Anniversary of Anniversaries: Bicentennial of the Synagogue in Ingwiller, France

The year 2022 marks the 10^th anniversary of Jewish Heritage Europe, and we will be celebrating it throughout the year with special content. The theme of JHE’s 10^th birthday celebrations is the “Anniversary of Anniversaries” — that is, using JHE’s own anniversary to feature other significant or symbolic anniversaries related to Jewish heritage that also take place this year.

In this post, we mark the 200th anniversary of the Synagogue in Ingwiller, France.

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(JHE) — A gala ceremony in early July attended by Jewish leaders including France’s Chief Rabbi Haïm Korsia, and civic authorities marked the 200th anniversary of the synagogue in Ingwiller, a town in the Bas-Rhin department in Alsace, in France’s Grand-Est region.

The synagogue was built in 1822 on the ruins of the 15th century castle of the Counts of Lichtenberg, which the Jewish community had acquired earlier.

Only part of the 1822 structure was used for prayer; it was rebuilt as a full-scale synagogue in 1870, when a women’s gallery was also added, and underwent further restructuring in 1891 and 1903. As Jean Daltroff writes, in a history of the Jewish community of Ingwiller on the web site Jewish Heritage in Alsace: 

In 1809 […] the community acquired what remained of the former Lichtenberg castle, built in 1472 and destroyed in 1677. On the old cellar in the Gothic style, a charming 18th century building was erected in 1822, part of the building serving as an oratory. “The oratory was made official by the State as a place of worship around 1870.” It was not until 1870 that a women’s’ gallery was added to the new building, which was not completely transformed until 1891 on the model of the synagogues of Central Europe. The synagogue was endowed in 1903 with its oriental-style bell tower […]

Below its copper-clad bulbous cupola, the tower features a distinctive clock with Hebrew letters, similar to the clock on the Jewish Town Hall in Prague.

The synagogue was ransacked by the Nazis during World War II. Though it was restored somewhat right after the war,  for use by the small Jewish community, the Jewish community dwindled sharply over the next decades.  The building fell into disuse and suffered severe damage from water infiltration and neglect. 

A full-scale restoration of the synagogue was carried out in 2013, thanks to the efforts of the Association of Friends of the Ingwiller Synagogue,  founded in 2009 by Michel Lévy, the last Jewish man living in Ingwiller and the custodian of the site. It was reinaugurated at a gala ceremony in September 2014.

Owned by the Jewish Consistoire of Bas-Rhin, it technically remains an active synagogue, but it is used for cultural events and houses a small permanent exhibition about local Jewish history and heritage.

Watch a video about the 200th anniversary created by local school children, with film of the synagogue and an interview with michel Lévy (in French):

 

Watch a webinar (in French) about the synagogue, by the Consistoire of Bas-Rhin. Hosted by Yoav Rossano: