Jewish Events & Exhibitions
in Austria
Discover unexpected and particularly exciting new insights into the early history of Viennese Jewish women and men as well as the fruitful life, but also the tragic end of this medieval community.
Permanent Exhibition.
From the Jewish Museum Vienna:
“Our City!” starts with the years from 1945 to the present on the ground floor. It describes the development, in spite of the unhelpfulness of Austrian post-war politicians, of an almost completely destroyed Jewish community to its present-day modest but highly dynamic presence. It is a story of immigration: first from Eastern and Central Europe, then from the former Soviet Union, particularly Central Asia.
On the second floor the exhibition looks back on the history of the community from the Middle Ages to the Shoah. It scrutinizes the tolerance of Emperor Joseph II and his successors. It shows the creative strategies of a community that did not officially exist before 1852 and the newly obtained optimism of the Viennese Jews as became the third largest Jewish community in Europe. This section also demonstrates how at the turn of the twentieth century the Jews of Vienna – some of whom remain world-famous today – were already feeling the pressure of a rabid anti-Semitism, long before the destruction of their community by Austrian and German National Socialists after 1938.
More information:
https://www.jmw.at/exhibition/our_city_jewish_vienna_-_then_to_now
Photo courtesy Jewish Museum Vienna © Ouriel Morgensztern
From the Jewish Museum Hohenems:
When the then chairman of the Jewish Community, Paul Grosz, was asked many years ago what he thought of the establishment of a Jewish Museum, he asked a bitter counter-question. Whether Jews should be marveled at there “like taxidermied Indians“?
Today, there are over 120 Jewish museums worldwide. However, even the definition of their designating adjective is by no means uniform. There are those to whom the institution itself is a Jewish one, to others the institution’s topic is Judaism – from the most diverse perspectives. For some, the adjective “Jewish” is unambiguous, for others, it is not just ambiguous but even full of contradictions. The question of definitions and perspectives are decisive for content and practices of museums – and thus also on the sovereignty of interpretation of what is “Jewish” in a social public sphere. The exhibition illuminates the history and present of the institution “Jewish Museum,” its collections and its canon – and thus reflects the urgent question of its role in society in the future.
An exhibition of the Jewish Museum Hohenems, in cooperation with the Saxon State Collections of Ethnography Leipzig, Dresden, and Herrnhut
More Information: https://www.jm-hohenems.at/en/exhibitions/current-exhibition
Staff:
Curators
Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek (Wien), Hannes Sulzenbacher (Wien)
Project Coordination
Anika Reichwald (Hohenems)
Exhibition architecture
Martin Kohlbauer, Stefanie Diwischek (Wien)
Exhibition design
atelier stecher, Roland Stecher, Thomas Matt (Götzis)
Archive
Raphael Einetter (Hohenems)
Education
Angelika Purin, Judith Niederklopfer-Würtinger, Claudia Klammer (Hohenems)
Public relations work
Birgit Sohler (Hohenems)
Assistance
Christian Chizzola, Melanie Jussel, Jessica Strobl (Hohenems)
Translations
Lilian Dombrowski (Ra’anana)
Editing
Rudolf Jelinek (Wien), Peter Niedermair (Lustenau)
Office
Gerlinde Fritz (Hohenems)
Exhibition Production and Printing
Museom Service GmbH (Wien)
Technical Installations
Dietmar Pöschko (Hohenems), Dietmar Pfanner (Andelsbuch)
Printing Matters
Thurnher Druckerei (Rankweil)
Painting work
Malerwerkstätte Alfons Mathis (Hohenems)
Anika Reichwald in conversation with Monika Volaucnik (in German)
Dramatic reading with swing music: Hermann Broch. Gefangen von Aussee / Geflüchtet aus Wien / Gut aufgenommen in New York
Museum Dorotheergasse
Lecture: Martha Keil “Unser Kulturerbe. Judenhass und antijüdische Stereotype seit dem Mittelalter”
Museum Dorotheergasse
Book presentation: Avi Jorisch “Thou Shalt Innovate. How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World”
Museum Dorotheergasse
So, 17. Okt 2021, 11:00-13:00 Uhr
Exhibition opening: am rand. Zusammen leben in der Untergasse.
The Jewish Quarter in Hohenems has been receiving increasing public attention since 1991. Many buildings have been renovated and lovingly restored, in large part in close cooperation with the monuments protection authorities. This urban development has had a strong impact on the entire Hohenems center, especially on the neighboring former “Christengasse.” By now, the ensemble of the former “Judengasse” and “Christengasse” is considered unique.
Freely accessible outdoor exhibition at Heldenplatz
A film screening in cooperation with the vai Vorarlberger Architektur Institut and the TaS-Kino (in German).
One should celebrate the festivals as they fall. This October, we are joyfully and proudly celebrating a major anniversary: for exactly 30 years, audiences have remained loyal to us, attending a variety of films with Jewish themes from around the world in Viennese cinemas.
After the pogrom in the Middle Ages and surge in anti-Semitism, a new Jewish community in Salzburg was established with the arrival of Jews at the end of the 19th century. During the interwar period, this state was torn between Catholicism and German nationalism, which demonstrates how the phenomenon of anti-Semitism without Jews was particularly unique.
Under these conditions, the Salzburg Festival was founded in 1920 as a Catholic-Neo-Baroque spectacle. Many Viennese Jews promoted the revival of the idea of Austria on the stage. In addition to the expected tradition, there were also surprisingly many avant-garde artists on the program, including the dance productions of the stage architect Oscar Strnad. Even a work by Arnold Schönberg was performed in 1928. During Austrofascism, a politicization was carried out, as Austria wanted to present itself as a better German state. Arturo Toscanini, who came from Bayreuth, conducted Wagner operas, which were staged by the Jewish director Lothar Wallerstein. The "1000 mark barrier" enacted by the German Reich government was directed as an economic sanction, especially against Salzburg. The festival now increasingly attracted an international audience. In 1938, the festival was ideologically reinterpreted according to the "racial theory" of the Nazis, which meant that Jews were no longer wanted and consequently expelled. In the postwar period, only a few Jewish protagonists were working as directors and performers. Many protagonists who excelled during the Nazi period, however, were able to continue their careers. These topics are the subject of the exhibition, "Everyman’s Jews: 100 Years Salzburg Festival". Max Reinhardt, Bruno Walter, and Berta Zuckerkandl are among the most famous protagonists of Jewish origin.
At the center of the exhibition are some never-before-seen objects from the estate of Max Reinhardt and various artworks that trace the rise of the festival to the present day, as well as the lives of the various individuals, their careers, and escape routes.
Curators: Marcus G. Patka and Sabine Fellner
Exhibition design: Fuhrer, Wien
Image (c) ASF_Photo Ellinger
The exhibition presents works by Yevgeny Khaldei, who accompanied the Red Army as an official war reporter during the liberation of Vienna. He was experienced enough to know what photos would be regarded in Moscow as ideologically acceptable and was thus able to take the official Soviet picture the liberation of Vienna: a group of soldiers carrying machine guns with the Austrian flag fluttering in the background. The exhibition shows potent images of a decisive moment in the history of Austria.
“Just in yesterday at M. E. Mayer, and everyone’s already talking about it today,” wrote Anton Kuh in 1925 in a feature about a popular French perfume of the time. M. E. Mayer’s two elegant perfumeries were well known to Kuh’s readers. They were located at Lobkowitzplatz 1 and Graben 17 in the center of Vienna. The factory where the company itself made many of the soaps, creams, perfumes, powders, aftershave lotions, razors, and razor blades it sold, occupied an entire block at Pernerstorfergasse 57 in the 10th district of Vienna.
In the exhibition "Herzl’s Daughters - 100 years WIZO. Viennese Women for Israel", the pre-war and post-war history of WIZO Austria will be shown on the basis of documents and photographs from the WIZO archive in Vienna, from extensive partial bequests by Mirjam Pollak and Rosl Müller, as well as through the photo collection of the photographic chronicler of the Vienna Jewish Community, Margit Dobronyi. An additional focus will be placed upon WIZO Austria’s forced dissolution and the persecution and murder of its members during the Shoah. These documents and objects not only make it possible to tell the story of WIZO Austria, but also about the networking of Jewish women on a national and international level.
For many Austrian Jews, Shanghai, the “City upon the Sea,” represented the last hope for refuge. The voyage there entailed a week-long sea crossing or an exhausting land journey across Siberia.
Immediately after the National Socialists seized power in Austria in March 1938, Jewish women and men were marginalized, humiliated and persecuted. The possibilities to leave the country increasingly dwindled. For many Austrian Jews, Shanghai, the “City upon the Sea,” represented the last hope for refuge.
Starting point for the exhibition “The Last Europeans. Jewish Perspectives on the Crises of an Idea” is a donation to the Jewish Museum Hohenems consisting of letters and documents, memorabilia and everyday objects from the Brunner family who left Hohenems for Trieste in the first half of the 19th century to contribute to the rapid development of the Habsburg metropolis in the Mediterranean region.
On the 100th anniversary of the Austrian constitution, the exhibition pays tribute to its architect Hans Kelsen and presents his life and work. It also invites you to take a closer look at the constitution and the surprising insights and realizations it reveals.
The exhibition is devoted to Viennese children who were sent abroad without their parents from winter 1938 to the start of World War II in autumn 1939. The children who escaped to countries that were later invaded by the Nazis were once again caught up in the deadly persecution and in some cases failed to survive.
Nils Olger is a filmmaker and artist living in Vienna. He studied post-conceptual art, new media and social work. He is involved in film, political, editorial and performance collectives. An iron cassette is his first feature-length documentary film.
At the center of the exhibition are some never-before-seen objects from the estate of Max Reinhardt and various artworks that trace the rise of the festival to the present day, as well as the lives of the various individuals, their careers, and escape routes.
In the one-hour guided tour, the curator of the exhibition "End of Testimony?" gives insights into the concept and development process. The focus here is not only on the content and technical processing of the museum's own collection of interviews with contemporary witnesses, but also on the different forms of expression of narrated memory that can be found in these interviews.
An exhibition of the Jewish Museum Hohenems and the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial, in cooperation with the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ)
Entry to the current exhibition and the permanent exhibition is free.
Early reflections of a Holocaust survivor who - in Yiddish and Polish - recounts the fate of a Jewish family.
A public guided tour as part of the programme accompanying the exhibition "End of Testimony?”
Discover the diverse facets of Jewish every day life and Jewish history in the Jewish Museum and the former Jewish Quarter of Hohenems, with its unique ensemble of private and public buildings, from the synagogue and the Jewish school, to the mikvah and the Jewish poorhouse, most of them beautifully renovated.
The story of Paul Grüninger, a police captain from St. Gallen, who saved the lives of hundreds of Austrian Jews fleeing from the Nazis to Switzerland before the war by forging their entry documents. He was arrested, discharged and put on trial.
Those who like to read or prefer having a story read to them have come to the right place on this afternoon at the Jewish Museum. Jewish authors from all over the world who (also) wrote stories for children get a word in edgewise when we read together in the museum. The museum also joins in the fun, since we go searching for a connection between the story and the objects in the museum that also tell stories. Maybe we will invent a new story together? Ex libris bookplates are then printed and creative bookmarks designed in our studio.
Redemption Blues is a movie dealing with the difficult legacy of the Holocaust and the insights from some of the last contemporary witnesses. It begins where usual Shoah depictions end and draws a path forward from the perspective of the second generation.
