Old Synagogue of Frauenkirchen

Die jüdische Gemeinde

Settlement began around 1670, when Jews from Mönchhof were allowed by Count Paul Esterházy to build houses on his land at Frauenkirchen. By 1679 there were 29 families, each paying protection money of three florins every half year, and the Israeli ANU Museum dates the organised community from 1714. The Jews lived in their own quarter around the Judengasse near the pilgrimage church. It had 16 Jewish-owned houses in 1712, 25 in 1754, 31 in 1775 and about 50 around 1880. Schwab's tables count 581 Jewish inhabitants in 1740 and 651 in 1754. A census of 1735 lists house owners, men and women under protection, servants, and 132 children. The Esterházy protection letters gave security but not equal rights, especially in crafts and trade. In 1754 the Jews described their own houses as built of poor materials, clay and mud. This made the quarter vulnerable to fire: after 1778 lightning burned newly rebuilt houses in 1781, and a further fire in 1854 destroyed 36 houses. After the 1778 fire the estate administration drew up a plan to open up the crowded quarter and add a fire wall.

Architektur und Gestaltung

No picture, plan or description of the synagogue rebuilt after 1778 has been found, and its builder, size and style are unknown. What can be said comes from indirect evidence. The Jewish houses of the period were built cheaply of clay and mud, according to the community's own statement of 1754, but the synagogue had masonry walls: after the 1840 fire the congregation put a provisional board roof on the almost ruined walls, which shows that the walls survived the fire at least in part. Contemporary accounts call the 1843 building the new synagogue built in place of the old Schul, so the rebuilt synagogue stood on the same plot on a small open square in the Jewish quarter. The excavation carried out before the memorial on the site was laid out in 2015 found remains of the earlier synagogues; how much of them belongs to the building of 1749, and how much to its successor, has not been published in any source read. Two sandstone columns found in a private garden are thought to come from the later synagogue, not this one.

Leben in der Synagoge

Almost nothing is recorded about worship in the rebuilt synagogue. Its best-known rabbi was Shalom Ullmann, born in Fürth in 1755, who had served as a rabbi there before he came to Frauenkirchen. He lived in a tiny house next to the synagogue, which was still remembered in 1927 though by then demolished. During the Napoleonic wars French troops took him hostage, and the community had to pay a large ransom for his release. In 1809 he moved to Lackenbach, another of the Esterházy communities, where he died in 1825. A writer in the Wiener Morgenzeitung in 1927 called him the founder of the great Ullmann rabbinical dynasty; his son and grandson also served as rabbis at Lackenbach, and his Talmudic notes were printed as Dibre Rash in 1826. In front of the synagogue a small well-house stood; in the 1843 building's time it was most probably used as a ritual bath, and it may have served the earlier synagogue too, but that is not recorded.

Zerstörung

The synagogue was ruined by fire, not by any deliberate act. On 21 August 1840 a fire caused by carelessness broke out in Frauenkirchen and destroyed several buildings, the synagogue among them. Schwab's thesis describes the damage in two ways, once saying the synagogue was destroyed and once that it suffered heavy damage. The congregation first made the building usable again in a makeshift way, laying a board roof over the walls, which were close to collapse. This repair did not hold, and the community decided that a new building was needed. Construction began in 1841 and the new synagogue was finished in 1843 on the same site, so the remaining walls of the old one were cleared away then. The abstract of Schwab's thesis dates this fire to 1880 and the new building to 1883, while its text, citing Herbert Brettl's history of the community, gives 21 August 1840 and the inauguration in 1843. An earlier fire, on 15 and 16 August 1778, had completely destroyed the first synagogue.

Das Schicksal der Gemeinde

The congregation outlived its old synagogue by almost a century. In 1932 Frauenkirchen had 359 Jewish inhabitants. After the Nazi annexation of Austria in March 1938, local Nazis and the SS turned on the Jews of Frauenkirchen at once. According to the ANU Museum, about 80 families, some 336 people, were locked in a cow shed without food, beaten, and robbed of their papers and property, and the head of the community, Dr. Weihs, was made to promise their immediate emigration. Some families were driven to the Czechoslovak and Hungarian borders and left in no man's land; a few reached Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia. In April 1938 sixty families were taken to Vienna. Schwab gives the number of Frauenkirchen Jews later deported as 350; how many were murdered and how many survived is unknown from the sources read. The synagogue of 1843, the successor of this building, was demolished in January 1939, and no Jewish community was re-established after the war.

Der Ort heute

Nothing of the rebuilt synagogue stands. Its site was occupied by the synagogue of 1843 until that building was demolished in 1939. The plot, on the former Jewish quarter around the Judengasse near the pilgrimage basilica, is now a memorial site known as the Tempelplatz, completed in 2015. Before it was laid out, archaeologists excavated the ground and found remains of the earlier synagogue buildings, some of which are reported to be visible in the paving. Street names in the area still recall the old Jewish quarter, and the Jewish cemetery on the road to St. Andrä survives.

Bedeutende Namen