Synagogue

On the opposite side of the Promenade (today: Sparkasse Neuss), until its destruction, stood the synagogue of the Jewish community in Neuss. On the night of 9th-10th November 1938, it was ransacked and set on fire by SA men from Neuss and Düsseldorf.

The building, designed by official Prussian architect Friedrich Weise (1801-1874), was one of the first representative buildings to shape the image of the newly created Promenade. The synagogue, to the construction of which the city had also contributed 2,000 thaler, was festively inaugurated on 29th March 1867. Numerous city dignitaries took part in the three-day inaugural celebrations. To the Jewish community, the inauguration apparently represented an affirmation of their new, almost equal status in relation to the Christian communities, which they had achieved since their foundation in 1816.

The new synagogue kept to an oriental style. Its façade consisted of light and reddish stone and was crowned by four small onion towers with gilded stars of David. A large round window dominated the middle axis, over which a star of David was positioned. The orientalised style was continued through into the richly decorated inner space. There was no women’s gallery; men and women were simply separated from one another by the central aisle. Until the synagogue’s inauguration, the services and gatherings of the Jewish community had taken place in a private house.

A small Jewish community already existed in Neuss by the 12th century, whose lives were played out between the so-called Jews’ Bridge, in the area of the later Hessian Gate, and Glockhammer. There was also already a synagogue here. In 1463, the city’s Jews were expelled and issued with a ban on settlement.

Only with the introduction of religious freedom during the Napoleonic occupation, at the beginning of the 19th century, could a Jewish community slowly form again, but was not very big. They reached their largest number in 1890, with 300 members.

In 1933, no more than 227 citizens of Jewish faith lived in Neuss, who were increasingly persecuted over the following years. At least 204 of the then or earlier members of the synagogue’s congregation in Neuss were deported and murdered by the National Socialist regime; only a few managed to escape into exile. Today, the victims are remembered by a memorial stone opposite the erstwhile synagogue, designed by Ulrich Rückriem, and numerous stumbling blocks around the city.

With the immigration of numerous Jewish families from the former Soviet Union, a Jewish community has again formed in Neuss since the beginning of the 1990s, which moved into the Alexander Bederov Centre on Leostrasse in 2008 as a ‘branch congregation’ of the Jewish Congregation of Düsseldorf.

Chronology

• 12th century Existence of a Jewish community in Neuss
• 14/15th centuries First synagogue at Glockhammer
• 1463 Expulsion of the Jews from Neuss, ban on settlement
• 1794 Beginning of the French period in Neuss, with religious freedom, immigration of Jewish citizens
• 1858 Foundation of the synagogue congregation in Neuss
• 1867 Festive inauguration of the synagogue on the Promenade
• 1938 Destruction of the synagogue during the night of the pogrom
• 1988 Visit of former Jewish citizens and their families to Neuss
• 1995 Inauguration of the memorial on the Promenade
• 2008 Opening of the Jewish community centre on Leostrasse

Sources and texts: Neuss municipal archives
Graphic design: Cornelius Uerlichs
Translation: A.C.T. Fachübersetzungen GmbH

This plaque was donated by: Sparkasse Neuss