Built to heal

Built
to heal
German architect builds synagogues to represent life
after Holocaust
…………………………………………………………………

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff

The leading designer
and architect of synagogues in Germany is quick to point
out that his buildings are not “Holocaust monuments.”

“Many of
the people who go in these synagogues and pray lived through
the Holocaust,” said Alfred Jacoby. “Why make
them relive it? It is more important to have a vision of
the future.”

Jacoby spoke
at Rice’s School of Architecture Sept. 5 in conjunction
with a photo exhibit that will be on display through Nov.
30 at Margolis Gallery at Congregation Beth Israel, 5600
Braeswood Blvd. Titled “In a New Spirit: Synagogues
of Germany,” the exhibit features contemporary synagogues
designed by Jacoby, whose parents survived the Polish Holocaust
and moved to Germany in 1946 — four years before Jacoby
was born.
Some of the synagogues Jacoby has built are located on former
grounds of synagogues destroyed during the Nazi era, but
they bear little resemblance to their predecessors.

“The synagogues
before the war were bombastic,” Jacoby said. “They
used gold or gold-plated materials and could seat 3,000
people.”

Noting that
synagogues have traditionally made a statement about what
it was like to live as a Jew in Germany at the time they
were built, he said it would be inappropriate to use lavish
materials today, when 70,000 of the 100,000 Jews in Germany
are on social welfare.

“There
is a rift in the history of these buildings and the people
they represent,” Jacoby said. “You can’t
go back to early synagogue tradition because it would ignore
the terrible historical event called the Holocaust that
really changed everything.”
Jacoby sees his synagogues as part of a long-term healing
process. They acknowledge that something has been broken
and needs to be healed.
“My buildings try to show that they open up to the
urban fabric that they are in,” he said. “The
major merit is that their outside and inside are in harmony
with each other. It’s not superficial on the surface.
If you come inside, you will feel this.”
Jacoby likes to use wood because it’s a live material,
and he likes the synagogues to be full of light. “I
don’t want people to feel like they’re in a morgue,”
he said.
Sometimes his design evolves as the solution to a problem.
He built a synagogue in Aachen, Germany, on the edge of
a town square that had been destroyed. A strategically placed
window allows people within the synagogue to look out and
see how the building repairs the square.

The German government
is paying for the synagogues that Jacoby has built. “The
government feels an obligation to replace the synagogues
since it cannot replace the people,” he said.

A professor
of architecture at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, Jacoby
said his involvement with designing and building synagogues
in Germany came “by chance, like everything in life.”
Being one of the few Jewish architects in Germany who were
trained after World War II, he was invited to enter a competition
in the city of Darmstadt. The synagogue he built there won
the competition, and he has since designed 11 more and built
seven more.

The synagogue
Jacoby now is building has a personal meaning because it
is located in an area of Chemnitz that the Communists occupied
in East Germany and wouldn’t allow Jews to build there.
“That’s where my grandmother came from,”
Jacoby recalled. He designed this one with a prayer room
next to a shrine for a dialogue with God. The building should
be completed by March 2002.

The photo exhibit
of Jacoby’s work is being presented by Margolis Gallery,
Rice’s School of Architecture, the Goethe Center for
Central European Studies at Rice and the Consulate General
of the Federal Republic of Germany. For museum hours see
the Exhibits section of the Calendar on page 7.