A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It has a place for prayer where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, choir performances, and children's plays. They also have rooms for study, social halls, administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious and Hebrew studies, and many places to sit and congregate. They often display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork alongside items of Jewish historical significance or history about the synagogue itself.
Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the government's wanted list. He fled first to Zürich and later to London. He returned to Germany after the 1862 amnesty granted to the revolutionaries.
The New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße in Berlin is a mid-19th century synagogue built as the main place of worship for the city's Jewish community, succeeding the Old Synagogue which the community outgrew. Because of its eastern Moorish style and resemblance to the Alhambra, the New Synagogue is an important architectural monument in Germany.
Synagogue architecture often follows styles in vogue at the place and time of construction. There is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. According to tradition, the Shekhinah or divine presence can be found wherever there is a minyan, a quorum, of ten. A synagogue always contains an Torah ark where the Torah scrolls are kept, called the aron qodesh by Ashkenazi Jews and the hekhal by Sephardic Jews.
Moorish Revival or Neo-Moorish is one of the exotic revival architectural styles that were adopted by architects of Europe and the Americas in the wake of Romanticist Orientalism. It reached the height of its popularity after the mid-19th century, part of a widening vocabulary of articulated decorative ornament drawn from historical sources beyond familiar classical and Gothic modes. Neo-Moorish architecture drew on elements from classic Moorish architecture and, as a result, from the wider Islamic architecture.
Ohel Jakob is a synagogue in Munich, Germany. It was built between 2004 and 2006 as the new main synagogue for the Jewish community in Munich and is located at the Sankt-Jakobs-Platz. The synagogue was inaugurated on 9 November 2006 on the 68th anniversary of the Kristallnacht. The building is part of the new Jewish Center consisting of the synagogue, the Jewish Museum Munich and a community center.
The Cremer & Wolffenstein architecture firm was founded in Germany in 1882 by Richard Wolffenstein (1846–1919) and Wilhelm Cremer (1845–1919) and existed up to the death of its two founders. During the so-called Gründerzeit in Berlin, the years of rapid industrial expansion in Germany at the end of the 19th century, they were a prolific firm in the various aspects of architecture. As one of the largest firms in Berlin at the turn of the century, they designed residential, commercial, transportation, government, and religious buildings. They built a number of synagogues, won second place in the 1882 competition to design the Reichstag, and were also involved in planning the Hochbahn overhead railway installation between Kreuzberg and Nollendorfplatz.
The Jewish Museum Munich, provides an overview of Munich’s Jewish history and is part of the city's new Jewish Center located at Sankt-Jakobs-Platz in Munich, Germany. It is situated between the main synagogue Ohel Jakob and the Jewish Community Center which is home to the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria and houses a public elementary school, a kindergarten, a youth center as well as a community auditorium and a kosher restaurant. The museum was built from 2004 until its inauguration on March 22, 2007 and is run by the city of Munich.
Rykestrasse Synagogue, Germany's largest synagogue, is located in the Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood in the Pankow borough of Berlin. Johann Hoeniger built the synagogue in 1903/1904. It was inaugurated on 4 September 1904, in time for the holidays of and around Rosh Hashanah. The synagogue stands off the street alignment and is reached by a thoroughfare in the pertaining front building.
The Rumbach Street synagogue is located in Belváros, the inner city of the historical old town of Pest, in the eastern section of Budapest. The synagogue in Rumbach Street was built in 1872 to the design of the Viennese architect Otto Wagner. Intentionally meant to serve the members of the Neológ community of Pest, its construction coincided with the Schism in Hungarian Jewry of 1869, and it became the home of the more conservative fraction.
The Semper Synagogue, also known as the Dresden Synagogue, designed by Gottfried Semper and built from 1838 to 1840, was dedicated on 8 May 1840. It was an early example of the Moorish Revival style of synagogue architecture.
The Alte Synagoge in Erfurt, Germany, is one of the best preserved medieval synagogues in Europe, its oldest parts dating back to the late 11th century. Most parts of the building date from around 1250–1320. Due to the fact that its roof is still standing, it is thought to be the oldest synagogue building intact in Europe and the world.
Córdoba Synagogue is a historic edifice in the Jewish Quarter of Córdoba, Spain, built in 1315. The synagogue's small size points to it having possibly been the private synagogue of a wealthy man. It is also possible that Córdoba's complex of buildings was a yeshivah, kollel, or study hall. Another possibility is that this was the synagogue of a trade guild, which converted a residence or one of the work rooms into the synagogue. The synagogue was decorated according to the best Mudejar tradition.
Replicas of the Jewish Temple are scale models or authentic buildings that attempt to replicate either the Temple of Solomon or the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
The Synagoge Zürich Löwenstrasse is the oldest and largest synagogue in the Swiss municipality of Zürich. In 1884 built in Moorish style, the oldest synagogue of Zürich also houses the prayer and school house of Israelitische Cultusgemeinde Zürich (ICZ) which was founded in 1862. ICZ is a unified Jewish community having about 2,500 members, and thus the largest Jewish community in Switzerland, which since 2007 in the Canton of Zürich is recognized as a denomination, i.e. it has the same legal state as the Christian denominations. In the synagogue, the community celebrates the daily Minyan and Shabbat and holiday services. The synagogue is a cultural heritage of national importance in Switzerland.
The Neue Synagoge is the synagogue, community centre, and museum of the Jewish community in Darmstadt. Inaugurated on in 1988, the synagogue was built as part of a citizens’ initiative to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht Known also as the ‘Holocaust Memorial Synagogue’, the architectural complex was designed to fulfil the needs of the city's Jewish population, who had been without a place of worship since the 1938 pogrom when Darmstadt's three synagogues were destroyed. Built according to plans by Alfred Jacoby, with a significant programme of stained glass windows designed by British architectural artist Brian Clarke. The religious and cultural complex is located on the site of the city's former Gestapo headquarters.
The synagogue on Fraenkelufer in Berlin's Kreuzberg district was built as an Orthodox Synagogue between 1913 and 1916 according to plans and under the direction of the master builder of the Jewish Community of Berlin, Alexander Beer. The structure was located on Kottbusser Ufer 48–50, today's Fraenkelufer 10-16. On Kristallnacht, the evening of November 9-10th, 1938, the main building of the synagogue was badly damaged. Further destruction in the following years led to the structures ultimate demolition in 1958/1959 after the end of World War II. Today the surviving outbuilding, previously used for the youth service, has been renovated and is home to a Conservative Synagogue. A complete reconstruction of the main synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazis is being planned for its original location.
The Görlitz Synagogue is a Jewish congregation and synagogue, located on Otto-Müller-Straße, in Görlitz, Germany. Built between 1909 and 1911 in the Art Nouveau style, the synagogue was the main place of worship for the city's Ashkenazi Jewish community. Despite an arson attack, the synagogue was one of the few synagogues in the area to survive Kristallnacht, sustaining only minor damage. The damage was lessened as firefighters ignored the Nazi German orders to let the synagogue burn. With the city's Jewish population depleted, the unused synagogue became a ruin in the following decades.
The Synagogue Neustadt on Eisenbahnstr. in Dresden is a mid-19th century building, built in 1839 as the main hall of the Leipzig train station in Dresden and was the first long-distance train station in Central Europe that went between the cities Dresden and Leipzig and was an important architectural monument in Germany.
