Germany: Tiny synagogue in Gleusdorf — out of use as a synagogue since 1909 — is conserved as info center on rural Jewish life

(JHE) — The tiny former synagogue in the Bavarian village of Gleusdorf — out of use as a synagogue for more than a century — has been refurbished and will open in the spring as an information center about local rural Jewish life and history. 

Structural work was completed in April, and organizers told JHE that informational panels that will be placed in the building are now being prepared. 

The synagogue has been owned since 2016 by the Untermerzbach municipality, which sponsors and oversees the €174,000 project. Funding includes a €87,500 grant from the EU’s LEADER funding program for the development of the rural economy. 

The synagogue will be operated in cooperation with the Friends of the Synagogue association in nearby Memmelsdorf, and the preservation concept accords with that of the Memmelsdorf synagogue –“conservation instead of reconstruction” —  that is, not to reconstruct or restore the building, but to conserve it in a way that shows the history of what it has gone through.

In addition the building adjacent to the synagogue (believed to have been a Jewish home) is also being refurbished to serve as a space for events, with toilets and other amenities for use by hikers and other tourists.

A Jewish presence in Gleusdorf was documented from the 16th century, but the community never amounted to more than a few families. The synagogue was built in around 1856/57, when the community was at its height — just over 50 people.  Munich Jewish Museum Director Bernhard Purin told JHE that it was the smallest synagogue in Bavaria.

The last Jewish family left Gleusdorf in 1909 and the Jewish community was official dissolved. The synagogue was sold, and under private ownership it served over the next decades as a workshop, storehouse and, most recently, for agricultural purposes.

The village was home to the ancestors of the American Morgenthau political and cultural “dynasty,” dating back to Moises Morgenthau, who was born in Gleusdorf in 1773.

See details of the aims of the project, on the municipality web site