Young volunteers are restoring the one-time synagogue in a centuries-old building in Dernau, on the Ahr River in western Germany, that suffered serious damage in devastating floods that swept the area in 2021. The next volunteer restoration camp is scheduled for June 8-28, with a focus on the restoration of the roof.
According to the German Foundation for Monuments Protection, the synagogue was set up in 1796 on the upper floor of a half-timbered house that was already more than 100 years old. It was used for worship until the mid-1850s and then was sold to non-Jewish owners in 1896. For many decades the building has been the home of Auguste “Gustel” Lindener, now 85, who escaped the flood by hiding in the attic.
The Foundation said that the destruction caused by the flood uncovered previously hidden details of the building’s history, “which can now be restored in accordance with the preservation of historical monuments.”
The two-story plastered half-timbered building is covered by a gable roof. The homeowners’ apartment was on the ground floor, and the prayer room with more than 20 seats was on the upper floor. The ceiling of the prayer room is designed as a Cologne ceiling [a typical style with plastered beams, with rounded-ended spaces between the beams] and was fortunately preserved; the flood level stopped 5 centimeters below the ceiling! Next to the entrance to the prayer hall there was a room used as a school hall; the women of the Jewish community probably sat in a small room adjoining the prayer hall during services. Today it is no longer possible to say with certainty where the mikveh was located.
Last year, 10 participants in the volunteer work camp restored the ceiling. They also resealed walls with clay bricks, using traditional building materials such as clay and straw.
“The flood in 2021 badly hit and damaged the structure,” the Foundation said. “Bit by bit, the youth Flood Aid Mobile Team, which was set up in 2022 by the German Foundation for Monument Protection, began to chip away at the sodden plaster and repair the many damaged areas on the building’s framework that were revealed underneath. During the flood relief camp in 2023, 10 committed camp participants reinstalled a clay bar ceiling based on the historical model, thereby bringing the repair of the building a lot forward.”
Flash floods inundated parts of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands in mid-July, 2021 triggered by torrential rain that caused rivers and streams to overflow their banks and ravage towns and villages, leaving many places under water and debris. Burst dams and landslides added to the devastation. More than 200 people lost their lives.
The Ahr River valley was hardest-hit flood region — we posted about the damage to Jewish cemetery and synagogue in the riverside town of Ahrweiler HERE and HERE.
The Foundation used its emergency aid program to provide the region financial and advisory help in saving and preserving buildings damaged in the flood. To provide further support, it then set up a “Mobile Flood Relief Team”, which has been providing active support with reconstruction measures since the autumn of 2021.
The Dernau synagogue restoration is one of around 20 projects this year in which the 300 participants of the youth flood relief camps are working.