Publication: Die zerstörten Synagogen Wiens (Destroyed Synagogues of Vienna)

Publication: Die zerstörten Synagogen Wiens (Destroyed Synagogues of Vienna)
by Samuel D. Gruber

Martens, Bob / Peter, Herbert: Die zerstörten Synagogen Wiens, Verlag Mandelbaum, 2009

I've been meaning to post about this book for quite a while.  I heard Bob Martens present his impressive work of digital reconstruction of Vienna's destroyed synagogues at a conference in Lviv, Ukraine in 2008.  This book came out the next year, and I've finally been making good use of it.  There is an English version that came out earlier this year but I have not seen it yet.

Vienna, Austria.  Pazmanitengasse Synagogue (Leopoldstadt Synagogue).  Ignaz Reiser, architect ca. 1910. Reconstruction/Photo: Bob Martens

There is a long history of making models of lost synagogues.  Visitors to Temple Beth El in Detroit have seen representation of past homes of the congregations, and visitors to Yeshiva University Museum and Beth Hafusoth in Tel Aviv have encountered more ambitious models of famous synagogues of centuries past. Beginning earlier in the last decade researchers at the Bet Tfila-Research Unit, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany began making wooden models of historic synagogues, a mix of (mostly German) surviving and lost buildings.  These have been exhibited in Berlin and elsewhere, and published in Synagogenarchitektur in Deutschland. Dokumentation zur Ausstellung (2008).  About the same time a growing number of architects began to use computer modeling to ‘reconstruct’ synagogue buildings.  In 2001, Robert Davis published on-line computer-generated models of Texas synagogues; and in 2004 architects at the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany made very detailed representations of German synagogues (Synagogues in Germany : a virtual reconstruction = [Synagogen in Deutschland : eine virtuelle Rekonstruktion), edited by Darmstadt University of Technology, Department CAD in Architecture, Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Institute for Foreign Cultural Relation.

Vienna, Austria. Mullnergasse Synagogue. Max Fleischer, arch. 1888-89. Reconstruction/Photo: Bob Martens

In Vienna, architects from the Technische Universität Wien led by Bob Martens have taken the recovery quest one step further.  Beginning in 1998 in an ambitious program inspired in part by the 1987 publication by P. Genee of Wiener Synagogen, Martens and his team marshaled documentary, graphic and photographic evidence and created digital reconstructions of twenty-three Vienna synagogues destroyed by the Nazis on Kristallnacht in November 1938.  The project does, however, not cover the approximately 80 additional prayer houses that were in the city.  These were not, for the most part, architecturally distinctive, but more importantly insufficient evidence survives of their appearance to allow reconstruction.  The reconstructions of the architecturally distinctive synagogues have been gathered into an extensively illustrated city guide to this lost heritage.

 Vienna, Austria.  Templegasse Synagogue. Ludwig von Forster, arch. 1854-58. Reconstruction/Photo: Bob Martens

With the help of CAD (computer-aided design) and rapid prototyping a working group based around the authors was able to virtually rebuild the destroyed synagogues.  The reconstructions attempt – mostly successfully – to reconstruct both exterior and interior appearances of the destroyed synagogues.  Like the German wooden models from Braunschweig, these reconstructions make a valiant attempt to recreate interior seating arrangements.  These reconstruction are much more valuable for understanding the full spaces of sanctuary interiors than more other visual aids.  One can better understand entrance and processions routes within the space, and also the relationship between the seating of men and women.

Another great virtue of this work is that all the synagogues are shown in their (often dense) urban context, past and present.  In the guide, historic photographs are contrasted with the virtual reconstructions and accompanied by descriptive texts.  The synagogues were built in a range of historicist and modern styles by many distinguished local architects, several of whom, like Gartner, Stiassny and Fliescher were Jewish.  Several scholars have been looking at Stiassny’s life and work but he has yet to receive the monograph he deserves. 

Exhibitions: German Jewish Museums Focus on Eastern European Jews in Germany Before and After the Shoah

Entrance to the Kempler pastryshop and Krakow Café, Grenadierstraße, Berlin 1926
© JMB, Schenkung von Hillel Kempler

D H. Lewin bookshop, Grenadierstraße 28, Berlin, ca. 1930 © bpk

Looking into Schendelgasse, Herbert Sonnenfeld, Berlin, ca 1935-1938
© JMB, purchase funds from the German Lottery Foundation Berlin

Sale of dry goods in Grenadierstraße , Frederick Seidenstücker, Berlin, 1932 © bpk

Exhibitions: German Jewish Museums Focus on Eastern European Jews in Germany Before and After the Shoah

Two exhibitions at German Jewish museums focus on the history and legacy of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to Germany before and after the Shoah. At the Berlin Jewish Museum the exhibition Berlin Transit traces the lives, settlement patterns and cultural expressions of Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe in the 1920s, especially those poorer Jews who settled in the neighborhood of Scheunenviertel, near Alexanderplatz, others in middle-class Charlottenburg.The exhibtion includes photos form the old neighborhoods as well as objects from the time, but it also includes works of fine art by some of the best Jewish artists of the interwar period, including Issachar Ber Ryback and Leonid Paternak. A cycle of pogrom images by Ryback is on display in Berlin for the first time since 1924. The imagery in these works will remind viewers of similar scenes in Marc Chagall's crucifixion series of the later 1920s. Rybacks' avant-garde watercolors join in dialogue with Leonid Pasternak's paintings and Naum Gabo's sculptures.

Meanwhile, an exhibition at the Munich Jewish Museum the exhibition Jews 45/90 From Here and There - Survivors from Eastern Europe examines the fate of Eastern European Holocaust survivors who settled in Germany after 1945. The Munich exhibitions examine the lives of DPs in the Munich area after the World War II, when Germany became home for tens of thousands of Eastern European survivors. This exhibit is purported to be the most comprehensive presentation to date about the everyday life, history and culture of Jewish Displaced Persons. The exhibit especially focuses on the stories of individuals, and also the varied living conditions of DPs. While some DPs remained in Germany and until the recent large influx of Russian Jews constituted the majority of Germany's post-war Jewish community, most emigrated again to Israel, the United States and other countries.

Berlin Transit: Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in the 1920s at the Jewish Museum Berlin

Through July 15, 2012

As a hub connecting East and West, Berlin was a place of refuge and a way station for tens of thousands of Jews from Eastern Europe starting in the late nineteenth century, and particularly after the First World War. Most of them were fleeing westwards, away from the war, revolution and pogroms of the former Russian Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy.

With its multilingualism and complex internal networks, the community of Eastern European immigrants brought about a heyday of Jewish culture in Berlin. Many of the poor Jewish immigrants lived in the Scheunenviertel area near Alexanderplatz, others in middle-class Charlottenburg, a district of the city referred to as "Charlottengrad" on account of the high proportion of Russians who lived there.

This cultural-historical exhibition focuses on the diverse worlds of Eastern European Jews in Berlin of the Weimar Republic, and presents a wealth of unknown materials: literary and autobiographic texts can be heard in their original languages (Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew and German), largely unknown photographs of the Scheunenviertel are subject to critical analysis and newly interpreted.

After the  Pogrom, series by Issachar Ber Ryback, drawing, Kiev/ Moskow, 1918/1920
© Mishkan LeOmanut, Museum of Art Ein Harod, Israel

Birds in Yiddish children's book, Leib Kwitko and Issachar Ber Ryback, Schwellen Verlag, Berlin, 1922
© Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv

 Die Berlinerin, Issachar Ber Ryback, Kiev and Berlin, 1919/1921-1924, oil on canvas

© Bat Yam Municipality, Israel

Max Liebermann opened an exhibition at the Berlin Academy of Arts, Leonid O. Pasternak, Berlin, 1930, oil on canvas © Jerusalem, The Israel Museum

The exhibition was developed in cooperation with the research project "Charlottengrad and Scheunenviertel: Jewish Immigrants from Eastern Europe in Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s" at the Eastern Europe Institute of the Free University of Berlin.

At the end of the exhibition visitors are invited to explore urban space for traces of the largely forgotten places that reflect the immigration of Eastern European Jews to Berlin.

A catalog of the exhibition (in German) is available.

Jews 45/90: From Here and There - Survivors from Eastern Europe

November 30th, 2011 through June 17th, 2012

Divided into nine different themed displays, the lives of DPs are described from their liberation until their emigration to Israel or other countries. It is not a straightforward story that is told. Depending on the occupation policies of the Allied Forces, the relief organizations, and international political developments, Jewish refugees did not know how long and under what conditions they had to carry on living in DP camps. Visitors therefore make their way through a maze - with a view of the next displays always barred. Many of the exhibits may seem at first glance to be everyday objects of little value. Their significance unfolds through the stories and memories that the lenders associate with them.

On the second exhibition level visitors are led into the Föhrenwald DP camp, now the Waldram district of Wolfratshausen, that existed from 1945-1957, longer than all other DP camps in Germany. Insights into the various aspects of camp life and the stories of individual families open up between the silhouettes of the characterstic Föhrenwald estate houses.

The richly illustrated exhibition catalog From Here and There Survivors from Eastern Europe provides further information on the DP era and on the exhibited objects. In the essay section, the children of former Displaced Persons such as the authors Lily Brett and Savyon Liebrecht, reflect their own family histories inspired by the objects in the exhibition.

Poland: Prayer house in Kielce to be Rescued

I'm cross posting this story from Jewish Heritage Europe the new go-to site for information about Jewish heritage sites in Europe.  I helped begin and edit this site about six years ago but it fell into stagnation.  The Rothschild Foundation and journalist, author and blogger Ruth Ellen Gruber have revived and remade it into something much for appealing - and up-to-date. cehck out the entrie site and subscribe to the Facebook link, too. 

Poland — Prayer house in Kielce to be rescued

Posted on February 28, 2012 by admin

A dilapidated small Jewish prayer house in the town of Kielce is to be moved from its current position in the back yard of a tenement house to nearby the Jewish cemetery in order to rescue it from falling into total disrepair and to enable development of the tenement site.
A report in a local  Kielce newspaper, and quoted by Virtual Shtetl, said that the 54-square-meter private prayer house was built in 1922 at 3 Slowackiego by a local entrepreneur named Herszel Zagajski, who owned a limestone plant.

[T]his house is one of three such buildings in Poland that have survived to the present day. Additionally, in Kielce, for historical reasons, it has become a symbol. The whole action enjoys the support of the Chief Rabbi of Poland and the Jewish Community in Katowice. Cutting the building, its transportation, reconstruction and renovation, which pose the most difficulties, will be completed by the Dorbud company. Presently, drafts, plans and necessary agreements with the monuments’ restorer are being made. The company wants to obtain subsidies from the Fund of Norway. In all probability, the building will be transported to the municipal land next year.

Read full story

Jean-Jacques Duval Synagogue Photo on Cover of Glass Art

Jean-Jacques Duval Synagogue Photo on Cover of Glass Art

Here is a photo credit I didn't expect - the cover on 'Glass Art'. It's a synagogue window at Congregation B'nai Jacob in Woodbridge, Connecticut from the early 60's by artist Jean-Jacques Duval. Glass Art has a profile of Duval, who is till actively at work.  

I blogged about his work earlier in the year and am quoted in the article.  You can read my earlier account and see more pictures at http://samgrubersjewishartmonuments.blogspot.com/2011/06/usa-jean-jacques-duvals-connecticut.html. 

After I posted that piece last June, I heard from several people.  

Contemporary artist Jeanette Kuvin Oren,  a member of Congregation B’nai Jacob in Woodbridge, CT. sent in a photo of the Ark curtain she made in the 1994-95 for the Jewish Theological Seminary inspired by Duval's glass. 

Synagogue maven Julian Preisler sent in these three photos of contemporary synagogues with Duval windows. 

Binghamton, NY. Temple Concord. Photo: Julian Preisler.

 Steubenville, OH. Beth Israel. Photo: Julian Preisler.

 Knoxville, TN. Heska Amuna.Photo: Julian Preisler. 

 We still need to get better pictures of the sanctuary interiors with all the glass.  Thanks Julian!