Synagogues | The Jews in Mecklenburg

For every Jewish community, the synagogue was and is a focal point of community life. Beyond its ritual significance, it was for every Mecklenburg community a symbol of their independence and autonomy, a sign that they wanted to be part of regional German society.

From the first phase of Jewish settlement in Mecklenburg, not a single synagogue is even approximately known or has survived. Nevertheless, they must have existed, as some legends about alleged host desecrations in Mecklenburg still attest.

Given the significance of a synagogue for Jewish self-understanding, it is therefore not surprising that nearly every Jewish community in Mecklenburg also longed for the construction of its own synagogue after the Jewish resettlement. Synagogue buildings did appear sporadically as early as the 18th century after the resettlement, but it was only with the flourishing of Jewish communities in the 19th century that this became widespread.

The communities could rarely count on state support for construction, but they could hope for generosity, a religious commandment of Judaism, even across Europe. They were rarely disappointed in this. The wealthy and numerically strong Jewish community of Hamburg in particular repeatedly distinguished itself in Mecklenburg as a charitable helper. But private benefactors, not infrequently Christians from the same town, also donated contributions to the success of the endeavor.

Despite numerous donations, the numerically small rural communities not infrequently still had to go into debt to realize their goal. For some, like the Sternberg community, it permanently put them in financial difficulty, as the communities lost contributing members due to the strong migration and emigration of Mecklenburg Jews, particularly from the middle of the 19th century onward.

Not in every community -- including Bruel -- does there appear to have been a building owned by the Jewish community used exclusively as a Jewish house of worship. Such communities usually made do with rented private premises, which they used as prayer rooms.

Only a few former synagogue buildings have survived to the present day. Some have been restored and serve as museums or memorials, for example in Roebel, Hagenow, Krakow, or Stavenhagen. These buildings usually survived the destruction during National Socialism only because they had already been sold to the town or privately during the phase of closures of Jewish communities that had become too small in the 1920s or even earlier, and were then used for other purposes. The fate was different for synagogues that were still functional during the Nazi era. Such synagogues were destroyed during the "Reichskristallnacht." In total, this affected at least 11 synagogues in Mecklenburg, including Parchim, Ribnitz, Teterow, Alt-Strelitz/Neustrelitz, Guestrow, Neubrandenburg, Rostock, and Schwerin.

By Gramenz, Jürgen / Ulmer, Sylvia (created: Sep 20, 2015)