The long-derelict Fabric Synagogue — designed by Lipot Baumhorn — and other Jewish heritage in Timisoara, Romania are on the 2022 World Monuments Watch: a list compiled by the World Monuments Fund of 25 heritage sites around the world deemed at particularly high risk.
“The selection of the Fabric Synagogue and Jewish Heritage of Timișoara on the World Monuments Watch 2022 will make sure that the synagogue building will be safeguarded and our rich and cherished Jewish Heritage will be preserved and promoted,” Ronald Wagmann, the Project Director for the Timisoara Jewish community told JHE.
The Watch list — compiled every two years — was announced Tuesday (March 1). The Timisoara sites comprise the only Jewish heritage site on the 2022 list, a diverse grouping that ranges from an African modernist building in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to a fortress built by King Henry VIII in the UK, to water fountains in Nepal….
The WMF said the 25 sites were chosen from 225 nominations from 24 countries and encompassed “a broad range of examples of how global challenges manifest and intersect at heritage sites, providing opportunities to improve the lives of communities as they adapt for the future.”
With Timisoara set to become the European Capital of Culture in 2023, the announcement said, the local Jewish community
is leveraging a unique opportunity to bring renewed visibility to local Jewish heritage. Efforts to map Timișoara’s diverse Jewish cultural and religious places are laying the groundwork for impactful storytelling of underrepresented histories.
At the same time, the rehabilitation and reuse of the 1899 Fabric Synagogue can showcase the value of Jewish architectural heritage to contemporary city life.
The so-called Fabric District Synagogue, was built between 1897 and 1899, and today stands in dangerously dilapidated condition. Closed to the public, it is still magnificent, and one of the most distinctive and original buildings in town.
It is one of four synagogue buildigs still standing in Timisoara – only one of them, the Iosefin synagogue, is still in use for worship. The Fabric functioned as an active synagogue until around 50 years ago but closed after the local Jewish population dwindled because of the largescale emigration to Israel and elsewhere.
Lipot Baumhorn — the most prolific synagogue architect in Europe before World War II — was based in Budapest but designed a number of buildings in Timisoara, which lies in western Romania near today’s borders with Hungary and Serbia.
We ran a Have Your Say on the synagogue two years ago (March 2020), in which Eszter Nagy-Tóth and Gábriel Szekély described the Fabric synagogue and its dilapidated state:
The synagogue has a square floor plan with a central dome, connected to the outer walls by deep semi-circular arches. The central dome is high, raised on an octagonal drum, and made of a plastered and painted wooden structure, supported by four pillars.
Baumhorn incorporated several elements of Moorish style, which were widely used in those days to decorate synagogues, but he also added other elements inspired by traditional European architecture, especially by Gothic and Romanesque styles. […]
The roof had been badly damaged by severe water leaks, destroying one side of the balcony completely. However, with the financial help of the local Orthodox Church the roof was fixed, and the interior remains dry. Several of the once grandiose stained glass windows are broken, the beautifully carved furniture is almost all gone.
Still, in spite of the decay, we could recognize neo-romanesque elements (double windows, small decorative column rows), neo-gothic elements (the sculpted rosette windows, the entrance), some Art Nouveau elements (arched volumes, flowers on the windows), and of course the Moorish decorative elements (brick decorations, oriental arches, wrought iron).
The Fabric is the focus of the WMF Watch, though the WMF had contributed toward the restoration of another synagogue, the Citadel synagogue, in 2000. The Citadel was used for services until 1985 and since then for concerts and cultural events. In January 2001, a 50-year agreement was made between the Jewish community and the Philharmonic Society of Timisoara to use the synagogue for musical performances.
Timisoara is one of the nine cities in eight countries that was part of the EU-funded Rediscover Project, a three-year education and tourism project aimed at valorising and promoting local Jewish heritage.
The more than €1.8 million project (with most funding from the European Regional Development Fund) kicked off June 1, 2018 and ran until May 31, 2021. It was implemented by partnerships of local governments, NGOs and Jewish communities in the EU’s Danube Region — an area stretching along the river and its hinterland, from the Black Forest to the Black Sea.
As 2020 was the 160th anniversary of Lipot Baumhorn’s birth, his life and work formed a focus of Rediscover projects — including traveling exhibition.
Read our Have Your Say article about the Fabric Synagogue
Read about the full Watch list
Watch a video about the WMF Watch
3 comments on “Romania: Timisoara’s long-derelict Fabric Synagogue (designed by Lipot Baumhorn) is on the 2022 World Monuments Fund Watch list of world heritage at risk”
Focus on saving Jews and not buildings which Jews no longer use. History is great and valuable but having Jewish philanthropy focus on rebuilding an empty Shule is as unproductive as rebuilding any Jewish Cemetery in a war-torn region of Eastern Europe. As Dara Horn wrote in her recent book, the world loves to memorialise the Dead Jews. I wish the focus was on love for the Jews who are not just survivors but now living a very vibrant and fascinating dynamic mix of Jewish culture in Israel and elsewhere. If there is a cultural history to preserve, why ask the survivors or descendants of persecuted Jews to pay for the restoration work. Let it come from the municipalities and citizens still living there, as we Jews don’t need to create other people’s tourist attractions.
It is about time that someone noticed the exquisite style and beauty of this world class Synagogue, one of the most outstanding in Europe and decided to pay attention to saving her.I spent my childhood at this Synagogue on a daily basis,my uncle Oscar was officiating the divine prayer services and my father Josef Schwartz and grandfather Armin rarely missed one of those!!!
My name is Nicholas Waldmann and I am the proud great-great son of Rabbi Loewy who was, probably, the first rabbi to worship at the Fabrik Synagogue in Timisoara.
My mother Emma was born in Timisoara/Temesvar in September 1908.
Her mother was rabbi Loewy’s oldest daughter, Rachell and her husband, Rabi Joseph Grunfeld of Kiraly Helmet, a suburb of Kosice, Slovakia.
I, my sister Anna as well as my twin brother Otto, are grateful to you magazine for this the wonderful article.