Josefov is a quarter in central Prague on the right bank of the Vltava, which grew out of the former Prague Jewish Town. Its main axis is Pařížská Avenue, running from the Old Town Square to the Čech Bridge.[2] After the slum clearance (asanace) at the turn of the 20th century, six synagogues, the Jewish Town Hall and the Old Jewish Cemetery remained of the original buildings.[2]*
The Jewish Town
The exact time when the first Jews came to Prague is not known, but their settlement goes back to the Middle Ages. At first they lived in several places, including the Lesser Town and the area of the later New Town, later around today's Dušní Street near the so-called Old School and around the Old-New Synagogue. It was there that the Jewish Town took shape.[1] Jewish merchants were active in Prague from the 10th century and were gradually forced to live in an ever more closed community, which became the ghetto.[2] Under Maria Theresa the Jews were expelled from Prague for several years. The Patent of Toleration issued by Emperor Joseph II in 1781 gave them a degree of religious freedom.[1] The quarter was named Josefov after Joseph II, and in 1850 it was joined to Prague as its fifth quarter alongside the Old Town, the New Town, the Lesser Town and Hradčany.[2][3] The ghetto was densely built up because, until its abolition, Jews were not allowed to live outside its boundaries. Wealthier residents then moved to other parts of the city and Josefov became a poor quarter; according to statistics from 1889, Jews made up only about one tenth of its inhabitants.[4]
Slum clearance
Preparations for the clearance began in 1882. Emperor Franz Joseph I signed the clearance acts in Vienna on 11 February 1893[8] and they took effect on 7 April 1893. There were two acts: the first defined the clearance districts and gave the city the right of expropriation for ten years, the second exempted new buildings from rent tax for 20 years.[3] The reasons given were sanitary conditions: contaminated well water, the lack of sewers and overcrowding. In addition, the low-lying area by the river was flooded during the spring thaw, so the cellars of the houses stayed damp all year round.[4]
The clearance districts covered more than 380,000 m² and contained 608 houses. The district of Josefov and the Old Town was bounded roughly by the Vltava, today's Revoluční Avenue, Dlouhá Avenue and Platnéřská Street; a smaller district lay in the New Town.[3] Partial demolition began in 1895 and large-scale demolition followed from October 1896.[3] Work started where the new main avenue meets the Old Town Square.[4] By 1914, 469 houses had been pulled down, 247 of them in Josefov, 198 in the Old Town and 24 in the New Town. The acts were repeatedly extended until 7 April 1943.[3]
Of the nine synagogues in Josefov, three disappeared: the New Synagogue in 1898, the Great Court Synagogue in 1902 and the Gypsy Synagogue in 1906. The Old Jewish Cemetery was also reduced in size in 1903. Streets such as Rabínská, Střelná, Červená and Masařská vanished as well.[3] The new main avenue was laid out on the pattern of the Paris boulevards and the Vienna Ringstrasse. The city sold the cleared plots to building contractors, who put up apartment blocks in styles ranging from historicism to Art Nouveau.[4] In 1901 the avenue was named Mikulášská in honour of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II; after several further changes it has borne the name Pařížská since 8 December 1947.[2]
The demolition met with public opposition. In April 1896 the writer Vilém Mrštík published the Easter Manifesto, signed among others by Alois Jirásek, Mikoláš Aleš and Josef Václav Myslbek. According to Kateřina Bečková of the Club for Old Prague, however, the protests were aimed mainly at demolitions in the Old Town and the Lesser Town, while the clearance of Josefov itself was accepted by the public at the time.[3]
Monuments
The Heritage Catalogue of the National Heritage Institute states that the central part of the Old-New Synagogue was completed around the turn of the 1270s and 1280s as a two-nave hall with an early Gothic portal on the south side. At the end of the 14th century it received new gables and a western vestibule; the northern vestibule was built mostly in 1732.[5] Its present appearance dates from 1883 and the work of the architect Josef Mocker.[2]
Burials took place in the Old Jewish Cemetery from 1439 to 1787, and more than 12,000 gravestones stand there. Because of the lack of space and the prohibition on disturbing graves, burials were made in layers, up to ten according to some researchers. The most visited grave is the Renaissance tomb of Rabbi Löw, who died in 1609.[6]
The Pinkas Synagogue was built in 1535 by Meshullam Horowitz; at the end of the 1950s the names of 77,297 victims of Nazism were written on its walls. The Maisel Synagogue was completed in 1592 and rebuilt in the Neo-Gothic style in 1892–1905 to a design by Alfred Grotte. The Klausen, High and Spanish synagogues also stand near Široká Street.[2] The Jewish Town Hall, No. 25 in Maiselova Street, was rebuilt in 1763–1765 by the builder Josef Schlesinger after the fire of the Jewish Town in 1754. Above its main facade is a clock with a Hebrew dial whose hands turn in the opposite direction, and in the cupola of the tower a clock with Roman numerals; all were made in 1764 by the clockmaker Sebastian Landesberger.[8]
The Jewish Museum
The Jewish Museum in Prague was founded in 1906 on the initiative of the historian Salomon Hugo Lieben and the municipal councillor August Stein. Its collection was based on objects from synagogues and prayer rooms that disappeared during the clearance.[7] During the occupation, the Central Jewish Museum was established in 1942 on the initiative of the Prague Jewish community; the Nazis approved it with aims different from those of its founders. It served as a repository for objects, books and archival records from the Jewish communities of the Protectorate.[7] Furnishings of synagogues from Bohemia and Moravia were thus brought to Prague, and the monuments of Josefov were preserved.[1] In 1950 the museum and its collections were nationalised. In 1994 the museum buildings were returned to the Prague Jewish community, and since 1 October 1994 the museum has operated as a non-state institution.[7]