New Synagogue

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Neue Synagoge in Berlin

Interior view from Berlin und seine Bauten, published by Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn 1896.

An image of the plaque on the front of the Neue Synagogue, outlining the building's history.

The Neue Synagoge (Eng. "New Synagogue") was built 1859-1866 as the main synagogue of the Berlin Jewish community, on Oranienburger Straße. Because of its splendid eastern moorish style and resemblance to the Alhambra, it is an important architectural monument of the second half of the 19th Century in Berlin.

The original building was designed by Eduard Knoblauch. Following Knoblauch's succumbing to illness, Friedrich August Stüler took responsibility for the majority of its construction as well as for its interior arrangement and design. It was inaugurated in the presence of Chancellor Count Otto von Bismarck in 1866 .

1 Building
2 History
3 Notes
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Building

The front of the building, facing Oranienburger Straße, is richly ornamented with shaped bricks and terracotta, accented by coloured glazed bricks. Beyond the entrance, the building's alignment changes to mesh with pre-existing structures. The synagogue's main dome with its gilded ribs is an eye-catching sight. The central dome is flanked by two smaller pavilion-like domes on the two side-wings. Beyond the façade was the front hall and the main hall with 3000 seats. Due to the unfavourable alignment of the property the building's design required adjustment along a slightly turned axis.

The Neue Synagoge is also a monument of early iron construction. The new building material (iron was previously not used in building construction) was visible in its use for the outside columns, as well as in the dome's construction. (Iron was also a core component for the now-lost floor structure of the main hall.)

[edit] History

The New Synagogue was built to accompany the growing Jewish population in Berlin, in particular, immigrants from the East. As the largest synagogue in Germany at the time, it seated 3,000 people. The building housed public concerts, including a violin concert with Albert Einstein in 1930. With an organ and a choir, the religious services reflected the liberal developments in the Jewish community of the time.^[1]

During Kristallnacht (9 November, 1938) the Neue Synagoge was set ablaze. The fire was extinguished, however, and the synagogue, protected as a registered architectural monument, escaped complete destruction. During World War II it was heavily damaged by Allied bombing during air raids in 1943 . The ruins of the building were finally demolished in 1958 . It was not until the collapse of the Berlin Wall that reconstruction began. From 1988 to 1993, the remains of the façade were restored as the "Centrum Judaicum" (lit. "Jewish Center"), without being constructed anew. In May 1995, the synagogue was partly revived, though it failed to regain its 19th century glory. After the renovations, only the front of the building with the destroyed dome remained.

Together with the New Synagogue, the whole Scheunenviertel district experienced a revival, with chic restaurants and boutiques opening up in the area, catering to an increasingly bourgeois clientèle.