Medieval Synagogue of Mödling

PRZEGLĄD

Historia Medieval Synagogue of Mödling

Mödling, a market town south of Vienna, was one of several small towns around the capital, with Perchtoldsdorf and Traiskirchen, where Jewish settlement grew in the fourteenth century. Jews are documented there before 1350, and their houses lay in a street named after them, the Judengasse. Their synagogue stood in the back courtyard of a house at what is now Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Straße 7. Julia Neuruhrer's study of Mödling's synagogues dates it, presumably, to the late fourteenth century; Sandra Glatz, in her survey of the medieval synagogues of Lower Austria, holds that it cannot be dated with certainty. It was a small vaulted hall of about 50 square metres.

The congregation came to an end in 1420, in the persecution known as the Vienna Gesera, and the synagogue passed to Duke Albrecht V. When it was sold in 1437 it was still called the 'Judenschuel'. The building then outlived its congregation by more than four centuries in other uses. It was recorded in two drawings in 1875 and pulled down in the late nineteenth century in the course of rebuilding work on the property. Its iron entrance door was kept and is now in the Museum Mödling. This medieval building has no connection with the synagogue that Mödling's modern Jewish community built in Enzersdorfer Straße.

LOKALIZACJA

Where it stood

Historic: Judengasse (later Holzgasse), Mödling, back courtyard of the house now numbered 7. Today: Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Straße 7, 2340 Mödling (address exact; position within the plot approximate).

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Społeczność żydowska

Jews settled in Mödling before 1350, part of the fourteenth-century growth of Jewish settlement in the small towns around Vienna. The ANU Museum of the Jewish People notes that they were active mainly as moneylenders, largely for clients from Vienna, and Neuruhrer adds that the wealthier Jews owned vineyards, houses and fields and furthered trade and crafts in the town. A few individuals are known from documents: Eisak, son of Muschlein of Perchtoldsdorf, lived in Mödling before 1350, and a Jewish woman named Rädel sold a vineyard near the town to a Viennese monastery. Rabbi Israel Isserlein mentions a Mose Mödling who had written rules on religious ritual. The Jewish quarter lay along the Judengasse: besides the synagogue at number 7, Neuruhrer's map of the quarter before 1421 marks an old Jewish house at number 11, a former bathhouse at number 17 and a possible ritual bath at number 19. No communal records, membership figures or names of officers survive.

Architektura i projekt

What is known of the building comes from two drawings made in 1875, before its demolition, an exterior view and an interior view looking east. Glatz attributes the drawings to F. Kutschera, after E. Hütter, and reproduces the north elevation from Simon Paulus's study of medieval synagogue architecture. She classes the synagogue as a hall type with a floor area of about 50 square metres, covered by a two-bay quadripartite rib vault under a saddle roof. Neuruhrer notes that the interior drawing probably already shows an intermediate floor inserted into the vaulted room after its Jewish use had ended. The building did not face the street but stood in the back courtyard of the house. Its one surviving part is the entrance door: a late-Gothic door of riveted iron plates, 183 by 83 centimetres, decorated with religious ornament. Glatz regards it as probably coming from the synagogue, and a study published by the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte states that the Mödling door of about 1420 has since been identified as a synagogue door. The architect, the builder and the seating capacity are unknown.

Życie w synagodze

No account of worship in the Mödling synagogue survives, and no rabbi, cantor or warden is known by name from the years it was in use. The prayer hall was small, about 50 square metres under two bays of vaulting, which fits a congregation of a few families, although the size of the community is unknown. The name of Mose Mödling, recorded by Rabbi Israel Isserlein as the author of rules on religious ritual, shows that the town was known in rabbinic learning, but the sources read do not say whether he lived or prayed here. The quarter around the synagogue held the other facilities a small community needed: Neuruhrer's map marks a former bathhouse at Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Straße 17 and a possible ritual bath at number 19, a few doors along from the synagogue at number 7. The heavy iron door, covered with religious ornament, is the only object from the building that can still be seen.

Zniszczenie

The synagogue lost its congregation in 1420, when the persecution known as the Vienna Gesera reached Mödling. Duke Albrecht V of Austria, taking an alleged theft of the host at Enns as pretext and, according to Pierre Genée as cited by Neuruhrer, possibly seeking to enrich himself, had Jewish property confiscated, and the Mödling synagogue passed to the duke. In 1437 it was sold, still described as the 'Judenschuel'. It then stood for more than four hundred years in other use, while its street was renamed Holzgasse at the end of the fifteenth century and Elisabethstraße in 1875. In 1875 the old building in the courtyard of number 7 was drawn inside and out, probably already with an inserted floor. According to Glatz it was finally pulled down in the late nineteenth century during alterations to the property that dragged on for years. The exact year of demolition and the owner who carried it out are not recorded in the sources read. The iron entrance door was saved: it was reused as the door of the town archive in Mödling's town hall and later passed to the Museum Mödling.

Los społeczności

The medieval community of Mödling was destroyed in the Vienna Gesera of 1420-21. Taking an alleged theft of the host at Enns as pretext, Duke Albrecht V of Austria moved against the Jews of his duchy: across Vienna and Lower Austria they were tortured, robbed, forcibly baptised, expelled and burned. The persecution reached Mödling in 1420. The town's Jews were expelled and their property confiscated, and the ANU Museum of the Jewish People records that several Jewish women of Mödling apparently took their own lives, while one Jew moved to Wiener Neustadt. The medieval settlement ended entirely. When Jews returned to the area in the seventeenth century they settled in nearby villages such as Achau, Rannersdorf, Enzersdorf and Zwölfaxing, and Mödling itself had no sizeable Jewish population until the second half of the nineteenth century, when a new community formed. Its history and its synagogue in Enzersdorfer Street, wrecked by a Nazi mob in November 1938, are the subject of a separate entry.

Miejsce dzisiaj

The site is in Mödling's old town at Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Straße 7, the former Judengasse, renamed Holzgasse in the late fifteenth century and Elisabethstraße in 1875 after the empress. The synagogue stood in the back courtyard of the house there. Nothing of it remains on the plot, which is occupied by a later apartment building with shops on the ground floor. Neuruhrer's study reproduces an old postcard of the house at number 7 as the site of the medieval synagogue. The only surviving fragment of the building is its iron entrance door, which is kept in the Museum Mödling. No marker on the site is recorded in the sources read.

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