Worms Synagogue | |
---|---|
German: Worms Synagoge | |
Religion | |
Affiliation | Judaism |
Ecclesiastical or organisational status | Synagogue |
Status | Active |
Location | |
Location | Hintere Judengasse 6, Worms, Rhineland-Palatinate |
Country | Germany |
Location of the synagogue in Rhineland-Palatinate | |
Geographic coordinates | 49°38′1″N8°21′59″E / 49.63361°N 8.36639°E |
Architecture | |
Type | Synagogue architecture |
Style | |
Completed |
|
Materials | Stone; slate |
Website | |
schumstaedte | |
Type | Cultural |
Criteria | ii, iii, vi |
Designated | 2021 |
Part of | ShUM Sites of Speyer, Worms and Mainz |
Reference no. | 1636 |
[1] |
The Worms Synagogue (German : Worms Synagoge), also known as Rashi Shul, is a Jewish congregation and synagogue located in the northern part of the city center of Worms, in the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany.
Founded in the 11th century, the synagogue is one of the oldest in Germany. The Worms Synagogue was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021 (along with other medieval Jewish cultural sites in Speyer and Mainz), [1] due to its historical importance and its testimony to the European Jewish cultural tradition through millennia.
The first synagogue at the site was built in 1034 and is therefore regarded as the oldest existing synagogue in Germany. [2] The building was destroyed during the First Crusade in 1096 and subsequently rebuilt in 1175 in the Romanesque style. In 1186 a subterranean mikveh was constructed southwest of the synagogue.
During the pogroms of 1349 and 1615 the synagogue was badly damaged: in both pogroms the vaulted ceilings and the walls were heavily damaged. During reconstruction after 1355 Gothic forms for the window and the vault were chosen. Of comparable seriousness was the damage after the fire of 1689 during the Nine Years' War. When the building was restored in 1700, the interior was renovated in period style.
On Kristallnacht in 1938 the synagogue was once again attacked and reduced to rubble. It was painstakingly reconstructed in 1961, using as many of the original stones as could be salvaged. [3] The synagogue, open as a museum, continues to be a functioning synagogue used by the Jewish community.
In May 2010, the synagogue was firebombed by arsonists, suspected to be anti-Zionists. [4] [5] The firebombs were thrown against eight corners of the stone building and against a window, but no one was injured and no serious damage to the building was reported.
Built at the point when the late Romanesque style was fading and Gothic rising, the rectangular prayer hall features a pair of Romanesque columns supporting groin vaults. The windows in the thick stone walls are simple gothic arches. The windows in the adjoining study hall, the so-called Rashi Shul, have rounded Romanesque arches. The women’s section of the prayer hall has Romanesque windows on the eastern wall, and gothic windows on the western wall. [6]
Mainz is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in the Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region—Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after Rhine-Ruhr—which also encompasses the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Offenbach am Main, and Hanau.
Rhineland-Palatinate is a western state of Germany. It covers 19,846 km2 (7,663 sq mi) and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Koblenz, Trier, Kaiserslautern, Worms, and Neuwied. It is bordered by North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse and by France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, situated on the Upper Rhine about 60 km (40 mi) south-southwest of Frankfurt am Main. It had about 84,646 inhabitants as of 2022.
Speyer, historically known in English as Spires, is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate in the western part of the Federal Republic of Germany with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located on the left bank of the river Rhine, Speyer lies 25 km south of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim, and 21 km south-west of Heidelberg. Founded by the ancient Romans as an fortified town on the northeast frontiers of their Roman Empire, it is one of Germany's oldest cities. Speyer Cathedral, a number of other churches, and the Altpörtel dominate the Speyer landscape. In the cathedral, beneath the high altar, are the tombs of eight Holy Roman Emperors and German kings.
Mainz Cathedral or St. Martin's Cathedral is located near the historical center and pedestrianized market square of the city of Mainz, Germany. This 1000-year-old Roman Catholic cathedral is the site of the episcopal see of the Bishop of Mainz.
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The Old Synagogue is a former Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at Steeler Straße 29, in Essen, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The former synagogue was repurposed in 1960 as a Jewish museum.
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St Peter's Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church and former cathedral in Worms, southern Germany.
Speyer Cathedral, officially the Imperial Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption and St Stephen, in Latin: Domus sanctae Mariae Spirae in Speyer, Germany, is the seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Speyer and is suffragan to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bamberg. The cathedral, which is dedicated to St. Mary, patron saint of Speyer and St. Stephen is generally known as the Kaiserdom zu Speyer. Pope Pius XI raised Speyer Cathedral to the rank of a minor basilica of the Roman Catholic Church in 1925.
The Frankfurter Judengasse was the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt and one of the earliest ghettos in Germany. It existed from 1462 until 1811 and was home to Germany's largest Jewish community in early modern times.
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The Jewish courtyard in Speyer, is an historic and archeological site located in the inner city of Speyer, Germany. Built in stages between 1104 and the 14th century, the courtyard contains some of the oldest and best-preserved Jewish community buildings. Along with the other ShUM-cities of Worms and Mainz, Speyer was the hometown of one of the most important Jewish communities in Middle Ages in northern Europe. Because of its historical importance and its testimony to the European Jewish cultural tradition, the Jewish courtyard was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021.
The Jewish Cemetery in Worms or Heiliger Sand, in Worms, Germany, is usually called the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Europe, although the Jewish burials in the Jewish sections of the Roman catacombs predate it by a millennium. The Jewish community of Worms was established by the early eleventh century, and the oldest tombstone still legible dates from 1058/59. The cemetery was closed in 1911, when a new cemetery was inaugurated. Some family burials continued until the late 1930s. The older part still contains about 1,300 tombstones, while the newer part contains more than 1,200. The cemetery is protected and cared for by the city of Worms, the Jewish community of Mainz-Worms, and the Landesdenkmalamt of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Salomon L. Steinheim-Institute for German-Jewish History at the University of Duisburg-Essen has been documenting and researching the site since 2005. Because of its cultural importance and preservation, the Jewish Cemetery was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021.
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