Architecture: Filmic Portraits of Selected Buildings in Germany

Its expressive character sets the new synagogue in Mainz apart from attempts by high-profile contemporary architects to achieve recognition through spectacular architecture. Its forms are significant and are rooted in the spirit and function of the site.

Passers-by are of divided opinion. Reactions range from being pleased about the new attraction in what is otherwise a rather boring district to outright hostility towards the “bunker”. Although in this instance “bunker” is more of an everyday synonym for something strange that people don’t want to deal with. The thing is, the building is in no way dull and hermetically sealed. And the tricks the sun gets up to with the new Mainz synagogue are truly something out of the ordinary.

But let’s look back. It was in 1999 that Manuel Herz, a lecturing architect from Cologne who now lives in Zurich, won an architectural competition for the new Mainz synagogue with an extraordinary sculptural design. The term “building” may not suit the dynamic structural sculpture, it is a work of art for which there is virtually no precedent. You have to go right back to the twenties and take a look at the work of the Dutch De Stijl group or the expressionists from the Gläserne Kette (Glass Chain) architects’ group to come across a similar expression of form. However it was not the artistic excitement that was the actual driving force for the architect.



The form originates from its symbolism, the building is absolutely loaded in a semantic sense. The architect has translated the five letters from the Hebrew concept of kedusha (sanctity) into the building structure, thus forming the five sections of the building and lining them up to create a layout with three folds. The tallest part of the building is the letter kuf with its breathtaking skylight that rises to the East. It is meant to be reminiscent of the shofar , the ram’s horn that was used to call the community together in former times.

Hebrew letters

The shimmering golden walls inside the prayer room are strewn with Hebrew characters, which are used like fabric decoration and only occasionally come together to form sentences. They are Piyutim, religious poems by scribe and philosopher Gershom Ben Judah (960–1040), who taught in Mainz. Letters become words, words become walls. Even the benches speak, they have the shape of the character lamed in cross-section.



The script is the one thing in the fate of Judaism that is dependable and eternal. And the Hebrew letters have an object character. The term for “word” (davar) also means “thing”. In this way the architect, in the absence of original building types and traditions for synagogue construction, has made use of the alphabet to create space for community life – space that offers a home and sense of security.

The bizarre forms of the abstracted letters that form the building are accented further by the façade design. The façade is made up of areas of glazed majolica ribs, which depending on the weather sometimes absorb the light to seem almost black and bottomless like a leaden lake, and other times shine like fire in the sun to display an ever-changing puzzle in hues of green, blue and yellow, resembling a three-dimensional, exaggerated interpretation of the famous pages from the 1942 series Grafische Tektonik (Graphic Tectonics) by Josef Albers. Graffiti sprayers back off in disheartenment, because they can’t keep up with that. But so far they have even spared the entrance, a massive gate made from cast aluminium, decorated with Hebrew letters of course, spelling out “Synagogue of Mainz, Light of the Diaspora”.

Spatial diversity

The oblique offset windows framed with the expressive ribbed fields inspire curiosity about its interior. The two-storey foyer displays the spatial diversity you would expect, the eyes are drawn outside to the garden, up to the glazed gallery with the community rooms on the upper level, as well as to the synagogue room on the right-hand side. The prayer room with the bima (lectern) and Aron Hadokesh, the Holy Ark containing the Torah, on the front wall, surrounded on three sides by a gallery, is bathed in zenith light from the incredible sweeping funnel-shaped structure, which floods downwards, reflecting many times off the golden walls, to charge the room with an atmospheric intensity.

The function room, which is also used as a kosher restaurant, the community rooms used for seminars, care for the elderly and pre-school facilities, as well as administration offices and a caretaker’s flat, all with the distinctive oblique-angled layout, decorated unpretentiously in white and furnished rather simply, form a contrast to the synagogue. It is the everyday architecture for intensive community life that differentiates the synagogues from the Christian churches in this country.

The synagogue with its expressive character is set apart from all the attempts by high-profile architects – the Gehrys, Hadids and van Berkels – to attract attention with spectacular “signature architecture”, because Manuel Herz’s forms have significance, they are not random, they are rooted in the spirit and function of the site. That makes the building unique in in this day and age.

A functioning part of the city

That just leaves the question of how this constructed creed with its extravagant design looks in its mundane surroundings. At any rate the synagogue does not appear out of place, and that’s down to the way it has been incorporated into the city architecture of Mainz’s Neustadt district. It follows the line of the street and forms an imperceptible continuation of the row of houses along Hindenburgstraße. And its tower forms a very deliberate focus as the destination point for the Josefsstraße axis that runs towards it. There is a square in front of the tower suitable for events, which gives the building the necessary frontal space. A few remaining columns bear witness to the former Mainz main synagogue, which was destroyed in 1938. After the war the main customs office was built here, which has now in turn made way for the new synagogue.

And this is what makes the building such a thing of value for the urban structure and culture, the fact that it is not a vain alien showing off its extravagance, it is a functioning piece of the city with a role as a centre, and please note that it is a characteristic feature in the urban landscape, probably even a landmark, which is certainly going to attract one or two visitors for whom the cathedral and old town are not enough of an architectural experience. It really is assured of a high-ranking position amongst Germany’s new synagogues, which are all of a very high calibre anyway.