Synagogue of Baden-Baden

The former synagogue in Baden-Baden stands on Stephanienstraße, a quiet street in the spa town. Built in 1899, it was designed by Ludwig Levy, a respected Jewish architect who had already completed several synagogues across Germany. The building followed a neo-Romanesque style, marked by a large round-arched entrance and a striking rose window on the south side. Its floor plan took the shape of a cross, with a transept and two stair towers leading to the women’s galleries. The adjacent community house served as the centre of Jewish life in the town. The synagogue was destroyed during the November pogrom of 1938, when SS men set fire to the interior after looting its metal ritual objects. Around eighty Jewish men were arrested that day, forced to listen to speeches in the burning building, and later sent to Dachau. The teacher Arthur Flehinger was made to read aloud from Hitler’s Mein Kampf before the violence began. After the fire, the ruins were cleared and the site turned into a car park for many years. Today the empty plot remains open ground, with only a small stone and plaque marking where the building once stood. A taller memorial column on Willy-Brandt-Platz, a few hundred metres away, was recently damaged in an apparent act of vandalism. The surviving architectural drawings and photographs show a graceful, light-filled interior that once served the town’s growing Jewish community.