Old Synagogue (Heilbronn)

The synagogue was built between 1873 and 1877 on the then still sparsely built-up east side of the southern Allee, beyond the original city limits of Heilbronn. The adjoining property to the north on Titotstraße was still undeveloped; on the neighboring property to the south, a doctor had the Villa Gfrörer, named after him, built in the Italian country house style in 1867. At the time of the destruction of the synagogue in 1938, this villa housed the Kahleyss Women's Clinic. At the same time the synagogue was the dominant building on the southern Allee, the (old) Harmonie festival hall was built on the middle of the Allee. There was only one other building between the synagogue and the Harmonie on the eastern side of the Allee; the rest of the land was still undeveloped. The eastern part of the synagogue property facing Friedensstraße (today Gymnasiumstraße) remained undeveloped. The address of the synagogue was Obere Allee 14. It was not until 1899 that the four streets Obere Allee, Untere Allee, Obere Alleestraße and Untere Alleestraße were merged into a single street, Allee, with the houses being renumbered. The synagogue was given the address Allee 4. The east side of the Allee was gradually built on. On March 15, 1928, more than 50 years after the synagogue was built, the head post office presented plans for a new Heilbronn main post office building to replace the old main post office building on the Neckar on the plot to the north of the synagogue on the corner of Allee and Titotstraße (Allee 6). The five-story-high modern new building would have blocked the view of the synagogue. In discussions between the post office, the Israelite church congregation and the city administration, it was agreed that the post office would move the new building back by two meters, dispense with a porch and keep the roofs flat so that the synagogue would continue to be visible even after the inauguration of the new post office building on 20 February 1931. so that the address of the synagogue was now Adolf-Hitler-Allee 4 until its destruction in 1938 and demolition in 1940. After the collapse of the Nazi regime, the avenue was given its original name again in 1945. It appeared in the Heilbronn address book in 1929 and was still listed in the 1934 address book. It was missing from the last address book of the Nazi era in 1938/39. Synagogenweg was also missing from the post-war address books and city maps for a long time. It was only after 1982 that it was once again included in the city map of Heilbronn and in the Heilbronn address book. == Architecture and interior ==

The two-story synagogue, which was built from Heilbronn sandstone, took up mainly oriental style elements in its appearance, but also European style elements in the interior which is why the building has been described both as a central building with side aisles The basic building type was a central structure in the shape of a Greek cross, which was set in an almost square rectangle. The resulting spandrels between the arms of the cross and the rectangle were open as part of "side aisles". Four large pillars formed a square in the middle of the building and supported a large tambour dome. Further columns separated the "side aisles" from the central building and contributed to the impression of a three-aisled building inside, although it was not divided into aisles by a regular column position. at each of its four corners, above the spandrels, which otherwise corresponded to the shape of the large central dome. The tambour of the large central dome had twelve round-arched windows; They were created according to the technique of medieval stained glass window art, framed with lead rods, tinted slightly purple and yellow and showing plant motifs in Art Nouveau style. In the middle of each of the two long sides, side portals provided access to the interior of the synagogue, which also had rose windows but were smaller and simpler than the main portal. there were 33 benches here. The organist Johannes Graf, later the cathedral organist in Ulm for many years, was employed as organist and choirmaster by the Jewish community of Heilbronn in those years. The disposition of the instrument was as follows: • Couplers: • Normal coupler: II/I, I/P, II/P • Suboctave coupler: II/I • Superoctave coupler: II/I • Playing assistance of the organ: Piano, Forte, Tutti, 2 free combinations, Crescendo, Crescendo Ab, hand register Ab, Pianopedal == History ==

Planning, construction and inauguration From 1830, Jews settled in Heilbronn again for the first time in 354 years. Due to further immigration, especially from rural communities, the Jewish community in Heilbronn grew considerably from the middle of the 19th century. On October 21, 1861, it separated from its mother congregation in Sontheim and formed an independent Israelite church congregation. The Lehrensteinsfeld district rabbinate, which was superior to the Israelite parishes, was moved to Heilbronn on July 1, 1867. In 1862 there were 137 Jews in Heilbronn, in the 1864 census there were 369, and in 1871 there were already 610. The only synagogue in the city at the time had been located in the central building of the Deutschhof since 1857, but the space there was very limited. On February 1, 1865, the congregation's church council decided to purchase a plot of land on Allee for 10,000 guilders. As the decision was not unanimous, the purchase could only be made in 1871 after fierce controversy, whereby the price of the land had already risen to 16,000 guilders. The decision to build was made on June 21, 1871. In 1873, the design by Stuttgart architect Adolf Wolff was approved, the third synagogue to be built in Heilbronn after the Stuttgart Synagogue (1859 to 1861) and the Ulm Synagogue (1870 to 1873). The congregation decided by 60 votes to four in favor of installing a synagogue organ, although instrumental music was not provided for in the orthodox liturgy and this led to a conflict with the orthodox members of the congregation. The costs for the new synagogue amounted to a total of 372,778 marks, of which the municipality of Heilbronn provided 30,000 guilders (51,428 Reichsmark) in 1876 in the form of a loan from the foundation's funds. The foundation stone was laid in mid-August 1873, on November 23, 1874, it was possible to celebrate the topping-out of the building, and at the end of May 1877 the construction was completed. On June 7, 1877, the Torah scrolls were moved from the prayer hall in the Deutschhof to an adjoining room in the new synagogue, and on June 8, the synagogue was solemnly consecrated. After a farewell service in the prayer hall in the Deutschhof (the "old synagogue"), the ceremonial entry of the seven Torah scrolls into the new synagogue took place at 11 a.m., followed by a sermon and a prayer of consecration by Rabbi Moses Engelbert. A midday banquet in the Rose restaurant with many representatives of official bodies and an evening ball in the Harmonie festival hall concluded the celebration. Eleven years later, the Heilbronn synagogue came to an end. Like many other synagogues in the German Reich, it was destroyed by arson on the night of November 9–10, 1938, the so-called " Reichskristallnacht" or Reichspogromnacht. On November 9, 1938, the NSDAP leadership had gathered in Munich to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the "Beer Hall Putsch". The order to carry out anti-Jewish riots following the assassination attempt on a German embassy employee in Paris seems to have reached the Heilbronn NSDAP by telephone at 11:30 p.m., probably via several intermediate stages. For the removal of the debris, it demanded 10,000 Reichsmark from the Jewish Community, which was offset against the purchase price of 10,000 Reichsmark. The completely burnt-out ruins of the synagogue remained standing until mid-January 1940, when the company Koch & Mayer began demolition work on behalf of the city administration. Mayor Gültig reported that the company commissioned with the demolition and removal of the ruins had estimated 34,000 Reichsmark for the work and that the value of the demolition material remaining in the hands of the city was 10,000 Reichsmark. The whereabouts of the synagogue stones are unclear; according to various reports, they were used to build roads or walls in Heilbronn. Two years later, on November 22, 1951, the Gaildorf factory owner Wilhelm Bott took over the Scala-Lichtspieltheater (renamed the Metropol-Lichtspieltheater on May 1, 1952) and the synagogue property at a forced auction. After the closure of the cinemas in July 2000, the 1948/49 Metropol building on the rear part of the property, for which no new tenant could be found, was demolished at the beginning of 2001; this part of the property has since served as a parking lot. In 2003, Avital Toren, as community leader of the new Jewish community in Heilbronn, which was in the process of being established, was interested in renting rooms in the cinema center on the site of the former synagogue. This failed due to the high conversion costs that would have been caused by security regulations for Jewish institutions in Germany, so that other premises were rented. Legal investigation of the arson Who set fire to the Heilbronn synagogue and who gave the order on site could not be officially clarified. in this regard contradict each other and range from early removal to partial rescue to complete destruction. In a letter dated May 9, 1962, the Heilbronn police director W. stated that he believed he remembered that the cult objects were kept in the attic of the Gestapo in Heilbronn (Wilhelmstraße 4) or at least were stored there for some time. For Schrenk, nothing is known for certain about the whereabouts of the cult objects; since almost no remains have been recovered so far, it must be assumed that the destruction of the synagogue was also aimed at destroying the cult objects. Attempts were made to obtain more precise information about the whereabouts of the cult objects via the applications for restitution filed by the Heilbronn Jewish institutions after World War II in accordance with the Federal Restitution Laws. Although there is evidence from sources that such applications were filed, they can no longer be traced in the files of the responsible authorities. The restitution statistics only contain references to applications for securities and bank deposits, but not for furnishings or objects of worship. == Memorials and remembrance ==

In 1960, Mayor Paul Meyle suggested that a memorial be created to mark the 25th anniversary of the synagogue fire in 1963. The city council's initial ideas included a plaque on the north wall of the Universum cinema to represent the burned synagogue. Later, a three-metre-high obelisk made of granite with a Star of David was considered, which was to be erected at the post office on the southern side of the crosswalk over the avenue. Two years later, a memorial stone had still not been erected. Several alternatives were considered, which could be seen in the spring of 1965 in the form of dummies on the central reservation of the southern avenue in front of the Universum cinema, but none of them met with approval. On November 9, 1966, a memorial stone with a bronze inscription plate was unveiled on the central reservation of the avenue. The 1.45 meter high, 90 centimetres wide and 30 centimetres deep memorial stone was carved by the sculptor Rückert; it is made of Heilbronn sandstone, the building material of the synagogue. The letters for the inscription on the 60 by 60 centimetre bronze plate were designed by the Heilbronn graphic artist and city councillor Gerhard Binder. The inscription refers to the synagogue once located here and the arson in 1938. When the construction of the pedestrian underpass on the southern avenue began in 1978, the memorial stone was temporarily removed. After the end of the construction work in 1980, it was moved to the junction of the Synagogenweg, i.e. in the immediate vicinity of the former synagogue site, and incorporated into the concrete parapet of the post office underpass. In 1982, the local newspaper reported on a letter to the editor by James May (Julius Mai), a Jew from Heilbronn who had emigrated to the US, who called for the "demolition of the current porn cinema and the stupid monument to the Jews at the entrance to these pleasure palaces" and the planting of an arboretum on the site of the former synagogue. The owners of the cinemas objected to May's choice of words "porn cinemas" and to his proposed demolition. The city council pointed out that it could not demolish other people's houses. which was inaugurated on May 5, 1993, is intended to commemorate the destroyed synagogue in Heilbronn. The memorial consists of a metal skeleton in the shape of the toppled dome of the Heilbronn synagogue and is also located near the former site of the synagogue in front of the cinema building on Allee. Following the closure of the Post Passage, a new memorial was created in October/November 2009 from the memorial stone and dome. The memorial stone is now located in an anthracite-colored concrete block. An opening for the Hanukkia was created in the ground in front of the concrete block - surrounded by paving stones - which is otherwise covered by a golden clasp. Bürkle's dome sculpture was placed next to the block at the junction with Synagogenweg. The ensemble was created in collaboration between the building department, the museum and the Jewish community of Heilbronn. A private individual created a virtual reconstruction of the exterior of the building based on the synagogue building plans, which has been shown on the internet since 2010. == Gallery ==

Bild 33, Heilbronn, Allee mit Synagoge, Objekt.ID=56742.jpg|View along Heilbronner Allee with synagogue (Vinzenz de Pay, Riedlingen) Heilbronn Synagoge 1900 Zwei.jpg|View along the avenue to the north, around 1900. In the center of the picture, to the right of the synagogue, the Villa Gfrörer. Heilbronn Synagogue colored postcard.jpg|View along Heilbronner Allee to the south. The synagogue in the left foreground, behind it the Villa Gfrörer (1908). == See also ==