The Kassel Synagogue is the description given to a succession of prayer houses of the Jewish community in

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major histor ...

Construction in 1839

In 1827, a previous synagogue was closed due to its dilapidated state. In 1828, the government offered a new location for the construction of a new synagogue at the corner of Untere Königsstraße and Bremerstraße. Several blueprints (by August Schuchardt, Conrad Bromeis, and Julius Eugen Ruhl) were rejected by the community. Finally, a blueprint by Albrecht Rosengarten was accepted, and the new synagogue was opened on August 8, 1839. It was the first

Rundbogenstil (round-arch style) is a nineteenth-century historic revival style of architecture popular in the German-speaking lands and the German diaspora. It combines elements of Byzantine, Romanesque, and Renaissance architecture with particular ...

synagogue.Architecture of the European Synagogue,

Rachel Wischnitzer Rachel Bernstein Wischnitzer (German: ''Rahel Wischnitzer-Bernstein''), (April 14, 1885 – November 20, 1989) was a Russian-born architect and art historian. Biography Wischnitzer was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Minsk, in Russia ...

Jewish Publication Society of America The Jewish Publication Society (JPS), originally known as the Jewish Publication Society of America, is the oldest nonprofit, nondenominational publisher of Jewish works in English. Founded in Philadelphia in 1888, by reform Rabbi Joseph Krauskop ...

, 1964, pp. 195-8.

Nazi rule and destruction of the synagogue

On November 7, 1938, in the course of

Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from ...

, the synagogue was desecrated by the Nazis; part of its interior decoration and ritual accessories were burned outside. On November 11, 1938, the city authorities decided to demolish the synagogue. Today, there is a memorial plaque at its former location with the following inscription:

The after-war period

A new prayer hall was built in Heubnerstraße in 1952/53. As it became too small by the 1960s, the decision was made to build a new synagogue with a community centre. On December 12, 1965, the new building with the community hall for 100 people was inaugurated. As it in turn became too small for the growing Jewish community, another new synagogue, designed by architect Alfred Jacoby, was built in 2000 with funds provided, among others, by the government of Hesse, the city of Kassel, the North-Hesse administrative districts, the local branch of the Evangelical Church in Germany, the Diocese of Fulda, and through private donations.

References

{{reflist Synagogues destroyed during Kristallnacht (Germany) Rundbogenstil synagogues Religious buildings and structures in Hesse Buildings and structures in Kassel Synagogues completed in 1839