Schooled like the m ajority of his Jew ish fellow arch itects in the German Hochshule system, Baehrwald "strove for a synthesis of local form s w ith contem porary functionalism ." O ne can arg u e th a t in this m a n n er B aerhw ald and his colleagues rep resen ted a n in eteen th century G erm an approach to national style as first unleashed in the beginning of the century by H einrich Hubsch in his then controversial book, In W hich Style Should
^ H e rb e rt and Heinze-Greenberg, 160; "Baerwald and the Search for an Indigenous Style," in G ilbert H erbert and Silvina Sonovsky, B auhaus On the C arm el A nd the C rossroads of Empire (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1993), 217-225.
47Edina Meyer-Maril, "The Stylistic Developm ent in Tel Aviv from its Foundation in 1909 to 1933," in Tel Aviv: M odem Architecture 1930-1939 . tr. Michael Robinson, (Berlin: W asm uth, 1994), 24.
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We Build?, and as concretized by Shinkel's ow n experim ents, especially the B auakadem ie.48 This historicist vision of national style was conceived as a fusion of an internal skeleton representing a functional program (often in a n e o -c lassica l s y m m e tric a l p la n ) w ith a m e d ie v a l fa c a d e (w h e th e r Rundbogenstile, i.e. R om anesque according to H ubsch or Gothic according to his opponents); b o th w ere alleged to have evolved historically in G erm an soil 49 The Rom antic Jew ish style in Palestine ap p ro p riated this historicist G erm an form ula by sim ply replacing in the facade one m edieval style, the Rom anesque, for another, the Islamic.
In so d oin g , th e R om antic Jugenstijl style in Palestine ironically affirm ed itself m ore definitively as an extension of the nineteenth century Jew ish style of the D iaspora in E urope. The Jew ish style w as com m only identified w ith a variety "O riental" medieval styles such as the Byzantine, O tto m an , M am luk, a n d in p a rtic u la r the M oorish-Islam ic.50 This style em erged in 1830's an d was applied by G erm an architects like G artn er and, m ost prom inently, G ottfried Sem per.51 Sem per's 1838 design of a synagogue in D resden, which he substantially replicated in Paris in 1850, was exemplary (fig. 6 ,7).52 This pioneering building had a plain cubical exterior attached to a rectangular annex of tw o tow ers flanking the entrance, all in the R om anesque
^ H e in r ic h Hubsch, In W hat Style Should We Build? The G erm an Debate O n A rchitectural S ty le , translated by D avid Britt (Santa Monica, CA: G etty C enter for the H istory of Art and the Humanities, 1992), 63-101. See Wolfgang H errm ann's introduction, p.3.
49lbid.
5®Carol H erselle Krinsky, Svnagoues of Europe: Architecture. H istory. M eaning (Cam bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983) 78-88. O th er non-M edieval styles such as the ancient Egyptian were also used in the architecture of Jewish institutions in Europe.
51H arold H am m er-Schenk, "D ie A rch itek tu r d e r Synagoge von 1780 bis 1933," in D ie A rchitektur d er Svnagoge (Frankfurt: Deutches Architurm useum , 1989), 157-287.
5^ Ibid.: M iles D anby, M oorish S tyle (London: Phaidon, 1995), 179. See Krinsky, 276-279. Sem per's D resden design w as popularized upon its publication in the prom inent periodical Allgemeine Bauzeitung in 1847.
style. The cubical exterior is surm ounted by a huge octagonal gabled roof in the M oorish Style, the d ru m of w hich is pierced by a series of arched openings. Inside it, the gabled roof shelters a dom e crow ning a cruciform interior w hich is elaborately covered w ith polychrom atic stucco, carved wood and ceramics after M oorish ornam ental p attern s.53 By proposing a Spanish- M oorish style of a rc h ite c tu re for Jew ish religious in stitu tio n s, Sem per displayed his fam iliarity w ith the em erging scholarly recognition of the significant contribution of Judaic cultu re in the M uslim C alip h ate.54 His dualistic design com bining a stylistically h y b rid exterior w ith a M oorish in terio r becam e a p o p u la r fo rm u la since it com bined a p riv ate Jew ish e n v iro n m e n t w ith a p u b lic im age free from th e ex p licit C h ristia n iconographic associations of the Gothic w ith o u t displaying obvious Jewish iconography w hich m ight alienate the C hristian host society. Sem per's choice of the M edieval/R om anesque instead of his oft-used Renaissance style could also be taken to signify the desire of Haskala (Enlightenment) Jews to identify w ith G erm an N ationalism , an attitu d e w hich Zionism w ould loathe. 55 In retrospect, however, one can conclude that, as m uch as the Romantic Jewish style in Palestine seem ed to its G erm an authors and historians expressive of the Zionist architectural zeal to em ancipate its idiom from th a t of the Diaspora, its Medieval Islamic vocabulary expressed the opposite tendency.
53Ibid.. 179.
S-hbid.
55S hortly afterw ard s, as the Jew ish m inority becam e econom ically a n d cu ltu rally m ore em pow ered, especially in G erm any and A ustria-H ungary, the Moorish style of the private interior com pletely took o v er the exterior to becom e a common public sym bol of the architecture of Jewish institutions.
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