La storia di Medieval Synagogue of Basel, Grünpfahlgässlein
Basel had two medieval Jewish communities. The first, recorded from 1212/13, worshipped in a synagogue on the Rindermarkt, today's Gerbergasse, until the community was destroyed in the Black Death persecution of January 1349. Within little more than a decade Jews were again living in the city: the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG) dates the second community to 1361, Alemannia Judaica to about 1360, and the English Wikipedia, citing published histories, to 1365. This second congregation was smaller and settled in roughly the same streets as the first. Its synagogue stood on the plot now numbered Grünpfahlgässlein 1, at the corner with the Gerbergasse. The Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz places it there 'after 1356', and Alemannia Judaica gives its period of use as about 1367 to about 1400. The congregation lasted barely a generation. In 1397, alarmed by rumours of a new persecution, the Jews left Basel, and from about 1400 none lived in the city. The former synagogue passed into secular use but kept its name: the house was still known as the 'Judenschule', the Jewish school, in the nineteenth century. The sources read do not say when it was pulled down. The SIG places the site within the premises of the cultural centre Unternehmen Mitte at Gerbergasse 30.
Where it stood
Historic: Grünpfahlgässlein 1, at the corner of the Gerbergasse, Basel. Today: within the premises of Unternehmen Mitte, Gerbergasse 30, 4001 Basel (approximate).
Apri la mappa grande →La comunità ebraica
Jews are documented in Basel from 1212/13. According to the SIG factsheet they appear in the records chiefly as lenders to the bishop and the local nobility: in 1223 Bishop Heinrich pawned the cathedral treasure to them, and the loan paid for the Middle Rhine Bridge. They did not live in a separate quarter but among the craftsmen's streets between today's Barfüsserplatz and Marktplatz. After the first community was wiped out in 1349, Jews were readmitted around 1361, probably, the SIG suggests, because the city needed money to rebuild after the earthquake of 1356. The second community was smaller than the first and lived in much the same area; the English Wikipedia, citing a 2019 study by Nolte, estimates it at about 150 people out of some 8,000 inhabitants around 1370. Its cemetery is thought to have lain beside the present Kirschgarten site (SIG), and from 1394 a plot on the Hirschgässlein was used for burials (English Wikipedia). No rabbi, cantor or leader of this congregation is named in any source consulted.
Architettura e design
Nothing is known of the building's appearance. No drawing, plan, photograph or description of the synagogue at Grünpfahlgässlein 1 was found, and no archaeological report on the plot could be read in this run. The sources do not say whether the second community built a new synagogue or adapted an existing house in the 1360s; Alemannia Judaica says only that a synagogue 'existed on the plot Grünpfahlgässlein 1' and speaks afterwards of 'the building'. Its position is better known than its form. The Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz gives the address Grünpfahlgässlein 1, and the English Wikipedia describes it as a building on the corner of the Grünpfahlgässlein and the Gerbergasse, the street that follows the valley of the Birsig below the Marktplatz. That it was a whole building rather than a room is suggested by the fact that the house itself carried the name 'Judenschule' for centuries after the Jews had gone. Architect, builder, size, capacity, construction and style are unknown.
La vita nella sinagoga
No record of worship, teaching or communal business inside this synagogue was found in the sources consulted, and no rabbi, cantor, beadle or community officer of the second Basel congregation is named in them. What can be said is limited to its setting. The congregation of the later fourteenth century was small, about 150 people by one estimate, and probably consisted of a few dozen households living close to the synagogue in the lanes between the Barfüsserplatz and the Marktplatz. The building was known in German as the 'Judenschule', the usual medieval term for a synagogue, which reflects its function as a place of study as well as prayer. The community also needed a burial ground, and the sources mention a cemetery near the present Kirschgarten and, from 1394, a site on the Hirschgässlein. The synagogue served the congregation for about thirty years, from the 1360s until the Jews left the city in 1397.
Distruzione
The synagogue was not destroyed in a persecution. Its congregation left Basel in 1397: the SIG says rumours of an impending persecution prompted them to flee, and the English Wikipedia says they left voluntarily despite the city council's attempts to keep them. Alemannia Judaica speaks of an expulsion and dates the end of the community to about 1400. After that, according to Alemannia Judaica, the building was put to secular use and was still called the 'Judenschule' in the nineteenth century, so it evidently survived the Middle Ages in some form. When, why and by whom the old house was finally pulled down is not recorded in any source read. The SIG factsheet places the site of the synagogue within the area of the present Unternehmen Mitte, the former bank building at Gerbergasse 30, which implies that the medieval house was demolished, at the latest when that building was put up, but no source states the demolition in words.
Il destino della comunità
Basel's Jews met two different ends in the fourteenth century. The first community was destroyed on 16 January 1349, during the wave of massacres that blamed Jews for the Black Death: the Jews were burned on an island in the Rhine. The English Wikipedia, citing Beit Hatfutsot, says the killing was committed by an angry mob and was not sanctioned by the city council or the bishop; the remaining Jews were locked into a wooden hut that was set alight. The SIG instead calls it an organised mass murder that also rid the Christian majority of unwelcome creditors and competitors. Gravestones from the first community's cemetery were later built into the city wall of 1398. The second community, the one that used this synagogue, escaped such a fate. In 1397, fearing a new persecution, its members left, moving east into Habsburg territory according to the English Wikipedia. Where individual families settled is unknown. Jews did not live in Basel again until Alsatian Jews were admitted from 1799, and a new community was founded about 1805.
Il luogo oggi
The site lies in the Grossbasel old town at the corner of the Grünpfahlgasse and the Gerbergasse, a short walk south of the Marktplatz. According to the SIG factsheet, the synagogue stood within the area now occupied by the Unternehmen Mitte, the cultural centre and café housed in the former bank building at Gerbergasse 30. No visible remains of the medieval synagogue are recorded, and no source consulted reports an archaeological excavation of the plot. No memorial to the medieval synagogue on the site is mentioned in the sources read. The first medieval synagogue stood a short distance away on the former Rindermarkt, today's Gerbergasse 14 according to the SIG.
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