Overview

• At a packed ceremony with roughly 400 to 460 guests, Chancellor Friedrich Merz grew emotional, pledged government action against antisemitism, and said he hopes Jewish institutions will no longer require police protection.
• Merz attributed part of current antisemitism to migration from countries where such attitudes are ingrained and stressed that Jew-hatred will not be tolerated in politics, law, culture or academia.
• The €14 million project was financed roughly one third each by the federal government, Bavaria and the City of Munich, with the Synagoge Reichenbach association covering the remaining ten percent.
• Driven by Rachel Salamander’s initiative launched in 2011, the restoration recreated stained glass and mouth-blown lighting from historic patterns and installed a Torah curtain woven from fabric by Bauhaus artist Gunta Stölzl, donated by her grandson.
• Built in 1931 by Gustav Meyerstein and ravaged in the 1938 pogroms, the building was used postwar and then fell idle after 2006; it will now host services as well as lectures, concerts and educational programs open to the wider public.