Humboldttempel

The Humboldttempel stood in Vienna’s 10th district, a single-storey brick synagogue with a central dome and four onion domes on its corners. Designed by Jakob Gartner, it rose on Humboldtplatz in 1896 beside the Humboldtgasse. The building combined Romanesque arches with the onion shapes favoured in eastern European synagogues. The congregation was founded in 1876 under president Benjamin Seher and three rabbis—David Löwy, Aron Levi Mandel and Albert Weiner—oversaw its rites. On 10 May 1898 the cornerstone was laid with public ceremony. Inside, the ground floor held 428 seats and the galleries another 277. In November 1938 the temple was wrecked during the pogrom. Today the site is a quiet square where the outline of the building is marked in paving stones. A plaque lists the names of the three rabbis and the president. Visitors can stand on the former bimah space and look across the Humboldtplatz to the tenements that once framed the skyline.