History of the
Bornplatz Synagogue
1906 - today
Inauguration and buildings
In 1902, the Jewish Community of Hamburg acquired a building site from the council at Bornplatz. The on-site construction of the synagogue began in 1904 according to the plans of the architects, Ernst Friedheim and Semmy Engel. The building comprised a total of 1,200 seats for worshippers - 700 for men and 500 for women.
The Bornplatz Synagogue was inaugurated on September 13th 1906.
It was the first synagogue in Hamburg to be built widely visibly and free-standing on a public square. It was designed in Neo-Romanesque style, combining Romanesque elements, such as the round arches, with Gothic ones - the rosettes or the tracery in the windows. A sign that this synagogue's architecture was created at the same time as the precursors of modernism, was the simple, reduced exterior design of the massive walls with their smooth surfaces. At the time of the contruction, the combination of Romanesque and Gothic forms was seen as a typical 'German style' of architecture. A clear symbol that the Jewish community of the time wanted to express its belongingness to the German nation and its claim of equal rights as citizens.
The Bornplatz Synagogue was crowned by a powerful dome raised slightly upwards, gilded with a Star of David. The brown-coloured dome was 39 meters high and visible from afar.
Next to the Bornplatz Synagogue there was a community center. It was easy to recognize the urban unity of the buildings, the common style of architecture, but still a clear demarcation between the sacral synagogue building and the outer communal building. The annex contained administrative rooms, a weekday synagogue, the mikveh (ritual immersion bath), a reading and study room and a few other utility rooms.
Virtual tour
Destruction under National Socialism
On November 9th 1938, at 11:55 p.m., the Gestapo office in Hamburg received a telex from the Berlin headquarters of the secret state police, which announced 'actions against Jews'; in particular against synagogues natinwide. The order also included that these 'actions' should not be disrupted and that only the uniformed police force had to ensure that no looting should take place.
On the same night, at 1:20 a.m., the Hamburg Gestapo received a telex from Berlin with the order that as many Jews should be arrested as could be brought into custody to the existing detention rooms. In Hamburg, in the early morning hours of November 10th, SA commandos moved out, destroyed synagogues, administrative buildings of the Jewish communities, as well as shops and private homes of Jewish Hamburgians.
At around 6 o'clock the following morning, flames were observed in the Bornplatz Synagogue. A group of people had gathered in front of the Great Synagogue: windows were thrown in and fires were set alight. Rioters invaded the synagogue and desecrated the Torah and other religious objects. It wasn't until 9:50 p.m. - almost 16 hours after the start of the first fire - that the local fire department reported that a small fire had broken out in the synagogue on Bornplatz.
At 6 pm on November 10th 1938, the end of the riots were officially announced on the radio. But the end of plundering and pillage did neither mean the protection of synagogues, nor the end of the police operation toarrest people. Some Jewidh citizens took their own lives to avoid arrest, torture or being detained at a concentration camp.
Not only synagogues, but also many Jewish businesses were destroyed in the pogrom of November 1938. It was therefore euphemistaclly known as 'Kristallnacht' - the night of broken glass.
In 1939, the Jewish Community was forced to resell the property at Bornplatz to the City of Hamburg at a low price and had even to bear the costs of demolishing the damaged synagogue.
Post-war period: Law and morality?
After 1945, the injustice was not over. The procedures for the restitution of robbed Jewish property were sometimes left to pre-encumbered officials. In a report on the city government dealings with Bornplatz, Hamburg historian and archivist Jürgen Sielemann. He described how officials reduced the value of the property. According to the city's district office of Eimsbüttel, it was classified as a 'rubble property', which generally was regarded as 'unusable'. But: The neighbouring university needed the space for extension buildings. By 1942, a high bunker had been built on the square, which the university was already using as an office building. The rest of the area became a parking lot.
The new Jewish community, which was ardously founded by a few dozen Holocaust survivors, reclaimed the property in 1949. But the tax authority did not negotiate with her at all, but stuck with the Jewish Trust Corporation for Germany (JTC). The trust organization had permission from the British military government to represent the claims Jewish property with no clear status of ownership.
In the municipal real estate devision, the government official Hans-Jochen Rechter was involved in the negotiations. The same official who was responsible for the forced sale of Jewish properties during the Nazi era. According to Historian Sielemann, one of the 'most fatal examples of continuity of personell' in Hamburg's post-war administration.
The city's legal section stated that the demolition of the synagogue was ordered 'not by the Hanseatic City of Hamburg', but by the Reichsstatthalter - the deputy official of the Reich - as if this could absolve it of its responsibility. In 1953, the Hanseatic City and the JTC finally reached a settlement; an extremely advantageous deal for Hamburg: For a lump sum of 1.8 million Deutschmarks, the JTC transferred 150 'Aryanized' Jewish properties to the city, many of them in prime locations, and waived any further claims.
The city paid 1.5 million Deutschmarks for ten other Jewish-owned properties, including the Bornplatz Synagogue property and the neighboring school, the Talmud-Tora Realschule. In state parliament, the governemnt of the time admitted that the purchase price was below the market value. Historian Sielemann calls the package agreement therefore 'a scandal'. The property belonged to the city until 2023, when it was returned. The school buildings were handed back to the Jewish community in 2002.
More than a thousand synagogues were set on fire and destroyed during the pogroms of 1938. In the meantime, destroyed synagogues in many German cities have partly been rebuilt on their historic sites, for example in 2001 in Dresden, 2006 in Munich, 2007 in Bochum, 2010 in Mainz and 2019 in Regensburg.
Hamburg - in comparison took a particularly long time. A city which had the fourth-largest Jewish community in Germany before 1933. To this day, worshippers have to come to terms with an unsightly new building in a quiet residential area to attend service.In fact, very few people know that there is a Jewish house of worship located there. The city covered the expenses when the synagogue was built in 1958. The synagogue is now in a state of dilapidation; in 2013, it had to be renovated for around two million euros.
The current square
Today, the square of the former Bornplatz Synagogue is a memorial site, an unbuilt, once empty spot. In 1988, a floor mosaic by Margit Kahl was set into the floor of the square, which depicts the floor plan and the vaulted ceiling of the demolished synagogue through gray stones.
In addition, the square was renamed 'Joseph-Carlebach-Platz' and a memorial plaque was placed with the inscription: 'May the future save descendants from injustice.'
Since 2004, there has been another free-standing memorial plaque which provides information on the history of the synagogue and the memorial site on the front and back.
In Hamburg, a public debate arose at the end of 2019 regarding a possible reconstruction of the synagogue, for which a motion for a feasibility study was unanimously adopted by the Hamburg state parliament in February 2020.
The initiative 'No to Antisemitism. Yes to the Bornplatz Synagogue' was formed, collecting over 100,000 signatures, videos, and photos from Hamburg residents.
A feasibility study conducted in 2022 concluded positively for the reconstruction - based on historical models - and paving the way for the construction of a new synagogue in the Grindel quarter.
In autumn of 2023, preparatory excavations took place on Joseph-Carlebach-Platz, uncovering and preserving, among other things, the foundations of the former Bornplatz Synagogue and evidence of Jewish life in the community at that time.
In November 2023, the federal government approved 13.2 million euros for an architectural competition, which was held in 2024.
In September of 2025 the winner of the architectural competition was announced.
Interview with Daniel Sheffer about the new Bornplatz Synagogue
An interview with the founder of the 'Initiative for the Reconstruction of the Bornplatz Synagogue' Daniel Sheffer
Download PressekitInterview
An interview with the founder of the 'Bornplatz Synagogue Reconstruction Initiative' Daniel Sheffer
What triggered the creation of the 'Bornplatz Synagogue Reconstruction Initiative'?
“For the founding of the “Bornplatz Synagogue Reconstruction Initiative,” I had a deep desire to preserve memory, honor the past and shape a hopeful future of Jewish life in Hamburg and Germany. I and my colleagues were aware of the importance of the Jewish heritage in Hamburg, but we also understood that the history of this once magnificent synagogue is inextricably linked with the dark chapters of the past. ”
What role did the “Crown of the Bornplatz Synagogue” play in this and what does it mean?
“A few months before the initiative was founded, I discovered the so-called “Crown of the Bornplatz Synagogue” at an antique dealer in Hamburg in late summer 2020. The valuable crown once adorned the Torah Scroll in the former Bornplatz Synagogue.
It was, so to speak, the only surviving, silent witness of the 1938 Reichspogrom Night, during which the Bornplatz Synagogue was forcibly plundered and destroyed. And now, after more than 80 years later, it came back into our lives and I held it in my hands in amazement. It was a very emotional moment. ”
What was the next step?
I wanted to save the crown for our community and had to buy it first. Which - to be honest - still makes me pretty angry. I - a Hamburgian of Jewish faith - had to acquire the Nazi loot! A piece of of the plundering and pillage that was demonstrably stolen from my ancestors in Nazi Germany from the former Bornplatz Synagogue. That felt very wrong.
And this injustice then gave the impetus to found the initiative with the campaign 'No, to Anti-Semitism. Yes, to the Bornplatz Synagogue'?
That's right. In many conversations within but especially outside the Jewish community, I felt people's desire that hate, discrimination or simple ignorance should have no future in our city. We are experiencing an increasing number of anti-Semitic crimes and are experiencing how dangerous it is to wear a kipa or even a Star of David in public. Because of this still sad reality and because of the discovery of the Crown, I then founded the “Bornplatz Synagogue Reconstruction Initiative” with great co-initiators.
However, the initiative's core team did not primarily consist of political or communication professionals, but mostly Hamburgers from the middle of our society who were involved in the campaign and initiative. Mothers and fathers of families, students, politicians and entrepreneurs.
Everyone found the fact that the Bornplatz Synagogue is still destroyed and that even the property, over the years, has still not been returned to the Jewish Community.
And it then became the most successful campaign for “Jewish Life” that has ever taken place in Hamburg and presumably Germany. More than 100,000 supporters - including the current Federal Chancellor, the Lord and Deputy Mayor, as well as other representatives from politics, culture, sport, religion, business and trade unions - accompanied and promoted the campaign.
Why was the response so great?
I think the tremendous support for this initiative reflects the belief that the destruction of the past can create a new splendor. However, many people also think that it is primarily about the law and visibility of Jewish life. The encouragement stands for the will to build a bridge between generations and to learn from history in order to build a better future. The reconstruction of the Bornplatz Synagogue is an opportunity for a visible and tangible Jewish future in Hamburg.
In autumn 2020, 600,000 euros were approved by the federal government for a feasibility study, which was intended to examine whether it was possible to rebuild the Bornplatz Synagogue. The result was - “Yes, it is possible.” What are the next concrete steps and financing?
The study was preceded by an intensive process of discovery and consultation within the Jewish Community, the “Reconstruction of the Bornplatz Synagogue” initiative and major authorities and representatives of our city. The feasibility of a close architectural relationship between the synagogue up to 1939 and the synagogue to be rebuilt as well as the integration into the historic building ensemble in Grindel was one result of the study. At the same time, however, it was also examined what the synagogue could look like from the inside, i.e. how space could be provided for the traditional Jewish liturgy and for the Reformed liturgy in Judaism.
These results can now be translated into concrete spatial planning, with an architectural competition, construction planning, etc. We place particular emphasis on early and open communication with our neighbors and residents.
We don't want to wait here for construction to start in order to be back at home in the Grindelviertel. Starting in 2024 - and therefore probably years before construction starts - we will create cultural diversity and an opportunity to meet people with events on Bornplatz.
The 'Bornplatz Synagogue Foundation' was founded in May 2021. Why was this step necessary and what is the Foundation's work?
The foundation anchors the future of the Bornplatz Synagogue in Hamburg's institutions. The Board of Trustees promotes construction and communication with all key stakeholders in the city and in particular local residents. For the future, the tasks of financing the company, in particular the program for meeting and experiencing Jewish life in the middle of our city and thus in the middle of our society, will be much more permanent.
It was important to us that federal, state and Jewish and non-Jewish people were represented on the Board of Trustees of the New Bornplatz Synagogue. Jewish life in Germany is life in an extraordinary minority. In post-1945 Germany, less than 0.2% of the current population is Jewish. For most members of the Jewish community, life in Germany is, of course, living together with non-Jews. We therefore want to tackle this major project together with our neighbors, the City of Hamburg and the Federal Republic of Germany.