Glass Art - January/February 2005 (Volume 20, Number 2)
New Light from the Shadows
Berlin’s Synagogue at Rykestrasse
A building wears its history in its bones: in its foundation, its bricks and mortar; its beams, joists and floorboards. But the building’s life is in its windows. Clear or colored, whatever their shape or size, the windows sculpt the light that breathes through the building.
There is a building in Berlin whose light was nearly extinguished, but now shines anew. That it does so after a hundred years of triumphs and tragedies is a credit to the spirit of its congregation, and to the remarkable artist/architect team of Ruth Golan and Kay Zareh. Their work is an inspiring demonstration of restoration as part artistry, part balancing act – a task that when done well, with imagination, sensitivity and determination, can help bring a building back to life.
The Synagogue at Rykestrasse is located in the northeast (Prenzlauer) district of Berlin. Built in 1904, it was consecrated as a reform synagogue in September of that year. Its architect was Johann Hoeniger, who had designed buildings before for Berlin’s Jewish community. Like others in this city, the synagogue was erected in a courtyard behind a row of street-facing buildings. Being the only synagogue in the district, it was built to accommodate one of the largest congregations in Europe, with separate seating for 1000 men and 1000 women.
In the 1930s, with the rise of Nazism and increasing restrictions on Jewish residents, the synagogue took on additional roles for the community, offering such things as lectures, language courses and concerts. Eventually huts were even built in the courtyard to shelter those who had been driven from their homes.
On November 9th and 10th, 1938 the Nazis instigated the infamous “night of broken glass” – a pogrom against German Jews. At the end of this orgy of violence Jewish shops, homes and synagogues across Germany were in ruins. Although most of the synagogues in Berlin were destroyed, the Synagogue at Rykestrasse managed to survive relatively unscathed due to its sheltered location and the rioters’ reluctance to endanger surrounding houses. Nevertheless that night saw the synagogue’s prayer room demolished, its sacred texts violated, and its rabbis and some congregation members arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Although the Synagogue eventually reopened, this was only a temporary respite; by 1940 the German army had expropriated the building - completing the desecration by using it as a military headquarters and a stable.
The end of the war brought the building’s liberation, but it was a bittersweet victory. Most of the congregation had died or fled and there were neither the resources nor the political will in East Berlin to prevent a gradual decline of the synagogue. Although it was never wholly abandoned, the Synagogue at Rykestrasse fell into a sad, decrepit state.
In 1952 Berlin’s municipal government sponsored some restoration work, but this effort was hampered by the ongoing shortage of materials and supplies in the German Democratic Republic. The architect responsible for the rebuilding noted at the time that the roof, the windows and all decoration in the synagogue had been destroyed by rain, but that the most important task was simply to secure the building’s substructure. Additional renovations took place in 1987, but it was not until the new millennium that the deteriorating exterior of the building was finally given the attention it needed. Ruth Golan and Kay Zareh were given the commission for this work.
Ruth Golan was born in Jerusalem and studied English and French literature at the University of Jerusalem. During a summer visit to Berlin she was offered a scholarship to continue her education there. In Berlin she developed an interest in architecture and she earned her architectural degree at the Technical University of Berlin. She received an additional degree in landscape architecture in 1986. While teaching in the Department of Architecture Ruth met Kay Zareh and an enduring partnership began.
Kay Zareh was born in Berlin Spandau. Returning with family to his native Iran, Kay had his first drawing exhibition at age 6 in the Department of Fine Arts, University of Teheran. Kay returned to Germany for secondary school and attended the Technical University of Berlin obtaining a Degree for Architecture in 1971. After receiving a further degree in Civic Design from the University of Liverpool Kay returned to Berlin as a tutorial assistant in the Department of Architecture.
The two have collaborated on many projects as architect and artist. When they received the request from the Jewish community of Berlin to restore the windows and exterior of the Synagogue at Rykestrasse they knew they faced a significant challenge: The outside of the building was dirty and dilapidated, and the leaky roof was disfigured by poor repairs. The window frames, built in 1952 from unseasoned wood, were neither windproof nor waterproof, and they were single-glazed with ornamental ‘livid yellow’ glass. In addition, several windows were walled up, so that the natural light in the praying room was sparse and dismal.
Golan and Zareh began the window restoration in 2001, following the completion of the roof repairs. The clinker masonry at the front of the synagogue was cleaned and the walled up windows were opened up again. Golan and Zareh started their work on the windows by building models based on the original architectural drawings from 1904, but it was soon clear that this was the wrong track. The architect’s original drawings portrayed windows with a rhombic pattern, but by examining the photos in an account of the 1904 consecration, Ruth and Kay concluded that at least in the pictured areas, a more richly decorative stained glass was used.
The black and white pictures in this record of the consecration were an invaluable resource in the restoration, as they give the only indication of how the synagogue actually looked at the time. With the bricked-up windows opened once again, and using these photos and some surviving glass fragments as a reference, the team could begin the real work of recreating (and in some cases creating anew) the art glass in the synagogue.
The restoration work for the doors and windows fell into four main areas:
- The three rosette windows in the south façade;
- The portal windows and the Kiddush-room windows;
- The Praying Room windows; and
- Assorted other window frames and doors throughout the synagogue.
The Rosette windows (Figure 1)
Of all the glasswork, the rebuilding of the three rosette windows in the south façade was probably the closest the team came to traditional restoration. These lights had been bricked up at some point in the past, and behind the walled up openings of the large rosette the team found fragments of the original windows. Further investigation revealed that these windows had originally been designed and created at the turn of the century by the Schmidt firm in Berlin. The traditional leaded panels had been built from mouth-blown antique and textured glass; some with double-sided painting. The war’s destruction, compounded by a subsequent lack of maintenance, had left only parts of the original windows. Starting with these few sections Golan and Zareh began the long task of to re-creating the design, renovating the existing glass, and rebuilding the destroyed sections.
The first step was to rescue and restore as much of the original glass as possible. The gathered pieces were painstakingly restored at the Glasmalerei Peters workshop in Paderborn, Germany, where Golan and Zareh worked closely with Christoph Sander of the studio’s restoration department. Starting with the recovered fragments, the team began the task of designing – a job that was equal parts detective work, jigsaw-puzzle building and artistic innovation.
The overall design was based on what could be proven of the original through the surviving fragments. The design maintained the original leading pattern, and the recovered fragments were carefully cleaned, pieced together and replaced in their historical context. In this way large parts of the rosette windows were restored.
The design for the original windows had been based on a Star of David motif, interfused with floral ornaments. Unfortunately the center sections of the three rosettes were completely missing and new designs would therefore have to be created. For the middle rosette the restoration team developed a decorative design in the same style as the restored outer sections; but it was decided that the two side rosettes should use a newer pictorial language.
After several sketches, a design was developed for the side rosette centers based on manuscripts found in the caves of Qumram. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest known biblical texts and link the three religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. As a Jewish temple in a predominantly Christian country the newly designed rosettes at Rykestrasse represent two of these religions.
Technically, the center of the small rosettes was created using multi-layered panels of screen-printed glass. Four panels of white, 2 mm thick float glasses were printed with fired enamels in yellow, red, blue, and black. The center of the large rosette was intentionally created in gray and white to indicate that this is a later restoration.
The portal windows and the Kiddush room windows
Portal windows
Unlike the rosette windows, nothing at all remained of the original portal windows. Luckily, one had been photographed – albeit from the outside – for the consecration record in 1904. This photo, which clearly shows the pattern of the lead work, was the only available guide in the reconstruction of the glazing. After much consideration, the team came up with a wonderfully imaginative solution, which was to use the photo itself as the design for the windows!
Each of the two facing portal windows therefore bears an enlarged color reproduction of the black and white photo from 1904 (Figure 2). In this way they recreate the form of the original windows, while forging a very real visual connection to the time of the consecration. The photo was screen printed and fired with traditional glass paints onto float glass, with a deeply sandblasted backing on the exterior side of the glass.
Gate room rosettes
The four-color printing technique appears once more on the rosette windows in the gate room. Here, themes of Jewish life were used as the inspiration for the design. One rosette portrays a biblical fragment that was found in Egypt, which dates back to 929 AD. The fragment contains an ornament that appears beside the Pentateuch (the first five books of Scripture). (Figure 3)
The other rosette shows the inside of Cave IV at Qumram in the Judean mountains, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
Kiddush room windows
The three windows in the staircase where today the Kiddush for Shabbat takes place were created using the following motifs:
The center window is similar to the aisle windows in the praying room, continuing the color flow and text developed in those windows (described below). The text is from Genesis, on the seventh day of creation, and is given in both Hebrew and German. The right-hand window shows a Hagada manuscript from Passover created in Aragon, Spain circa 1350. The original parchment is in the library of the University of Bologna. The left-hand window shows a torah curtain from Italy made in 1643 or 1644 that was originally made from silk and silk damask and embroidered with metal threads. (Figure 4)
Praying Room
The windows in the Praying Room were a major challenge, since none of the original glass survived, and there were no photographs or visual cues to show what had been there. In this case windows had to be newly designed for the three levels of windows in this space. The only clue to the original windows came from the record of the consecration:
“The windows of the synagogue received stained-glass decorated with glass painting. No mullioned window frames were used. Instead the windows were directly inserted into the masonry and secured by tap wrenches. The ornamentation was placed in a way that it was only concentrated in single places in the windows and the main part of the window surface was divided by leads. Thus it was achieved that in spite of a certain simplicity and without major impairment of the light the windows still create a beautiful colored impression.”
Several concepts were explored during the design work. Figurative designs were quickly dismissed, as they are seen to contradict the Second Commandment, which prohibits the making of “…a graven image, nor any manner of likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath.” Furthermore, an abstract design was more in line with the team’s own aesthetics and with the other windows.
In developing this design Golan and Zareh worked on the principle that the new windows should in no way mimic the traditional windows nor compete with them visually. It should be immediately obvious to the viewer that “These are the new windows.” At the same time, it was felt that the design should follow through on the original intent of the three tiers of windows within the overall concept: to color and shape the light in the room. (Figure 5)
The windows on all three levels of the Prayer Room share a common color scheme, with abstract designs that were inspired by a verse from Genesis: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness covered the face of the deep.” The designs use the complementary colors of green and red to evoke the transition between heaven and earth. These are also the first colors mentioned in Scripture.
In the windows, a softly colored translucent background was created, and on the ground floor the theme is worked in different color variations. As in other places in the Synagogue, the windows incorporate text - in both Hebrew and German. This highlights the central role that the written word holds in the Jewish faith. Some of the windows contain lines from the first chapter of Genesis, using images of an ancient handwritten version. Also used is the text known as “Tikun Sofrim,” which presents the rules for writing a Torah scroll. (Figure 6).
There were 14 windows on the ground floor. This number seemed ideally matched to the seven days of Genesis, which would be presented in two languages. However as the German version of the same text is double the length of the Hebrew, the seventh day was introduced to the windows of the Kiddush room.
The color theme of the balcony windows (Figure 7) becomes lighter towards the top, and this extends into the clerestory windows. The intensity also changes depending on the distance from the altar.
Christoph Sander of Glasmalerei Peters writes about the technique:
”The windows of the Synagogue nave consist of float glass which is painted by hand on both sides of the glass. On the inside of the windows enamel colors were applied in several layers. This color creates an effect of structure and depth due to the swinging stroke of the brush.
The enamels were applied with a broad brush and fired at 600 degrees. A second layer with a light brush strokes and spattered color was laid on. Again this layer was fired at 600 degrees. The Hebrew and German text was photographically enlarged and screen printed onto the glass with traditional glass paints then fired once more at 600 degrees.
Restoration is never a simple task, and restoration at the level seen here requires tremendous patience, sensitivity, and depth of experience. But the rewards are worth it: the Synagogue at Rykestrasse recently celebrated its first centennial, and it must have been thrilling to see it enter its second century with its light and its life restored - and even strengthened. For the light in the synagogue’s windows shines not only with the life of the building, but with the enduring spirit of its congregation, thanks to the extraordinary effort and care that Ruth Golan and Kay Zareh brought to their work there.
