Breslau Synagogue
Greetings from Breslau. Synagogue. St Cross Church and Cathedral. Barasch Brothers Department Store. Tauentzien Square. Published by Kunst- und Verlagsanstalt S. Schottlaender, Breslau. The handwriting on the card is dated 4 November 1898.
The new main synagogue in Breslau (now the Polish city of Wrocław), the industrial, commercial and cultural centre of Lower Silesia, was one of the largest and most impressive in Germany. Located at Anger 8, it was frequently referred to as the Synagoge am Anger (Synagogue by the Common). Designed by Edwin Oppler (1831–1880) to accommodate some 1,800 worshippers, it was officially inaugurated in 1872 by the congregation’s two rabbis: Rabbi Gedalja Tiktin (1808–1886, representing the orthodox stream in the congregation) and Manuel Joël (1826–1890, for the more reform-oriented stream). At the time, roughly 14,000 Jews lived in the city. Oppler was one of Germany’s foremost Jewish architects. Based in Hannover, he worked extensively for the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie but also designed half a dozen synagogues including those in Hannover and Breslau (seen here). None of them survived the Nazis’ onslaught. His work marked a caesura in German synagogue architecture in that Oppler rejected the widespread reliance on neo-Moorish motifs and instead sought to develop a primarily neo-Romanesque form of synagogue architecture. It is presumably no coincidence that this caesura coincided with the acceleration and completion of the process of German unification. In the November pogrom of 1938, the synagogue was ransacked and set alight. While the fire severely damaged the synagogue and its dome collapsed, it took the authorities until May 1939 to pull down the remaining structure and dispose of the rubble.
The postcard shows the old Barasch Brothers department store. In 1904, Artur and Georg Barasch inaugurated a flash new art nouveau building designed by Georg Schneider. It was badly damaged in the war but survived and subsequently reopened as the Feniks department store. The department store was “aryanized” in 1936, when Heinrich Münstermann and Gustav Haedecke acquired it for less than half its actual value. Ironically, the store was nevertheless attacked during the November pogrom of 1938. Georg Barasch apparently made it to Ecuador and died there in 1943. Artur Barasch was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942.
Salo Schottlaender (1844–1920) was one of the younger siblings of Julius Schottlaender (1835–1911), Breslau’s wealthiest businessman and most prolific philanthropist. Salo Schottlaender’s publishing business, established in 1876, focussed mainly on high-quality novels by authors such Theodor Fontane and Karl Emil Franzos. Its non-fiction authors included Ludwig Philippson, Max Nordau and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. The book publishing business went public as Schlesische Buchdruckerei (Silesian Bookprinting) in 1889, but a separate publishing firm under Schottlaender’s name continued to operate alongside this enterprise until 1906. It then merged with Harmonie, a publishing business focussing on sheet music and miscellaneous more humorous products that was run by Alexander Jadassohn (1873–1948). Jadassohn fled to New York in 1938, his busines was snapped up by the music publisher Rudolf Eichmann. Post-war attempts by Jadassohn’s heirs to reclaim the publishing enterprise apparently failed.
