In 1451, the Franciscan monk John of Capistrano preached in Brno. His hateful attacks against the Jews as a cause of all evil found fertile ground in Moravia. And so, three years later, the Jewish population was expelled from all the Moravian royal towns. The gates to Brno remained closed to the country's Jewish population for several centuries.
Only rarely were wealthy merchants permitted to enter. Jews were only allowed to sleep and eat at the New World inn, established outside the city walls in 1659. Even so, in 1706, a certain Solomon Deutsch was accused of a crime of allegedly holding services for a group of Jews in this inn on Křenová Street. Common prayers were forbidden to Jews even in the suburbs of Brno.
It was not until the decades following the revolutionary year of 1848 that Jews gained the same civil rights as Christians in the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The first modern synagogue in Brno was built between 1853 and 1855. It became a proud symbol of the equality of Judaism with other religious movements.
It stood at the corner of Spálená and Přízova Streets, near the homes and businesses of the then still majority suburban Jewish population. It began serving the Jewish community on the Jewish New Year, which fell on September 12, 1855.
Take a look at this photo of the Great Synagogue in Brno from the collections of the Jewish Museum in Prague. Can you imagine where exactly the synagogue stood?
Answer in the box below.