Synagogue (Frankfurt on the Oder)

As a hub of East-West trade, the city on the Oder offered Jewish merchants a good livelihood. The Viadrina, the name of the university founded in 1506, also admitted Jewish students from 1699. The first synagogue is also said to have once stood on the grounds of the Viadrina. In the Jewish world, Frankfurt was known for printing the Hebrew Bible and the Babylonian Talmud since the early 17th century. A visible sign of the economic and social rise of the Jewish community was the construction of a new synagogue. In 1823, the building, designed in the classicist style, was inaugurated in what was then Tuchmacherstraße. However, not all Frankfurt Jews could identify with the liberal rite practiced there, especially since an organ was installed in 1891. Thus the congregation split and the followers of Orthodoxy moved into their own prayer hall in Spornmachergasse. On Pogrom Night, the Frankfurt synagogue was set on fire, but not completely destroyed. In the 1950s, the demolition of the still standing components took place.