Prayer Hall at the Jewish Cemetery on Papiermühlestrasse

About the building

The Jewish Cemetery of Bern lies on Papiermühlestrasse, not far from today's Wankdorf stadium. It was opened on 5 September 1871. Until then the dead of the Jewish community were buried in Hégenheim in Alsace. Bern had already had a Jewish cemetery in the Middle Ages, but it lay where the east wing of the Federal Palace stands today and had long since disappeared.

In 1929 the Israelite Religious Community of Bern had a new prayer hall built in the cemetery. The commission went to the Bern architect Albert Gerster, who had earlier designed Neo-Baroque villas in the Kirchenfeld district, such as the villa at Elfenstrasse 20 in 1907. Here he chose a quite different language: the building is plain and cubic, stands on a base, has a bevelled cornice and a flat roof.

The form is easy to read. At its core is the cube-shaped prayer room. In front of it lies a lower entrance hall, and beside that two even lower annexes with toilets. The result is a stepping from high to low. Light enters through small square windows, always grouped in threes and fitted with elaborate grilles. On each side of the prayer room there are three such groups, tied together by a continuous cornice.

Above the entrance there is an inscription in Hebrew script; translated it reads "Love is stronger than death". The city heritage office sees in the consistently designed, box-shaped building a clear realisation of the ideals of the Neues Bauen, the Swiss modern movement, and an early example of this architecture in Bern. The building is classed as worthy of protection in the building inventory. Since 1988 the cemetery has also had a memorial to the victims of the Shoah, designed by Oskar Weiss.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Papiermühlestrasse 112 · Jüdische Gemeinde Bern: Friedhof · Wikidata Q138960803 und Q1716643 (Jüdischer Friedhof Bern)