The synagogue in Münchener Strasse was inaugurated in 1910 and offered space for 836 people. The adjacent front building housed a weekday prayer room, classrooms, a library, a day nursery and the administration. During the November 1938 pogroms (Reichskristallnacht) the synagogue was not set on fire, probably because of the neighboring houses. However, it was desecrated through looting and the destruction of its interior. The building was damaged during an Allied air raid but remained largely intact. In 1956 the synagogue was demolished rather than restored.
Single layer colour linocut edition of 4
Print size: 34 x 25 cm, paper size: 38 x 57 cm.
Paper: Canson Edition 250 gsm, 100% cotton, pH neutral and archival
The rather posh neighbourhood Bavarian Quarter (Bayrisches Viertel) within Schöneberg was a magnet for Jewish citizens including Albert Einstein who lived there until his emigration. After 1933, many of the neighbourhood’s Jewish residents emigrated from Germany. During the war, a branch of the Jewish Welfare and Youth Welfare Office was set up in the building. By 1943 the Bavarian Quarter was considered “Jew-free” (“Judenfrei”). SS officers from the Reich Security Main Office V (Reich Criminal Police) moved into the synagogue’s house with their families. Of around 16,000 Jewish residents in the Bavarian Quarter, around 6,000 were deported to Nazi extermination camps by 1943.
The synagogue followed the orthodox rite. Community rabbi was the renowned Mendelssohn researcher Professor Dr. Alexander Altmann from 1935 until his escape in 1938.
Today, the property is used by an elementary school with a “Denk-Stein-Mauer” (think-stone-wall) in remembrance of the Jewish synagogue and neighbourhood.
