Online Archive of Synagogues

From 1999 to 2001, curious about the internet’s new opportunities for memorial culture, Marc Grellert (TU Darmstadt, Digital Design Unit) developed the Online Archive of Synagogues. The database (www.synagogen.info, currently offline) contains basic information on over 2200 synagogues in Germany and Austria that had been in use in 1933. Interested users were able to add comments, images, links, and (survivor) testimonies to the entries. These contributions by individuals were then incorporated directly into the database. A team under Bob Martens (TU Wien) was responsible for the synagogues in Austria. The website synagogen.info is currently offline due to a lack of resources.

The online archive is a means to memorialize more than 2200 synagogues in Germany and Austria that were closed, desecrated, or destroyed under the Nazi regime. The database also provides information about what happened to the buildings that were still standing in 1945, or what was done with the site.

The compilation of extensive information in one database made it possible to filter specific information about these synagogues for the first time, enabling quantitative claims, for example that around 370 synagogues were torn down after 1945.

The sites determined by the Online Archive of Synagogues project formed the basis of the Jewish Places website entries for historical synagogues. Our website on local Jewish historical sites benefited enormously from the event data that the users of synagogen.info had compiled over years. Some event categories, for example “first use,” “destroyed,” and “demolished” could be incorporated directly into the Jewish Places information about synagogues.