Revealed architecture: sacred and secular Jewish buildings in East Prussia

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The research project on Jewish architecture of East Prussia is the first to study the Jewish architecture of a region that has not been taken into consideration systematically until today. The various buildings erected by the Jewish population of East Prussia after the adoption of the Edict of Emancipation in 1812 and until the extermination of the communities by the Nazi regime will be documented, researched and compared. While the history of Jewish architecture in the regions of today's Federal Republic has been and will be considered in numerous research projects and from various points of view, a systematic consideration of the Jewish heritage in East Prussia has hitherto been lacking. This project aims to investigate how the buildings of a social minority in a German border area, which was exposed to different (also architectural) influences from the neighboring countries, developed and to what extent a specific Jewish identity can be revealed. Synagogues, cemetery halls and other ritual buildings – a total of 52 buildings of Jewish community institutions are known, of which 13 are preserved according to current knowledge – but also profane architectures up to housing construction will be examined on an architectural-historical and socio-cultural level. This expands the perspective of the previous research on Jewish architecture, which is primarily focused on religious buildings, towards a comprehensive overall view of Jewish architectural history of this region. In addition, the construction process will be considered – from the choice of land to the planning, approval, selection of craftsmen and financing – with regard to the question of what kind of influence the authorities exercised on the building decisions and the construction process and which craftsmen were commissioned. Regarding the sacred and profane community buildings, aspects of art history will play an important role, too.The project bridges a major gap in the historiography of East Prussian architectural history and general cultural history of East Prussia. At the same time, it will provide an important contribution to the study of the German-Jewish architectural history of the 19th and early 20th centuries.For the first time, a complete survey of the preserved and destroyed Jewish architectural heritage of East Prussia is undertaken. Intense archival studies and documentations on site will be the basis for the research. With the documentation of the extant synagogues that are still threatened by decay and complete annihilation as well as the lodge house in Tilsit, designed by Erich Mendelsohn – one of the most important Jewish architects in the world – the awareness for these buildings will be raised and they will be preserved virtually for posterity.