Qualla: Glockengasse Synagogue

Glockengasse Synagogue: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Julius Deutsch, Public domain. There is no synagogue at Glockengasse in Cologne any more. The site is occupied by the modernist Cologne Opera House on Offenbachplatz, and on the façade is a bronze plaque that tells passers-by what used to be there. In 1861, on the site of the former Monastery of St. Clarissa, the architect Ernst Friedrich Zwirner - the same man whose plans were then crowning the long-stalled Cologne Cathedral - completed a synagogue for the Jewish community of Cologne. It had a forty-metre dome, four minaret-shaped towers, a horseshoe-arched Torah ark in white Carrara marble, and stucco work modelled on the Alhambra in Granada. It stood for seventy-seven years. On the night of 9 November 1938, during the Nazi pogrom now known as Kristallnacht, it was destroyed.

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Image: Julius Deutsch | Public domain

Glockengasse Synagogue: A Gift from the Oppenheims

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Druck einer Liithographie nach einer Zeichnung von Peter Parrit (19.Jh.), Public domain. The community had been meeting in a small prayer hall on the same site since the years of the French occupation, but the building was declared unsafe and closed in 1853. In June 1856 the Jewish communal executive board debated whether to rebuild on Glockengasse or move elsewhere....

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Image: Druck einer Liithographie nach einer Zeichnung von Peter Parrit (19.Jh.) | Public domain

Glockengasse Synagogue: Moorish Cologne

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit unknown, Public domain. Zwirner had designed something extraordinary. The floor plan was a Greek cross under a central dome - the first synagogue in this form, recalling Byzantine churches but adapted to Jewish use, with the bimah placed under the dome in the centre of the room as Orthodox tradition req...

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Image: unknown | Public domain

Glockengasse Synagogue: The Night of November Ninth

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Julius Deutsch, Public domain. On the evening of 9 November 1938 and into the early hours of the tenth, organised mobs across Germany and Austria attacked synagogues, Jewish-owned shops, homes, and schools. The pogrom was directed from Berlin, carried out by SA paramilitaries and ordinary citizens, and tolerat...

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Image: Julius Deutsch | Public domain

Glockengasse Synagogue: What Remains

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Plups, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the war the rubble was cleared, the site rebuilt, and in 1957 the modernist Cologne Opera House by Wilhelm Riphahn opened on Offenbachplatz, occupying part of the synagogue's footprint. A bronze plaque on the opera house façade marks what stood there. The synagogue has been...

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Image: Plups | CC BY-SA 3.0