Miltenberg probably had a Jewish community from the very beginning. The first synagogue of Miltenberg was built in the late 13th century. After a long history of many ups and downs the then dilapidated building was sold to the neighbouring brewery (“Kalt-Loch-Brauerei”) in 1877. The brewer renovated and repaired it and converted it to his fermenting cellar.
Thanks to nation-wide collections and some very generous donations, among others from Jews who came from Miltenberg and had made a fortune abroad (first of all William Klingenstein who lived in London) the town’s master mason Ludwig Frosch could be assigned to draft the first blueprints of a new synagogue in 1903. In late August 1904 the synagogue was inaugurated in “a festivity, held, not only by the Jews but by the whole town with unfeigned joy”, as then mayor and chronicler Jakob Josef Schirmer wrote.
In 1938 the Nazis destroyed especially the eastern part of the synagogue with the sacred spaces. Afterwards the house was reconstructed as a residential building. Today only some small elements remind those who know of the house’s history of its previous exterior (arches over the windows, an empty badge over the door but most of all the foundation stone).
Due to the destruction in the Third Reich, we have to rely on old photographs if we want to know what it originally looked like. In the register of monuments the description of the “New Synagogue” (monument D-6-76-139-293) is rather brief: “Former synagogue, two-storey building of bunter ashlars with a mansard roof and an elevated median avant-corps with a pyramid roof, historicist, 1904 (domed sacred space destroyed 1938 and reconstructed for residential use)”
