These I recall: traces of a repeated past in the Worms Synagogue reconstruction

Germany's first Jewish World Heritage Site, the ShUM Sites of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, offers a unique lens to examine the complex interplay between memory, materiality, and identity. The study reveals that the reconstructed Worms Synagogue, despite its lack of a congregation, serves as a powerful symbol of resilience and continuity, challenging conventional narratives about shifts in material cultures of memory post-modernity. By employing a regional, decentralized, and colloquial understanding of memory-work, the research highlights the mundane materialities of the site as evidence and storyteller of conflicting, contradictory, and often semi-fictitious struggles for agency and identity. Traditional Jewish ritual and liturgical conceptions of memory are utilized to expand and complicate readings of this site, questioning prominent assumptions about fundamental shifts necessitated by events like the Holocaust.

Koltun-Fromm, A. (2023). These I recall: traces of a repeated past in the Worms Synagogue reconstruction. Architectural Research Quarterly, 27(4), 301–314. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1359135524000046