Englische Ausgabe | Bucher Verlag | Hohenems 2013 | Broschur | 26 Seiten | 17 x 24 cm | € 2,90

The Jewish Museum Hohenems is part of a unique urban setting. This market town’s former Jewish Quarter—Hohenems was granted city status only as late as 1983 following an initial attempt in 1333—is both memorial landscape and lively center. Ever since the opening of the Jewish Museum in 1991, a process of revitalization has set in. Numerous buildings, architectural evidence of the former Jewish community, were restored and, with new functions, have become bridges between past and present. With this city guide as part of our Museumstexte series, it is our intention to introduce visitors not only to the history of the Quarter and its buildings, but also to its dynamic development. Here, the introduction of some of its inhabitants and their paradigmatic history is an integral part.
A walk around the Jewish Quarter and along Christians’ Lane, passing synagogue and church, the count’s Renaissance palace, and Gründerzeit structures from around 1900, leads us through 400 years of history and the present: a time span that has been marked by migration and coexistence, conflicts and prejudices, success and persecution, upheavals and departures. Their traces are still perceivable in today’s cityscape. Visitors to the Jewish Museum and the city, natives and immigrants, they all are hereby offered a gateway to the center of Hohenems, which has always been characterized by polarities, between palace and market, between commoners and counts, between Jews and Christians, between those who are already here and those who have newly arrived. Hohenems has once been the only community in Europe whose main streets were called “Christians’ Lane” and “Jews’ Lane.” Nowadays, other immigrants and minorities are at the fore of public interest and leave their own mark on the urban center. This guide through the Jewish Quarter and the historic city center is meant to enhance the ability to better navigate through these spaces, to better manage in every conceivable sense.