Intelligenztempel

The Intelligenztempel (Tiergarten Locality, Central Berlin)

The synagogue association of the Moabit locality of Berlin was formed in 1895, and renamed the synagogue association of Moabit and Hansa (another Berlin locality) in 1903. Services were held in two rooms on the ground floor of a building owned by Mr. Louis Brockmann, a prominent member of the association who, in 1898, gave permission for a synagogue to be built in the yard of his property on the corner of Flensburger Strasse and Lessingstrasse. Construction of the modest, 250-seat synagogue began in the summer of 1909 and was completed in 1910, at which point the new synagogue was inaugurated. The house of worship became known as the Intelligenztempel (“temple of the intelligentsia”) for many of its members were academics: it is rumored that Albert Einstein attended services there, as did Professor Ismar Ellenbogen, spokesman of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (or “Judaic Studies”) movement. Rabbi Chaim Heinrich Cohn, the community’s last rabbi, served until 1939, when he immigrated to England. The Intelligenztempel synagogue was burned on Pogrom Night and torn down in the summer of 1939. The site on which the building once stood is now the front garden of number 6 Lessingstrasse (previously number 19). Many of the synagogue’s congregants were deported to and murdered in the camps. A memorial site at Levetzowstrasse, the location of one of Berlin’s largest former synagogues and the site from which Jews were rounded up for deportation, contains a plaque in memory of the Flensburger Strasse/Lessingstrasse synagogue.
Moshe Finkel
Copyright: Pogrom Night 1938 - A Memorial to the Destroyed Synagogues of Germany/ Germansynagogues.com

Notes

Sources: Synagogen in Berlin: Zur Geschichte einer zerstörten Architektur, Rolf Bothe [Ed.], [publisher] Willmürth Arenhövel, 1983., Guide to Jewish Berlin: History and the Present, Vera Bendt, Nicola Galliner Thomas Jersch, Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, Carolin Hilker-Siebenhaar [Ed.], [Publisher] Verlag Nicolai, 1987.; www.luise-berlin.de

Details

Date Added Jan 22, 2020
Category Synagogue
Country DE
State Berlin
City Berlin
Exhibits Pogrom Night 1938 - A Memorial to the Destroyed Synagogues of Germany

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