The synagogue in Mainz-Weisenau was built in 1737/38 and is the only house of Jewish worship in Mainz that survived the time of the Nazi regime and the Second World War without damage. Incidentally, it is also the oldest still intact building in Weisenau. In the 18th century, about a quarter of the inhabitants of the village of Weisenau were Jewish, and the community therefore had its own synagogue at Wormser Strasse.
The building was badly damaged during the siege of Mainz in 1793, and it took 25 years to restore the synagogue to its former glory. During the Kristallnacht pogroms of 1938, the synagogue of Weisenau was looted and desecrated. As the looters feared that putting the building on fire would cause damage to adjacent houses, it was spared this fate. In 1940, the owners were forced to sell the site and the building, and after the war, it was used for a time as a shed and henhouse.
Few people remembered that the somewhat hidden building had at some point in time actually been a place of worship. This changed in 1978 with the "Jews in Mainz" exhibition that brought the synagogue back into public consciousness. The building was duly declared a protected monument and was handed over to the city of Mainz together with the local association for the restoration of the synagogue established in 1993, who went about reinstating it as a Jewish place of worship. On 27 May 1996, the restored synagogue was officially inaugurated.
In its front yard, the builders found two Mikveh (baths for ritual immersion), one dating from the Baroque period and the other from the 19th century, both unique for Germany.
