Fasanenstrasse synagogue

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The Fasanenstrasse synagogue (German: Synagoge Fasanenstrasse) was a liberal Jewish Synagogue in Berlin, Germany. It was located on the posh Fasanenstrasse, close to Zoo Station.

Interior of the Fasanenstrasse synagogue after Kristallnacht, November 1938

The Fasanenstrasse Synagogue was built between 1910 and 1912 and was large enough to accommodate 1,720 worshippers. A scholar of Progressive Judaism rabbi Leo Baeck was one of its leaders. Its main cantor for many years was Magnus Davidsohn and Richard Altmann (who was blind) was its organist.

Kaiser Wilhelm presented the synogogue with a ceremonial marriage hall, dedicated to the Jews of Germany, and, as Magnus Davidsohn's daughter, Ilse Stanley, describes in her book The Unforgotten, visited the temple upon its opening in 1912.

The synagogue functioned for only twenty four years. The Nazis forced it to close in 1936. The synagogue was destroyed during the Kristallnacht pogrom on November 10, 1938. In 1943, the remains of the building were destroyed during an Allied air raid on Berlin.

After the Holocaust, most of a few Jews who returned to Berlin were immigrants from the Eastern Europe. The grounds of the former Fasanenstrasse synagogue were chosen for the building of a new Jewish Community Center of Berlin. In 1957, the Mayor of Berlin Willy Brandt attended the ceremony of laying its corner stone. The old ruins were removed, but a few surviving elements, such as the main portal, were kept for the decoration of the new building. It was designed by the architects Knoblauch and Heisse of Essen in the modern style of the 1950s.

The building of the Jewish Community Center (German: Jüdisches Gemeindehaus Fasanenstraße) in Berlin was inaugurated on September 27, 1959.