The first report three days after the New Year sounded less than spectacular. The police headquarters in Upper Franconia reported that a “window pane broke” at the synagogue in Ermreuth, probably on New Year’s Eve. Now it turns out that a 21-year-old German is said to be responsible for this. According to SZ information, the investigations revealed that he belonged to the right-wing extremist milieu. The man is said to have been recorded with a camera at the synagogue.
Mayor Martin Walz (CSU) is audibly trying to react calmly to the attack, which is allegedly motivated by right-wing extremists. One does not live in an “ideal world” in the Forchheim district either, he says. For decades there was no such incident in the district of Ermreuth to complain about, after the municipality of Neunkirchen am Brand had converted the synagogue, which had meanwhile been used as a warehouse for agricultural goods and suffered severe damage, into a house of encounter and culture in 1994. This cultural project is highly successful and very well received. In this respect, he had already thought to himself when confronted with the matter at the synagogue: “That doesn’t exist.”
Of course, Walz knows what associations the 800-inhabitant district of Neunkirchen am Brand has. The traces of the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann, which was banned in 1980, led mainly to the Franconian town of Ermreuth, where the paramilitary organization had a local center. The mayor knows that, of course. But also says that Ermreuth has “not appeared” in a right-wing extremist context for decades. “Thank God,” says Walz, “we were spared” in the end.
Until now. On New Year’s morning, a walker discovered a broken window at the synagogue, right next to the entrance. There is a bench for pedestrians, for safety reasons only in summer, on New Year’s Eve it was probably there too.
Ermreuth’s first small synagogue was built in 1738. In 1822 a new, much more magnificent sandstone house was built on the same site. The Nazis desecrated and severely damaged the house, but it survived the Second World War.
Nine years after the end of the war, the synagogue became the property of the local Raiffeisen cooperative, which converted the house into a warehouse, including massive architectural changes, both inside and out. The front door was replaced by a large barn door and the house was divided into two floors. Although the synagogue has belonged to Markt Neunkirchen am Brand since 1974, it remained empty for almost a decade and a half, including decay. After all, the roof was renovated in the 1980s, and numerous religious writings and ritual textiles were found. Since 1989, the market town and the district have taken care of the synagogue, which had been badly damaged in the meantime. It was reopened five years later. Partly also for religious purposes.
The window, says an employee from the vicinity of the synagogue, has now been provisionally repaired. But the wound from the alleged attack will “remain open for a long time,” she fears. In the course of the day, the public prosecutor’s office and the police want to announce details.