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1938-2025

No one who has ever met Uri Tänzer can forget his quiet yet profound presence. As a founding member of the American Friends of the Jewish Museum Hohenems, he served as treasurer for so many years and repeatedly ensured that descendants of Hohenems Jews supported “their” museum.

But above all, we remember him as a loving person who could not hide his emotion at being loved himself. His modesty and wisdom moved many people. On April 20, Uri Hugo Taenzer passed away peacefully at Samaritan Hospice in Voorhees, New Jersey. May the earth be light to him.

Uri reached the age of 86. He is survived by his beloved wife Cantor Marlena Taenzer, his sister Ruth Loose, his daughter Laura Aberant (Kevin), his granddaughters Elizabeth and Catherine, his niece Michelle, many cousins, and too many friends and acquaintances to mention. Born in Tel Aviv in 1938 to Fritz and Margot Taenzer, and the grandson of Hohenems Rabbi Aron Tänzer, his family emigrated to the United States in the early 1950s, settling in Vineland, New Jersey. Uri then attended Rutgers-Camden where he earned his BS and JD degrees and was part of one of the law school’s first graduating classes.

After graduation, he moved to Burlington County, where he practiced law for seven decades and served as Willingboro and Burlington Township District Court Judge in the 1970s. He was a passionate supporter of many civic and charitable organizations, including Rotary International (past president of the Willingboro Club and recipient of the Business/Professional Person of the Year Award), the Rutgers Alumni Federation (Meritorious Service Award), Burlington County Bar Association (president 1983-84), National Liberty Museum (patron), and most notably, the American Friends of the Jewish Museum in Hohenems.

He will be remembered as a man whose generosity and quiet humor was infectious and who gave his time, love and support to all who knew him.

The legacy of his grandfather, who maintained throughout his life that Judaism was above all an ethical value, was alive in him.

On April 23, Uri was laid to rest at Alliance Cemetery in Norma, New Jersey. The moving funeral service in Cherry Hill was attended by countless friends of his fulfilled life.

1964-2025
Luisa Jaffé left us on February 25, 2025. In 2008, together with her and the Committee of Descendants, we organized the second Hohenems Reunion. The third followed in 2017. In doing so, she followed in the footsteps of her father Felix, who organized the first worldwide reunion of the descendants of Jewish families from Hohenems with the Jewish Museum in 1998. But with her own much different temperament.

Luisa moved us all deeply, her seriousness, her quiet humor and her resilience carried us all through the adventure of a cosmopolitan community of world citizens at these reunions.

Born in 1964 in Kenya, where her father worked as a geologist, she grew up in Geneva and eventually lived in Belgium, from where she organized congresses and communication for an international association of academics. In other words, she did what she gave to us, the Jewish Museum and the community of descendants: living out her talent for bringing people together without putting herself in the foreground. She needed resilience, because her father Felix was a strong personality who successfully passed on his Hohenems family heritage and demanded commitment, but did not necessarily appreciate dissent when opinions differed on what priorities should be set.

Her presence lives on in the Jewish Museum; in a video interview with Arno Gisinger, she describes, her many different passports in hand, what it means to be at home in many nations and cultures – and how the small town on the border could become something of a hinge between her various ties, as the child of a German-Austrian-Jewish father and a Christian-American mother. And she quoted Eva Grabherr: “Hohenems has become a place of generations.”

“I like this sentence because it encompasses everything. … So we already know a thousand descendants. They are now scattered all over the world and I would like to find a way for these people to continue to meet, learn things together and perhaps even begin to reflect together. Or maybe, but this is a bit selfish on my part, to be able to ask my personal questions: Who am I? What am I doing? Questions that basically everyone asks themselves. To turn Hohenems into a kind of mirror that might one day give me an answer, even if that is utopian. That’s what I want for the future.”

On February 25, Luisa’s brother Philip wrote to us: “Today, February 25, 2025, my young sister Luisa, barely 60 years old, decided to go, with clarity, in peace, courageous in the course of her illness.”

We are infinitely sad. Luisa was always present in our personal and museum life and will remain so. We will miss her when, hopefully in a few years’ time, we are once again able to welcome people from all over the world for whom Hohenems has become an anchor for their diverse identities and life issues.

In doing so, we will always remember Luisa.

The new newsletter of the American Friends of the Jewish Museum Hohenems has just been published. The newsletter, which is published twice a year, provides information in English about individual family stories, personalities or historical events – and about the activities of the Jewish Museum Hohenems: about exhibitions, projects and new publications.

Born and raised in Bregenz, Vorarlberg, Bernhard Purin’s interest in Jewish history was sparked early on by his history teacher Meinrad Pichler. Even as a student, he roamed the then-desolate former Jewish quarter of the nearby town of Hohenems with his camera. After studying empirical cultural studies and modern history in Tübingen, he worked as project manager in 1990 and 1991 on the establishment of the Jewish Museum Hohenems and published his first book, which was about the history of the neighboring community of Sulz: The Jews of Sulz. A Jewish rural community in Vorarlberg 1676-1744.

Already in the founding phase of the Hohenems museum, he proved to be a contentious figure who encountered the often naive handling of objects of material Jewish tradition with knowledge and critical enthusiasm, insisting on precise object research. In addition, he also laid the foundation for the development of the museum’s genealogical research database. Thus, the museum is still characterized by his critical mind and his sense of networking.

Between 1992 and 1995, Bernhard Purin was curator at the newly founded Jewish Museum Vienna. Here, he initiated the Vienna Yearbook for Jewish History, Culture & Museum Studies, which he also edited as the main responsible person. With his contribution Jewish History and Culture in Austrian Museums and Exhibitions in the first volume of this yearbook, he laid an essential foundation for the expansion of a comprehensive bibliography on the subject of Jewish historiography, cultural history, contemporary history, and art in museums. During a research stay at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, he found the inventory book of the world’s first Jewish Museum, which allowed for the gradual reconstruction of the Vienna pre-war collection. With the exhibition Confiscated. The Collection of the Vienna Jewish Museum after 1938, the processing of the history and fate of the historical Jewish Museum in Vienna began in 1995.

1995, he was appointed as the director of the Jewish Museum Franken in Fürth, where his ironic approaches to Jewish history and present triggered some productive controversies – debates that he could endure with the support of the professional community, the museum’s sponsors, as well as the approval of the interested audience. In 2002, he was appointed as the founding director of the Jewish Museum Munich, which he could open in 2007 – and of which he remained the director until the end. Under Bernhard Purin’s leadership, Munich was a place of innovative exhibition contents and design over the years, as well as a sought-after project partner. One of his culturally most original exhibitions certainly was Beer is the Wine of this Country. Jewish Brewing Stories in 2016/17. Principally, it was one of his strengths to always keep in mind the thematic and content-related connection to the place of his work. In the Bavarian capital, he was also significantly involved in the development of the memorial site for the victims of the Olympic massacre, which opened in 2017. In 2022, together with his team and in collaboration with a number of other Munich and Bavarian institutions, he coordinated a twelve-month remembrance project “Twelve Months – Twelve Names”, which commemorated one of the people murdered in 1972 each month.

Bernhard Purin was globally esteemed as an expert in Judaica and was in constant exchange with collectors. His love for Jewish ritual objects was expressed not only in such large object-based exhibitions as, for example, Seven Boxes of Jewish Material. From Theft to Rediscovery 1938 to Today’ in 2018 but also in many smaller presentations such as Sign and Metal Art by Heinrich Schwed. Judaica from a Munich Artisan Workshop in 2009 or Samson’s Menorah – A Hanukkah Menorah from the Wertheimer Family Collection in 2014, as well as in numerous thoroughly researched individual publications.

He also greatly influenced the international networking of Jewish museums. From 2001 to 2007 and from 2013 to 2018, he served on the board of the Association of European Jewish Museums (AEJM). At the same time, he was always willing to share his knowledge, be it in the training programs of the AEJM, in the scientific advisory boards of various museums, the Editorial Board of the journal Images. A Journal of Jewish Art, the Advisory Board of the Central Registry of Information on Looted Cultural Property, or in personal conversation.

Everyone who knew Bernhard Purin is stunned by the fact that he is no longer with us. His unerring judgment and humor, his integrity, his profound knowledge, and his unusual and surprising approaches to the world of Jewish object history will be sorely missed.

Jutta Fleckenstein (Jüdisches Museum München), Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek und Michaela Feurstein-Prasser (xhibit.at), Hanno Loewy (Jüdisches Museum Hohenems), Mirjam Zadoff (NS-Dokumentationszentrum München)

Titelbild (Ausschnitt) Bernhard Purin, Foto: ©DanielSchvarcz

A joint declaration on the war in Israel and Gaza (from 24.10.2023)

We are still paralyzed by horror and shock at the pogrom-like, anti-Semitic and misogynistic terror against innocent Israeli civilians on October 7 and the spiral of violence it has already unleashed. The lack of any prospect of an early non-violent solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is causing feelings of powerlessness, despair and anger among many people on both sides of the fence and their relatives and friends. In the midst of this madness, we would like to set a common sign for non-violence, humanity and healing.

The conflict is already being fought out on the streets of the world, but above all in the echo chambers of social media. The fighting is accompanied by a media “war of images”. This war of images is part of the calculation of the terrorist Hamas. People are to be emotionalized and incited to hate others. The conflict is to be perceived as a clash between Muslims and non-Muslims. The inevitable rise of anti-Muslim racism – which is always the case when terrorist attacks are allegedly carried out in the name of Islam – is deliberately accepted, indeed it is a strategic goal of Hamas and its ideological relatives.

They must not be allowed to succeed! We call on all people who feel emotionally affected by the conflict and the current outbreak of violence to continue (and now more than ever!) to seek dialogue with each other and not to allow themselves to be divided and incited against each other.
The future of the Israeli government, especially that of Prime Minister Netanyahu, is being openly discussed in Israel. Many see him and his right-wing government as (co-)responsible for this development and this escalation of violence. The next elections will decide their fate. Israeli society is at a crossroads. This includes the question of whether the response to terror respects international law or takes the path of collective punishment.

The Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, on the other hand, have long been unable to decide their own fate and are dependent on solidarity and supplies from outside. The population of the Gaza Strip therefore deserves every solidarity and expressing it must not automatically be equated with anti-Semitism. However, showing solidarity with the Palestinians’ justified desire for self-determination and a life in safety and dignity must not mean legitimizing Hamas’ terror in any way. It must now be clear to everyone that the totalitarian Hamas cannot be part of this movement for equal rights for all people in the region. Israelis and Palestinians will continue to live side by side in the region and there can only be a future for both sides if the fantasy of eliminating the other no longer determines their actions.

Anti-Semitism is a real threat to Jewish life – and the new wave of anti-Jewish conspiracy fantasies that is already emerging is causing us great concern. But neither can anti-Semitism be countered with anti-Muslim racism, nor should racism in our society be misused as a justification to pander to the rampant terror propaganda.

We know that dialog in our diverse society faces new and difficult challenges. But we can only stand together against the threat of division in our society. Here and there.

Prof. Dr. Zekirija Sejdini

Institute for Islamic Theology and Religious Education, Innsbruck University

Dr. Hanno Loewy
Jewish Museum Hohenems

Arnon Hampe, Dipl.-Pol.
#OhneAngstVerschiedenSein

The exhibition “A Place of Our Own” focuses on the lives of four young Palestinian women. They are Israeli citizens, living and studying in Tel Aviv, and setting out from there on their professional lives, in Israel and elsewhere. Israeli photographer Iris Hassid (b. 1965) began photographing them in 2014 and talking to them about their ambitions, friendships, families, and political-social involvement.

The English edition is a package with the German edition and a separate text volume in English. | Ed. Hannes Sulzenbacher | Bucher Printing and Publishing 2021 | 240 pages | Softcover | 95 illustrations | 17 x 24 cm | € 29,80 | ISBN dt. 978-3-99018-573-5 | ISBN engl. 978-3-99018-575-9

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.

Tuesday, May 25, 2021, at 6:00 p.m. in the Salomon Sulzer Hall in Hohenems | Despite a modest lineage as butchers and cattle dealers in Hohenems, the Jewish Brunner family experienced a steep social and cultural rise: at the beginning of the 19th century, almost an entire generation left Vorarlberg to seek their fortune elsewhere.