Linz Synagogue (Bethlehemstraße)

Die jüdische Gemeinde

A Jewish community existed in medieval Linz until the expulsion of 1421; its synagogue was turned into a church in 1426. The Jewish Virtual Library gives 391 Jews in 1869, or 1.3 per cent of the population, 533 in 1880 and 1,238 in 1923, the peak; German Wikipedia says that at their height in the 1920s most members lived in Urfahr, across the Danube. Numbers then fell, to 671 in 1934 and about 650 before the Anschluss of March 1938. The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Linz built the Bethlehemstraße synagogue at the start of this period of growth. German Wikipedia lists its rabbis as Wilhelm Stern (1861), Adolf Kurrein (1873-1876; the Jewish Virtual Library gives 1876-1882), Abraham Frank (1876-1883), Moriz Friedmann (1883-1923), Abraham Jakob Mark (1915-1918) and Viktor Kurrein (1923-1938), Adolf's son, who also wrote the community's history. The names of the community's presidents and cantors were not found in the sources read.

Architektur und Gestaltung

According to the history prepared for the Archiv der Stadt Linz and Ars Electronica reconstruction project, the original building measured about 25 metres deep and 17 metres wide, with about 425 square metres at ground level. It stood on a raised podium, and three flights of steps led to the main entrance. The façades followed the neo-Romanesque synagogue in Kassel, with round-arched windows and doors on the front and sides; one version of the text also calls the design classicist. The interior departed from the Kassel model: instead of round arches and barrel vaults, slender cast-iron columns carried the galleries and the ceiling. The prayer hall covered about 255 square metres, with 300 seats for men on the ground floor and 200 for women in the galleries. The seats of honour for the rabbi and cantor stood against the rear wall, facing the entrance. Six large double windows on each side lit the hall by day, and sixteen ceiling lamps, a chandelier and many candelabra by night. The 1906 extension increased the depth to 30.5 metres and the floor area to about 500 square metres, adding a sacristy and a choir area for an organ.

Leben in der Synagoge

The synagogue was consecrated on 10 May 1877. German Wikipedia names Rabbi Abraham Frank as the officiant, while the Jewish Virtual Library and the Jewish Guide to Europe say the building was opened under Rabbi Adolf Kurrein, who held the Linz rabbinate from 1876 to 1882. Men prayed on the ground floor and women in the galleries, with the rabbi and cantor seated in places of honour on the rear wall. The 1906 extension added a choir area for an organ, so music accompanied at least some services in the last three decades of the building. Moriz Friedmann served as rabbi for forty years, from 1883 to 1923, the longest tenure in the building's history. Rabbi Viktor Kurrein, who led the congregation from 1923 to 1938, collected material on the community's past; a collection of his papers held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum covers 1917 to 1934 and includes photographs of the synagogue. No detailed description of services, of the choir, of the cantors or of the community's associations was found in the sources read.

Zerstörung

The Anschluss of March 1938 put Linz, the capital of the province where Hitler was born, under Nazi rule, and the city's Nazi authorities set out to make it free of Jews. During the November Pogrom, in the early morning hours of 10 November 1938, members of the Nazi SA and SS set the synagogue on fire; the Jewish Virtual Library attributes the burning to the SS. The ANU Museum of the Jewish People says the building was broken into and wrecked before it was set alight. The Jewish Guide to Europe records that the fire brigade could only protect the neighbouring buildings. Unlike many burnt synagogues in Austria, the shell was not cleared during the Nazi period: according to German Wikipedia and the Archiv der Stadt Linz history, the ruin stood on the plot until 1967. That year the post-war Kultusgemeinde, with a contribution promised by the Upper Austrian provincial government in 1965 as a gesture of restitution, commissioned a new building on the site, and the remains of the old synagogue were removed to make way for it. The exact date of the demolition and the firm that carried it out are not recorded in the sources read.

Das Schicksal der Gemeinde

By November 1938 most Linz Jews had already left for Vienna or abroad, and Jewish businesses had been taken over under so-called Aryanisation. After the pogrom the roughly 65 Jews still living in Linz were arrested and ordered to leave the city for Vienna within three days, the Nazis claiming that no Jews could live in the capital of the province where Hitler was born. The Jewish Guide to Europe puts the number of Jews from the Linz region murdered in the Holocaust at about 300. Rabbi Viktor Kurrein escaped to England in 1938; two of Adolf Kurrein's five children were murdered at Auschwitz. After the war about 2,400 Jewish displaced persons were housed in the Bindermichl camp near Linz, and survivors of Mauthausen also stayed in the city. A new Kultusgemeinde was founded and numbered 238 members in 1949 and 145 in 1961.

Der Ort heute

The plot of the old synagogue is occupied by the present synagogue of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Linz at Bethlehemstraße 26, designed by Fritz Goffitzer and consecrated on 2 April 1968. It is a small modernist building and is regarded as one of the most significant post-war synagogues in Austria. Nothing of the 1877 building is known to survive above ground. In 2016 and 2017 the Archiv der Stadt Linz and the Ars Electronica Futurelab presented a digital walk-through of the old synagogue based on René Mathe's TU Wien reconstruction, shown in the Deep Space 8K room of the Ars Electronica Center.

Bedeutende Namen