A synagogue was already present in Usingen at the beginning of the 19th century, although it was probably a prayer room in one of the Jewish residential houses. In 1852, a new synagogue and worship order was issued. In 1877 the synagogue was in such a dilapidated condition that it could not be renovated.

In the course of the November pogrom in 1938, the building was broken up, whereupon the interior furnishings and prayer books were destroyed and the Torah scrolls were thrown into the street.

Only towards the end of the 19th century again a Jewish community called "Israelitische Vereinigung" was established in a rented room of a back house in the Pauritzer Gasse (today's Pauritzer Straße), to which largely Jewish families from Eastern European countries belonged. The first influx of Jewish families began in the late 1860s. In 1868, a Wilhelm Wolff registered a text business in Altenburg. From the association an independent religious community was formed at the end of the 1920s.

During the Thirty Years' War (1620/21), four Jews were allowed to settle in the area of the German court. 
It is unknown whether Jewish persons/families actually settled.

1418 lived in Altenburg 14 men considered as taxpayers.
. Eight of them supported themselves - on a small scale - from the money trade. Also a butcher selling only to Jews (Fleischsnider of the Jews) is mentioned. In this period the Jewish families formed a small community, which probably had a prayer room (synagogue) in Johannisgasse (probably in today's Johannisstraße 31). After 1430, the Jews of Altenburg were probably expelled. In the middle of the 15th century, no Jews lived in the city anymore. 

In 1367, the Jew Merkel von Altenburg was admitted as a citizen in Erfurt. 
By 1404, another four Jews with the name of origin von Altenburg were mentioned in Erfurt.

Jäckel von Altenburg perished in Eger in the course of the persecution of the Jews during the plague.