New Synagogue Ohel Jakob

The literal ‘homelessness’ of Munich’s Israelite Religious Community after 1945 was emblematic of its community life. After all, it was by no means a matter of course that Jews would want or be able to settle down, make a home and start families back in Germany, much less in Munich, the former ‘Capital of the Movement’: Most Holocaust survivors found the very idea unthinkable. For several decades, the small Jewish community, many of whom saw Germany merely as a temporary stopping point, used the relatively hidden synagogue in Reichenbachstraße.

Jews from Czechoslovakia and Poland had come to Munich during the Cold War, and the community was further expanded by Jews returning from Israel and America. Yet it was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany which proved a turning point for the Israelite Religious Community. Since 1989/90, the Israelite Religious Community in Munich has welcomed an influx of new immigrants from countries such as the former Soviet Union, and is now Germany’s second-largest Jewish community with around 9,500 members. This growth is just one factor that must be accounted for.

The Israelite Religious Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria under its President Charlotte Knobloch laid the foundation stone for the new Jewish Center in 2003, while Munich’s new main synagogue was formally opened on November 9, 2006. The design developed by the Saarbrücken-based architectural firm Wandel Hoefer Lorch (Andrea Wandel, Dr. Rena Wandel-Hoefer, Andreas Hoefer, Prof. Wolfgang Lorch, Hubertus Wandel) picks up on the formal language of the tent and temple, God’s dwelling places in ancient times. However, the name Ohel Jakob (‘Jacob’s tent’) also serves as a reminder of the orthodox synagogue destroyed in 1938. The construction of a new synagogue on Jakobsplatz at the heart of the city of Munich along with a community center linked to the synagogue by a passage symbolizes the integration and acceptance of Jewish life in German society. Memories of the Holocaust and the country’s Nazi past are always kept alive but are not allowed to dominate the present and future of Jewish community life.