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Edwin Oppler (18 June 1831, in Oels – 6 September 1880, in Hanover) was a German architect of Jewish ancestry,Arno Herzig: Jüdische Geschichte in Deutschland. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, C. H. Beck Verlag, 2002, and , pg. 179; and a major representative of the Neo-Gothic style. He designed several , throughout Germany, all of which were destroyed by rioters on Kristallnacht.
After becoming a member of the in 1856, he spent the next four years in Brussels and Paris, where he worked in the offices of Hoffmann & Massenot, with the stained glass artist, and, primarily, with the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. It was in the latter capacity that he became involved in the restoration of Notre Dame, and acquired his knowledge of Gothic architecture. He returned to Hanover in 1861.
In 1866, the year he was appointed a building officer, he married Ella Cohen, daughter of the Royal Physician, Hermann Cohen. They had four sons: Ernst Oppler, a painter and etcher; Alexander Oppler, a sculptor; , a doctor; and , a jurist.Jochen Bruns: Ernst Oppler (1867-1929). Leben und Werk. LIT, Münster 1993, pp. 5, 160
He established himself in the Jewish community through numerous commercial and residential buildings, designed for noble and bourgeois clients, but mostly through his synagogues and designs for Jewish cemeteries. From 1872 to 1878 he published a magazine, Die Kunst im Gewerbe (Commercial Art) and operated a studio together with .
Many of his buildings were destroyed by bombing in World War II. One of his largest and most familiar, the in Hanover, was burnt during the anti-Jewish riots known as "Kristallnacht", in 1938.
He died from what was apparently a rapid onset of heart disease, aged only forty-nine.
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