Hradec Králové Synagogue

Hradec Králové. Academy of Fine Metalwork. Synagogue. K. K. & Co. Posted on 16 December 1913.

Inaugurated on 24 September 1905, the new synagogue in Königgrätz (Hradec Králové), which—as this card shows rather nicely—fit seamlessly into the architecture dominating the city’s inner ring, survived the German occupation. Previously used first as an academic library and then as a bookstore, the property was apparently returned to the Czech Jewish community in 2007.

On the eve of the First World War, the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire comprised the territory of what are now Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, parts of southern Poland and western Ukraine, the northwestern half of Romania, the northern third of Serbia, and South Tyrol (now the Italian region of Alto Adige). It had almost 53 million inhabitants, including roughly two million Jews (some four per cent of the population on average). For German-speaking Austrians, the name Königgrätz (Hradec Králové), located roughly 100 kilometres east of Prague, held a particular significance: it was just outside the city that, in 1866, Prussian-led troops decisively defeated Austria and its allies in the so-called First War of German Unification, putting Prussia rather than Austria in charge of the process leading to the creation of the first German nation state in 1871.