> 1920 - 2019
> 1960 - 2013
> 2020 - 2027
by Roger Harmon, historian and member of the association
The Jewish Community of Hegenheim was once the largest one in the Sundgau (= the Alsace’s « Southern District » south of Mulhouse), numbering some 850 souls in a mid-19th century census.
Then as now, one worked in Basel and slept in the Sundgau. Week in, week out Jewish textile and cattle merchants walked or rode from as far away as Hegenheim, Buschwiller, Hagenthal-le-Haut or Hagenthal-le-Bas (HLH and HLB respectively, 10km from Basel) to sell their goods; HLH and HLB were the Sundgau’s 4th and 2nd largest Jewish communities. In the wake of the Helvetic Republic (1798-1803), Switzerland and, with it, Basel began granting civil rights to Jews, a long and rocky process not completed until 1866.Early Jewish establishments in Basel included a kosher inn at Rümelinsplatz, whose inn-keeper was the president of HLB’s Jewish community, and the Israelitische Gemeinde Basel (IGB) or « Basel Jewish Community », which in 1805 began praying in the home Zum Venedig (« at the Sign of Venice ») of its first president, he too from HLB. These examples typify the close Jewish ties between the Sundgau and Basel.
It was above all Hegenheim, though, which influenced the young IGB. 80 years long, until 1885, the Rabbi of Hegenheim was Basel’s rabbi too, and it would not be exaggerated to call the 19th century IGB a « local branch » of the mother-house in Hegenheim. The Hegenheim synagogue, therefore, is important for Basel’s Jewish community but also for the city itself.
When was the Hegenheim synagogue built? The architectural style is little help in this question, for the synagogue exemplifies the timeless style of rural Alsatian synagogues of the 18th and early 19th centuries; see for example its sister-house, the synagogue of HLB (1766/67) and, not much farther afield, the synagogue of Durmenach (1802), home of the Sundgau’s third largest Jewish community with, in the 1840s, majority Jewish population, Jewish town council and Jewish mayor. All three synagogues, seen from the outside, are plain, functional, rectangular head-end buildings which - in contrast to churches - do not exceed the height of neighboring houses. One might suppose therefore that at least the foundation walls and basic design of the Hegenheim synagogue date, like the synagogue of HLB, from the late 1760s when the relatively philosemitic policies of the ministre d’état Duc de Choiseul replaced the decidedly antisemitic policies of the royal Attorney General Valentin Nef (1676-1754). For from 1711 until his death, Nef had seen to it that no synagogues be built in the Alsace and in 1725 had three already existing synagogues demolished (HLB, Biesheim, Wintzenheim). A late 18th century provenance of the Hegenheim synagogue would only underline it’s significance. For according to Jean Daltroff (Route du Judaïsme en Alsace, 2010, pp. 49 and 122), « synagogues construites en Alsace sous l’Ancien Régime sont rares ». It would be of interest, therefore, to inventory and study the ensemble of « rare » synagogues which yet survive from the 188 Jewish communities censused in the Dénombrement Général des Juifs Qui sont tolérés en la Province d’Alsace (Colmar 1785).
Rarer yet than a synagogue from the 18th century is one whose woodwork and plaster - the living « flesh » on the dry bones of the stone walls - survives intact. And that is what we find in Hegenheim. Another rare example is the synagogue of Dornach near Mulhouse. In Hegenheim, the ensemble of stone, wood and plaster exists much as it was conceived. Such a building is alive, so to speak; it vibrates yet, at the molecular level perhaps, with the memory of thousands of prayers and psalms.
In June 2017, a dendrochronological study showed that the attic joisting of the Hegenheim synagogue dates from 1820. What had happened? In 1815 the Austrian Army lost the battle of Huningue, a French village adjoining Basel to the north. The Austrians withdrew to the west, i.e. straight through Hegenheim, and en passant, gratuitously as it were, set fire to the synagogue. It took five years for the Jews of Hegenheim to scrape the money together to reconstruct and refurbish their synagogue and thus to compensate for the damage of a single day. The synagogue, radiant once more, was re-inaugurated in 1821. Thus, that which touches us so deeply today, the lofty sanctuary, the sublime joisting, stems from 1821. May the house, thanks to the Society, shine anew in 2021!
In the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, more and more Jews left Hegenheim until 1912 when the Israelite Consistory of the Upper Rhine attempted to seize the Jewish community’s assets - 10‘000 Swiss Francs deposited at the Swiss Bank Corporation (today’s UBS). The community was no longer able to field a minyan (the 10 men necessary for public prayer), but two members sue the Consistory anyway for this appropriation of funds and a court case ensues. The Consistory asserts that such funds are to be used where Jewish life persists. - In the 1920s, the Consistory pursues a court case seeking to evict a squatter from the synagogue. In the 1930s, one of Hegenheim’s last Jews, a woman, resides in it. During World War 2, the synagogue serves as a prison for Russian POWs, after the war as a depot for crops.
A new era begins with Walter and Julie Gürtler’s purchase of the synagogue in 1961. Walter is a sculptor, Julie a dance teacher. They use the sanctuary as atelier and dance studio and in particular replace the long windows, oculus and Tora shrine in the north east wall with a large plate glass window, providing thus the light they need for their work but radically altering the building’s appearance. In the same north east wall, Walter immures some finished stones he had found outside the main entry, five of them probably from the demolished synagogue of HLH (immured on the exterior as frame for the new window) and an inscribed stone from the synagogue of HLB (immured inside below the new window).
Otherwise, they treat the building with the utmost respect and caution, preserving all the original substance we see today. For the 20th century, when synagogues were demolished (Sierentz, Buschwiller, HLH) or remodeled beyond recognition on the outside (Durmenach, Uffheim) and/or on the inside (Hirsingue, Blotzheim), this is a remarkable attitude and much to their credit. And, as far as the window is concerned: without it, the Gürtlers would not have been able to pursue their artistic careers, the synagogue would have been demolished long ago (Walter received repeated invitations to sell from buyers coveting the ashlars), a new house or two would stand in its place, Hegenheim would have become a bit more like anywhere else and the world would be a bit poorer.