Synagogue main street (Karlstadt)

Already in the Middle Ages there was a Jewish community with a synagogue in Karlstadt. The city was planned and founded around 1200 by the Würzburg bishop Konrad von Querfurt on the drawing board. Hans Leopold Müller assumes that Jews were directly involved in the financing and construction of the town. However, this assumption is only supported by circumstantial evidence. There are no written records of the first Jewish community in Karlstadt. It is only known that it was wiped out by the pogrom in the course of the "Rindfleisch-Verfolgung" in 1298. The synagogue of the first community in Karlstadt is not mentioned in writing until 1453, when it had long since ceased to be a synagogue and was used as an inn. Even today, one can read on a sandstone slab set into the outer wall in 1602: "Anno Domini 1602 den 30. Nov. hab ich Hanß Berckmüler Angefangen diesen bau Auff zu richten. This house stands in God's hand and is to the Jüdenschuel genandt".  
In 1876 there was for the first time again a Jewish house owner in the city: Aron Berney from Laudenbach bought a house in the Obere Kirchgasse 5 and opened a store. The Jews of Karlstadt were affiliated with the Jewish community in Laudenbach in the absence of their own community institutions. It was not until 1885 that an independent Jewish community was founded with a prayer room and a room for religious instruction for the children. The deceased of the community were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Laudenbach.

The building that housed the congregation's prayer hall stands right next to the synagogue of the first congregation. It was built in the 16th century as a three-story half-timbered house with projecting floors.