The Hamburg Temple was the synagogue of the Jewish reform movement in Hamburg (Germany) from 1818 to 1938. It was the first reform synagogue in Germany.
The New Israelite Temple Society was founded in 1817. One of the pioneers of the Temple movement was Israel Jacobson (1768–1828). In 1810 he founded his school synagogue in Seesen, and Kassel.
Dr. Eduard Kley together with Dr. Gotthold Salomon were the first spiritual leaders of the Hamburg Temple in 1818. The first members included Meyer Israel Bresselau, Lazarus Gumpel and Ruben Daniel Warburg. Later members included Salomon Heine and Dr. Gabriel Riesser, who was chairman of the Temple Association from 1840 to 1843.
The Hamburg Temple was founded in 1818 in the Brunnenstraße (Hamburg Neustadt).
The religious service of the Hamburg Temple was disseminated at the 1820 Leipzig Trade Fair, where Jewish businessmen from Germany, many other European countries, and the United States met and discussed the new ritual. As a consequence, the Reform community, including New York and Baltimore, adopted the Hamburg Temple's new prayer book, which was read from left to right, as in the Christian world.
In 1844 the New Temple Poolstraße was built by Johann Hinrich Klees-Wülbern.
In 1879, Rabbi Max Sänger asked Moritz Henle to come to Hamburg Temple and Henle decided to accept the offer from Hamburg. He immediately began his work in Hamburg by forming a mixed choir. One member of the mixed choir was Caroline Franziska Herschel, who was related to Moses Mendelssohn. They married in 1882 and from that date on his wife accompanied Henle during his performances as well as during official functions.
In 1883, Dávid Leimdörfer became rabbi at Hamburg Temple, where he is also principal of the school for religion as all other rabbis. He died 1922.
In 1931 another New Temple was built in the Oberstraße and it was a great time with the rabbi Bruno Italiener. But 1938 the Nazis closed the Temple after Kristallnacht.
The influence of the Temple movement was not restricted to the liberal community; one of the lasting effects has been the introduction of the sermon in German, also within the orthodox community. Today Reform Judaism, with its origins in the Hamburg Temple, has just in the United States circa 2 million members.