no Jewish community in Mühlhausen, the synagogue is mainly used as a meeting place and library as well as for exhibitions and concerts.
In addition to the synagogue and the community center, there is also the Jewish cemetery in Mühlhausen .
architecture
The synagogue building is a simple half-timbered building . In the gable end there is a round window over the location of the Torah shrine .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Consecration of the Mühlhausen Synagogue 175 years ago ( Memento of the original from August 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Thüringer Allgemeine, accessed on August 2, 2016
- ↑ a b Doreen Zander: Mühlhausen's Synagogue , Thüringer Allgemeine from January 21, 2011
- ↑ Erich Stockhorst : 5000 heads. Who was what in the 3rd Reich . 2nd Edition. Arndt, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-88741-116-1
Coordinates: 51 ° 12 ′ 33.3 " N , 10 ° 27 ′ 29.6" E