The Neue Synagoge (“New Synagogue”) was built 1859–1866 as the main synagogue of the BerlinJewish community, on Oranienburger Straße. Because of its eastern Moorish style and resemblance to the Alhambra, it is an important architectural monument of the second half of the 19th century in Berlin. Jewish services are now held again in the New Synagogue; the congregation is the Berlin community’s sole Masorti synagogue. Most of the building, however, houses offices and a museum. The dome may also be visited.
The building was designed by Eduard Knoblauch. Following Knoblauch’s death in 1865, Friedrich August Stüler took responsibility for the majority of its construction as well as for its interior arrangement and design. It was inaugurated in the presence of Count Otto von Bismarck, then Minister President of Prussia, in 1866. One of the few synagogues to survive Kristallnacht, it was badly damaged prior to and during World War II and subsequently much was demolished; the present building on the site is a reconstruction of the ruined street frontage with its entrance, dome and towers, and only a few rooms behind. It is truncated before the point where the main hall of the synagogue began.
The front of the building, facing Oranienburger Straße, is polychrome brickwork, richly ornamented with sculpted bricks and terracotta, accented by coloured glazed bricks. Beyond the entrance, the building’s alignment changes to mesh with pre-existing structures. The synagogue’s main dome, with its gilded ribs, is an eye-catching landmark. The central dome is flanked by two smaller pavilion-like domes on the two side-wings. Beyond the façade was the front hall and the main hall with 3,000 seats. Due to the unfavourable alignment of the property, the building’s design required adjustment along a slightly turned axis.
The Neue Synagoge is also a monument of early iron construction. The new building material was visible in the outside columns, as well as in the dome’s construction. Iron was also a core component for the now-lost floor structure of the main hall.
