Fasanenstrasse Synagogue

The Fasanenstraße Synagogue (German: Synagoge Fasanenstraße) was a liberal Jewish Synagogue in Berlin, Germany. It was located on the posh Fasanenstraße at number 79-80, close to Zoo Station.

The Fasanenstraße Synagogue was built between 1910 and 1912 and was large enough to accommodate 1,720 worshippers. A scholar of Progressive Judaism rabbi Leo Baeck was one of its leaders. Its main cantor for many years was Magnus Davidsohn and Richard Altmann (who was blind) was its organist.

Kaiser Wilhelm presented the synagogue with a ceremonial marriage hall, dedicated to the Jews of Germany, and, as Magnus Davidsohn's daughter, Ilse Stanley, describes in her book The Unforgotten, visited the temple upon its opening in 1912.

The synagogue functioned for only twenty four years. The Nazis forced it to close in 1936. The synagogue was destroyed during the Kristallnacht pogrom on November 10, 1938. Joseph Goebbels personally gave the orders to burn this synagogue, at the time, the largest in Berlin. He watched the "red flames" from his hotel. In 1943, the remains of the building were destroyed during an Allied air raid on Berlin.

After the Holocaust, most of a few Jews who returned to Berlin were immigrants from the Eastern Europe. The grounds of the former Fasanenstraße synagogue were chosen for the building of a new Jewish Community Center of Berlin. In 1957, the Mayor of Berlin Willy Brandt attended the ceremony of laying its corner stone. The old ruins were removed, but a few surviving elements, such as the main portal, were kept for the decoration of the new building. It was designed by the architects Knoblauch and Heisse of Essen in the modern style of the 1950s.

The building of the Jewish Community Center (German: Jüdisches Gemeindehaus Fasanenstraße) in Berlin was inaugurated on September 27, 1959.

References

• Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I, by Saul Friedlander, published 1997, ISBN 0060928786, soft cover edition page 272.

External links

• The Fasanenstraße Synagogue, Berlin, Germany
• Beit Hatefutsot - Museum of the Jewish People
• New Jewish Museum Berlin tells tales of past, present that unfold 2,000-year history of Jews in Germany by Alexandra Wall, September 14, 2001
• Template:De icon The Jewish Site of Berlin Jüdisches Gemeindehaus Fasanenstrasse