Die Geschichte von Noordwolde Synagogue
Noordwolde lies in the far southeast of Friesland, close to the borders of Drenthe and Overijssel, in the present municipality of Weststellingwerf. According to the Jewish Cultural Quarter's community encyclopedia, the first Jewish couple settled there in 1750 and more families followed in the later eighteenth century, enough to form an organised congregation with its own cemetery on the Schapendrift from 1770. The synagogue stood on the Hoofdstraat-West, the village's main street, and is documented as existing before 1786. Its standing in the province is shown by the 1789 description Tegenwoordige Staat van Friesland, which, as the historian H. Beem pointed out, named synagogues in only three Frisian places: Leeuwarden, Harlingen and Noordwolde. Beem found it hard to explain why Jews settled in this inland village, when most Jewish traders in Friesland were drawn to the coastal trading towns.
The congregation never grew large. It counted 66 people in 1809 and 36 in 1840, struggled to pay its religious taxes in the early nineteenth century, and in 1861 tried without success to raise money for a new synagogue. The old building was sold in 1876 and pulled down in 1880. The remaining members were eventually placed under the Jewish community of Heerenveen. No picture, plan or description of the building has been found.
Where it stood for 94 years
Historic: Hoofdstraat-West, Noordwolde, Stellingwerf, Friesland; house number unknown. Today: Hoofdstraat West, 8391 Noordwolde, municipality of Weststellingwerf; pin on the middle section of the street (approximate).
Größere Karte öffnen →Die jüdische Gemeinde
The Jewish Cultural Quarter (JCK) encyclopedia, based on the Joods Historisch Museum's community texts, dates the first Jewish settlement in Noordwolde to 1750, when one Jewish couple came to live there. Further families arrived in the second half of the eighteenth century and formed an organised community, which had a cemetery on the Schapendrift from 1770. Its members earned their living in trade, mostly as shopkeepers and pedlars, and kept close ties with the Jewish communities of Gorredijk and Steenwijk. Life was hard: at the beginning of the nineteenth century the community could not pay the taxes it owed. The JCK gives these figures for Jews in Noordwolde and its surroundings: 66 in 1809, 36 in 1840, 41 in 1869, 14 in 1899 and 17 in 1930. As membership declined the community lost its independence and was merged into the Jewish community of Heerenveen; the date of the merger is unknown. H. Beem counted Noordwolde among the earliest Jewish settlements in Friesland, alongside Harlingen, Workum, Hindeloopen and Bolsward.
Architektur und Gestaltung
Nothing is known about the appearance of the Noordwolde synagogue. No photograph, drawing, postcard, plan or written description of it was found, which is not surprising for a small village building that disappeared in 1880, before photography of rural Friesland was common. The sources give only its location on the Hoofdstraat-West, the main road running through the southern part of the village, and the fact that it existed before 1786. Its builder, date of construction, size and seating capacity are unknown. The congregation was small throughout its history, at most about sixty-six people in 1809, so the building was probably a modest prayer room or small hall, perhaps in or behind a house, as was usual for rural Dutch congregations of the period; this is an inference, not a documented fact. In 1861 the community tried to raise funds for a new synagogue, which suggests that the old building had by then become inadequate or was in poor condition, but the appeal failed and no replacement was ever built.
Leben in der Synagoge
No record of services, officials or ritual life inside the Noordwolde synagogue was found in the sources consulted. No rabbi, cantor, teacher or warden of the congregation is named in them. What can be said is limited to the outline of the community's history. The synagogue was in use by 1786 and was still recognised as one of Friesland's few synagogues in 1789. Its congregation was large enough in 1809, with 66 Jews in and around the village, to hold regular services with a prayer quorum, but by 1840 it had fallen to 36. The members' close links with Gorredijk and Steenwijk suggest that family and religious life was shared with those neighbouring congregations. The failed fundraising of 1861 shows that the community still hoped to continue worship in a better building at that date. By 1876, when the synagogue was sold, the congregation evidently no longer needed or could no longer maintain it, and the few Jews remaining in Noordwolde came under the Heerenveen community.
Zerstörung
The synagogue was not destroyed by violence. According to the JCK community encyclopedia, the old synagogue on the Hoofdstraat-West was sold in 1876 and demolished four years later, in 1880. The sale followed decades of decline in the congregation and the failure of its 1861 attempt to fund a new synagogue. The sources consulted do not say who bought the building, what price was paid, whether the buyer used it for another purpose during the four years before demolition, or who carried out the demolition and why. Who demolished it is not recorded. No later building is said to have been put up on the site, and its exact plot on the Hoofdstraat-West has not been identified. The building was thus gone more than sixty years before the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and no link between its loss and the Second World War exists.
Das Schicksal der Gemeinde
By the time the synagogue was demolished in 1880 only a few Jewish families remained in Noordwolde. The JCK figures show 14 Jews in and around the village in 1899 and 17 in 1930, by then members of the Jewish community of Heerenveen rather than an independent congregation. The cemetery on the Schapendrift fell out of use: writing in the twentieth century, H. Beem described it as lying in the middle of the fields, overgrown and abandoned for more than a century, with only half a gravestone dated 1815 left. During the Nazi occupation Jews from the Stellingwerf area were deported and murdered; the JCK states that the monument unveiled at the Noordwolde cemetery in 2003 honours the Jewish war victims of Stellingwerf. How many of them had lived in Noordwolde itself, and their names, were not established in this research. No Jewish community has existed in Noordwolde since the war.
Der Ort heute
The exact site of the synagogue on the Hoofdstraat-West has not been identified, so what stands on the plot today is unknown. The street is still the main road through the southern part of Noordwolde and is lined with houses and shops. Nothing of the synagogue is known to survive. The Jewish cemetery on the Schapendrift is maintained by the Frisian nature conservation society It Fryske Gea, was transferred to the Nederlands-Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap (NIK) on 25 October 2003, and keeps three gravestones. A monument to the Jewish war victims of Stellingwerf was unveiled there the same day. Identifying the synagogue's plot will need the land registry records of 1876-1880 held by Tresoar in Leeuwarden.
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