Medieval Synagogue of Graz

La comunidad judía

The Jewish community of Graz was small but long established. Evidence of a settlement goes back to the twelfth or thirteenth century, and its cemetery, first securely recorded in 1304, lay outside the town wall, probably on the site of today's Jakominiplatz; it served Jews from the surrounding towns as well. In the fourteenth century moneylending was a main source of income. Jews of Graz and Judenburg lent money to the Styrian nobility, among them the Stubenbergs, and one loan was secured on the Villach toll for 1,040 marks of silver. The German Wikipedia names a Graz Jew Eisak, who also owned a house in Wiener Neustadt, and his son Herschl. Debts owed by burghers who had pledged their houses to Jewish lenders bred resentment, and anti-Jewish riots and temporary expulsions are recorded in 1339. Around 1400 the community numbered about 200 people. By 1398 it was led by a Judenmeister and had a judge of the Jews (iudex Judaeorum). A gravestone of Rabbi Nissim dated 1387 survives, later built into the medieval town wall.

Arquitectura y diseño

No description, plan, drawing or archaeological record of the medieval synagogue of Graz was found in the sources consulted, so its size, form, materials and interior arrangement are unknown, and so are its date of construction and its builder. What can be said concerns its setting. It stood at the centre of the Jewish quarter, a compact walled district at the southern end of the Herrengasse, near a small gate in the old town wall known as the Judentürl. The German Wikipedia locates the building between the present houses Herrengasse 26 and Frauengasse 3, a plot now bordering the Stadtpfarrkirche. The ANU Museum instead places the first synagogue more generally in the old Judengasse, and no source gives no street frontage, door or orientation for it. Whether it was a free-standing hall or a room within a larger house, and whether it was built of stone or timber, cannot be said from the sources read. A mikveh is recorded with it in 1398; its site is also unknown.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

Almost nothing is recorded about worship in the synagogue itself. The community that used it had a Judenmeister at its head, a ritual bath and a cemetery that also served Jews from surrounding towns. The Encyclopaedia Judaica lists the synagogue and the mikveh among the institutions of the community by 1398. The gravestone of a Rabbi Nissim, dated 1387, is the only record found of a scholar of the community from the time the building was in use; the ANU Museum calls him rabbi, but nothing more is known of his teaching or his role in the synagogue. A further medieval gravestone of a woman from Graz also survives. Neither the names of other rabbis or cantors nor any details of the community's customs, its schooling or the furnishing of the prayer hall have come down in the sources consulted.

Destrucción

The synagogue was lost through the expulsion of the Graz Jews in 1438/39. The German Wikipedia and the Graz Museum state that the estates of Graz induced Duke Friedrich V, the later Emperor Friedrich III, to expel the Jews; he confiscated and sold their property and dissolved the quarter. The TU Wien thesis by Eva Doppler names Friedrich IV of Tyrol instead, which appears to be an error. According to juedische-gemeinden.de, residents of Graz then tore down part of the 'Judenstadt', and a chapel was built on the cleared ground. The German Wikipedia records that this first church was built in 1440 at the suggestion of Friedrich III; it was a Corpus Christi chapel handed to the Dominicans about twenty-five years later and is today's Stadtpfarrkirche zum Heiligen Blut. Doppler writes that its construction destroyed the whole Jewish infrastructure of the quarter. No document recording the demolition of the synagogue itself, its date or the people who carried it out was found, so the date of about 1438 to 1440 is inferred from these events.

El destino de la comunidad

The expulsion of 1438/39 ended the first community. The duke confiscated part of the Jewish property and pledged the former Jewish houses, and Christians of the upper classes moved into the quarter. Some of the expelled Jews are said to have gone to Eisenstadt. Around 1447 the ruler, anxious for the revenue of the Jewish tax, allowed Jews to settle in Graz again. The renewed community was small, about 25 households or some 150 people in the second half of the fifteenth century, and it had its own synagogue in the Herrengasse opposite the Dominican monastery. The town council continued to press for expulsion, and in 1496 Maximilian I ordered all Jews to leave Styria; they had until 6 January 1497 to go. The fate of the second synagogue after 1497 is not recorded. From 1497 until 1848 Jews were barred from settling in Styria, and Jews found there were imprisoned. A new community formed in Graz only in the nineteenth century.

El lugar hoy

The site of the first synagogue lies in the Innere Stadt of Graz, at the southern end of the Herrengasse, close to the Stadtpfarrkirche zum Heiligen Blut at Herrengasse 23, which the German Wikipedia says stands on the former synagogue. The plot named there, between Herrengasse 26 and Frauengasse 3, is built over with later houses beside the church, and the old Judengasse survives in the line of the Mesnergasse, Jungferngasse and Frauengasse. No remains of the synagogue are known above ground and no excavation of it was found in the sources consulted. The gravestone of Rabbi Nissim of 1387, once built into the town wall, is kept outside the seat of the Styrian provincial government. The exact footprint of the building is not established, so the map pin marks the plot named by the German Wikipedia only approximately.

Nombres destacados