Massive and magnificent against a crisp blue sky, the Essen Synagogue rises in its full Romanesque-Byzantine splendor in this hand-colored photographic postcard from the Weimar era — the great copper-green dome, rusticated sandstone walls, and soaring arched windows speak to the confidence and cultural integration of Germany's Jewish community before the catastrophe to come. In the right foreground stands the "Jahrhundertbrunnen" (Century Fountain), a muscular figural sculpture. This synagogue, completed in 1913, was damaged during Kristallnacht in November 1938 and is today — remarkably — one of the few surviving large prewar German synagogues, now serving as a house of Jewish culture. The card was published by Ullstein Verlag (catalog number 5800), one of Germany's most important media houses of the era, itself later seized by the Nazis because of its Jewish ownership.