Symbols of Emancipation - Nineteenth-Century Syangogues in the Czech Lands
Symbols of Emancipation - Nineteenth-Century Syangogues in the Czech Lands

Summary/Abstract: In the spring and summer of this year (21 March – 4 August 2013), the Jewish Museum in Prague held the exhibition Symbols of Emancipation – Nineteenth-Century Synagogues in the Czech Lands at the Robert Guttmann Gallery. This show featured for the first time a large group of synagogue buildings, particularly from the period of architectural historicism in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as depicted in historical documents – photographs, postcards and plans. This was a time when the Jewish population of the Czech lands finally achieved legal equality and underwent its largest ever economic and cultural development. This period saw rapid growth in the Jewish population, as well as the emergence of many new communities in large industrial and commercial centers where for many centuries Jews had been prohibited from living. In the last third of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, in particular, new communities built opulent temples on the new avenues of rapidly expanding cities, often with one or two towers in the façade or with a dome above the central space. These buildings played an important role in the integration of the new communities.

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