The Stadttempel ( en, City Prayer House), also called the Seitenstettengasse Temple, is the main

synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. It is located in the

Innere Stadt The Innere Stadt (; Central Bavarian: ''Innare Stod'') is the 1st municipal Districts of Vienna, district of Vienna () located in the center of the Austrian capital. The Innere Stadt is the old town of Vienna. Until the city boundaries were expa ...

1st district, at Seitenstettengasse 4.

History

The synagogue was constructed from 1824 to 1826. The luxurious Stadttempel was fitted into a block of houses and hidden from plain view of the street, because of an edict issued by Emperor

Joseph II Joseph II (German: Josef Benedikt Anton Michael Adam; English: ''Joseph Benedict Anthony Michael Adam''; 13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg lands from November 29, 1780 unt ...

that only Roman Catholic places of worship were allowed to be built with facades fronting directly on to public streets. This edict saved the synagogue from total destruction during the ''

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 ...

'' in November 1938, since the synagogue could not be destroyed without setting on fire the buildings to which it was attached. The Stadttempel was the only synagogue in the city to survive

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, as Nazi paramilitary troops with the help of local authorities destroyed all of the other 93 synagogues and

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

prayer-houses in Vienna, starting with the

. In August 1950, the coffins of

Theodor Herzl Theodor Herzl; hu, Herzl Tivadar; Hebrew name given at his brit milah: Binyamin Ze'ev (2 May 1860 – 3 July 1904) was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish lawyer, journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer who was the father of modern p ...

and his parents were displayed at the synagogue, prior to their transfer for reburial in Israel. In the 1981 Vienna synagogue attack, two people from a bar mitzvah ceremony at the synagogue were murdered and thirty injured when Palestinian Arab terrorists attacked the synagogue with machine guns and hand grenades. Today the synagogue is the main house of prayer for the Viennese Jewish Community of about 7,000 members. The synagogue has been declared a historic monument.

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 ...

, Architecture of the European Synagogue, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1964, p. 178. On 2 November 2020, a

terrorist attack Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

near the synagogue left four civilians dead and 23 others wounded. It was not immediately certain if the synagogue was the target of the attack.

Architecture

The synagogue was designed in elegant

Biedermeier The ''Biedermeier'' period was an era in Central Europe between 1815 and 1848 during which the middle class grew in number and the arts appealed to common sensibilities. It began with the Congress of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in ...

style by the Viennese architect

Joseph Kornhäusel Josef Georg Kornhäusel (13 November 1782, in Vienna - 31 October 1860, in Vienna) was an Austrian architect of the first half of the 19th century. He primarily employed the contemporary style of Neoclassical architecture, moving to the Biederme ...

, architect to

Johann I Joseph, Prince of Liechtenstein Johann I Joseph (''Johann Baptist Josef Adam Johann Nepomuk Aloys Franz de Paula''; 26 June 1760 – 20 April 1836) was Prince of Liechtenstein between 1805 and 1806 and again from 1814 until 1836. He was the last Liechtenstein prince to rule unde ...

, for whom he had built palaces, theaters and other buildings. Construction was supervised by the official municipal architect, Jacob Heinz. Two five-story apartment houses, Numbers 2 and 4 Seitenstettengasse, were built at the same time as the synagogue, designed by the architect to screen the synagogue from the street in compliance with the

Patent of Toleration The Patent of Toleration (german: Toleranzpatent) was an edict of toleration issued on 13 October 1781 by the Habsburg emperor Joseph II. Part of the Josephinist reforms, the Patent extended religious freedom to non-Catholic Christians living ...

, which permitted members of tolerated faiths to worship in

clandestine church A clandestine church ( nl, schuilkerk), defined by historian Benjamin J. Kaplan as a "semi-clandestine church", is a house of worship used by religious minorities whose communal worship is tolerated by those of the majority faith on condition th ...

es, but not in buildings with facades on public streets.Kaplan, Benjamin J., ''Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe,'' Harvard University Press, 2007, Chapter 8, pp. 193. The synagogue is structurally attached to the apartment building at # 4 Seitenstettengasse. Stadttempel interieur

The synagogue itself is in the form of an oval. A ring of twelve

Ionic column The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite or ...

s support a two-tiered women's gallery. Originally, the galleries ended one column away from the

Torah Ark A Torah ark (also known as the ''Heikhal'', or the ''Aron Kodesh'') refers to an ornamental chamber in the synagogue that houses the Torah scrolls. History The ark, also known as the ''ark of law'', or in Hebrew the ''Aron Kodesh'' or ''aron ha- ...

, they were later extended to the columns beside the ark to provide more seating. the building is domed and lit by a lantern in the center of the dome, in classic Biedermeyer style. A commemorative glass made at the time of the synagogue's dedication and etched with a detailed image of the synagogue's interior is now in the collection of the

Jewish Museum (New York) The Jewish Museum is an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the former Felix M. Warburg House, along Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The first Jewish museum in the Unite ...

. The synagogue underwent renovation in 1895 and again in 1904 by the Jewish architect Wilhelm Stiassny, adding considerable ornamentation, and, in the opinion of architectural historian

, "the serene harmony of the design was spoiled by renovations." Damage inflicted on Kristallnacht was repaired in 1949. The "Stadttempel" was renovated once again in 1963 by Prof. Otto Niedermoser.

Famous members

Simon Wiesenthal Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 190820 September 2005) was a history of the Jews in Austria, Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He surviv ...

* Adolf JellinekKlaus Kempter, Die Jellineks 1820-1955, 1998

References

External links

The Stadttempel, Vienna
{{Authority control Ashkenazi Jewish culture in Austria Ashkenazi synagogues Synagogues completed in 1826 Orthodox Judaism in Austria Orthodox synagogues Synagogues in Vienna Regency and Biedermeier synagogues Round and octagonal synagogues Buildings and structures in Innere Stadt Jewish Austrian history 1826 establishments in the Austrian Empire Aesopian synagogues

History

Architecture

Famous members

See also

References

External links