Kaiserslautern Synagogue

The Jewish community

Jewish families are recorded in Kaiserslautern from the early nineteenth century; in 1814 there were thirteen families. The community grew with the town's industrialisation and its role as a regional centre of the Palatinate. Rabbis served the community from 1834, beginning with Moses Cohen, followed by Ludwig Seligmann from 1843 to 1879. A first synagogue was built in 1848–1849 on Salzstraße. By the early 1880s the congregation had outgrown it, and in 1882 it commissioned a new building from Ludwig Levy, a young Jewish architect from Landau who had just set up practice in Kaiserslautern. Rabbi Wilhelm Landsberg, appointed in 1880, led the community through the construction period. The chosen site on Fischerstraße, near the Stiftsplatz and the Stiftskirche in the centre of town, and the scale of the building signalled the confidence of a community that by 1900 numbered 741 members. The old synagogue was sold in 1886, the year the new one was dedicated.

Architecture and design

Levy designed a centrally planned building, a Greek cross inscribed in a square, crowned by a large, squat, bulbous dome on a tall drum; the dome measured about 8.5 metres in diameter and rested on four massive pillars. The main front featured a horseshoe arch framing a rose window above a tripartite portal. The building was constructed of local sandstone, covered about 590 square metres and was roofed in zinc, with gilded mouldings on the domes. Levy chose a Romanesque base with oriental detail to distinguish the synagogue clearly from Christian churches while meeting Jewish liturgical needs; later scholars classify it as Moorish-Byzantine. The prayer hall was oriented east-west. Men sat on the ground floor, women in galleries over the side aisles. The almemor (reading platform) was raised several steps toward the east in front of the Torah ark, and a seventeen-register organ stood on the west gallery. The walls were painted in casein colours and lit by coloured leaded glass. The total cost was 193,328.18 marks, about 312 marks per seat.

Life inside the synagogue

The synagogue was the setting for the community's worship for more than half a century. Its seventeen-register organ on the west gallery points to a liberal, organ-accompanied rite, although the congregation's formal affiliation has not been confirmed. Its rabbis were Dr Wilhelm Landsberg (1880–1912), who served when the building was dedicated in 1886, Dr Michael Max Mordechai Weyl (1913–1917) and Dr Saly Baron (1919–1938), the last rabbi before the synagogue's destruction. Membership stood at 741 in 1900 and 648 in 1933, about one percent of the town's population. With around 620 seats, the building was a focal point of Jewish life in the western Palatinate. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, emigration steadily reduced the congregation, which had fallen to 295 members by 1938. The final service took place on 27 August 1938, shortly before the city began demolition. Afterwards the congregation was given a room with barred windows in the long-disused former prison for Sabbath and High Holy Day services.

Destruction

Kaiserslautern's synagogue was destroyed as a planned municipal act before the November Pogrom. In July 1938 the Nazi mayor Richard Imbt, backed by Gauleiter Josef Bürckel, summoned the community chairman, Justizrat Dr Blüthe, and told him the synagogue did not fit the townscape and obstructed the city's expansion plans; the community was forced to surrender the building to the city. The official pretext was planning for the intended Gau capital, but local newspapers openly welcomed the removal of 'a piece of the Orient'. On the night of 28 July 1938 the cabinet holding the Torah silver was stolen, and police made no real investigation. A request to keep the building until after the High Holy Days went unanswered. Rabbi Saly Baron preached the farewell sermon at the last service on 27 August 1938. Demolition began on 29 August according to German Wikipedia; Baron's account, cited by historian Roland Paul, dates the blasting to 17 September 1938, and the city filmed it. The north portal, the last standing element, was blown up on 9 October 1938. Restitution was settled only in 1951.

The community’s fate

In 1933 Kaiserslautern had 648 Jewish residents. Persecution, economic exclusion and the loss of the synagogue drove most to emigrate or move away, and by 1938 only 295 remained, falling to 49 by 1940. In October 1940, in the deportation known as the Aktion Bürckel, the Jews remaining in the region were sent to the Gurs internment camp in southern France; about 45 members of the Kaiserslautern community were among them, and at least 17 died from camp conditions or later deportation to extermination camps. According to jüdische-gemeinden.de, about 145 people who were born in Kaiserslautern or had lived there for long periods became victims of Nazi persecution, and other estimates exceed 200; the names of 192 murdered Jewish citizens are recorded at the site today.

The site today

Nothing of the synagogue building stands. The site on Fischerstraße, near the Stiftsplatz and the Stiftskirche, was named Synagogenplatz in 1978. During redesign works in 2002 the original foundations of the former north portal were uncovered, and the footprint of the synagogue is now outlined with boxwood hedges. A memorial was dedicated in 2003, incorporating a reconstructed wall fragment bearing the names of 192 murdered Jewish citizens, and viewing devices on the square show a virtual reconstruction of the building.

Notable names

Ludwig Levy

1854–1907Architect

Levy, a Jewish architect born in Landau, opened his practice in Kaiserslautern in 1882 and received the commission for the town's new synagogue that year. His domed, centrally planned design, dedicated in 1886, established his reputation; he went on to build at least eleven synagogues, all destroyed after 1938, and published a description of the Kaiserslautern building in 1891.

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Wilhelm Landsberg

1844–1912Rabbi (1880–1912)

Dr Wilhelm Landsberg served as rabbi of Kaiserslautern from 1880 to 1912. He therefore led the congregation through the commissioning of Ludwig Levy's design, the laying of the foundation stone in 1883 and the dedication of the synagogue in 1886, and he served in the building for its first quarter-century as the community grew past 700 members.

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Saly Baron

1874–1946Rabbi (1919–1938)

Dr Saly Baron was the last rabbi of the Kaiserslautern synagogue, serving from 1919 to 1938. He preached the farewell sermon at the final service on 27 August 1938, and his unpublished account of the forced surrender and demolition, held by the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, is a key source for the synagogue's last weeks.

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Justizrat Dr Blüthe

Dates unknownJustizrat; first chairman of the Kaiserslautern Jewish community (1938)

As first chairman of the Kaiserslautern Jewish community, Justizrat Dr Blüthe was summoned by Mayor Richard Imbt in July 1938 and told that the synagogue must be surrendered to the city. He then convened the congregation in the synagogue to give its forced consent and asked, without success, that it be allowed to keep the building until after the High Holy Days.

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