The New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse in the Spandauer Vorstadt in the Mitte (Centre) district of Berlin was inaugurated in 1866 in the presence of Count Otto von Bismarck, then Minister President of Prussia, as a liberal synagogue.
One of the few synagogues to survive the November pogroms (Reichskristallnacht) in 1938, it was badly damaged by Allied air raids during World War II and subsequently much was demolished. During the nationwide pogroms on the night of November 9-10, 1938, members of the SA began to set fire to the New Synagogue. The district chief of the nearby police station, Wilhelm Krützfeld, confronted the arsonists and alerted the fire brigade, which was able to extinguish the fire inside the building, and thus saved the synagogue from destruction. The New Synagogue was used again for services between April 1939 and January 14, 1943.
The remains of the New Synagogue were located in the Eastern Sector of the divided city after 1945. Reconstruction of the front section began only after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and was completed in 1993. It is now used for offices and a museum of the Centrum Judaicum (Jewish Center). In 1995, a congregation using a small prayer room was reestablished and Gesa Ederberg, representing the conservative Masorti movement, was appointed as female rabbi, a decision strongly opposed by Berlin’s Orthodox rabbis.
Multi layer colour linocut edition of 6
Single layer B&W linocut edition of 6Print size: 28 x 21 cm, paper size: 37 x 29 cm.
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By the middle of the 19th century, the Jewish community in Berlin had grown significantly to about 28,000 members in 1860. The only synagogue at the time – later called the “Old Synagogue” – no longer offered enough space and the New Synagogue was built. The non-Jewish architect Eduard Knoblauch, member of the Prussian Academy of Arts since 1845, was commissioned with the planning. He had previously successfully managed the renovation of the old synagogue and the new building of the Jewish hospital. When he became seriously ill in 1859, he was replaced by a friend, the Prussian court building officer and “King’s architect” Friedrich August Stüler. He took over the construction according to Knoblauch’s ideas and designed the interior. After Stüler’s death in 1865, Knoblauch’s sons Gustav and Edmund completed the building. The synagogue was inaugurated on the Jewish New Year celebrations on September 5, 1866 – the 25th Elul 5626. The main hall offered 3,000 seats.
The facade is a richly structured polychrome brickwork with shaped stones, terracottas and coloured glazed bricks. The central dome and its gilded ribs are a widely visible, dominating feature of the city scape, expressing the Jewish community’s newly found new self-confidence and pride. Two smaller domes flanked the central dome on the two side-wings. The appearance of the front of the building characterised by a style reminiscent of the Alhambra, the palace and fortress complex in Granada, Andalusia, Spain..
Rabbi was Joseph Aub who was reform-oriented and one of the first rabbies conducting services in German. A new three-part prayer book with a German translation was used and in 1868 an organ was installed. Pronounced differences about the synagogue´s new rite eventually led to a split in the community. In 1869 Adass Yisroel was formed, a group of dissatisfied conservative and orthodox members who left the community in 1872 and received official approval as an Israelite synagogue community in 1885. Adass Yisroel was led by rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer, who was a prominent proponent and founder of Modern Orthodox Judaism.
