News-Archiv


We are open again …

We recommend a look at this page on the current exhibition “The Last Europeans”: www.lasteuropeans.eu . Here you will find insights into the exhibition, exciting interviews, lectures and debates – and a critical European diary that explores the crises and distortions of the European project, the handling of human rights and democracy, and the political abuse of Jewish history and the present by the nationalist populism of these days.

We wish you all the best, stay healthy and see you soon!
Hanno Loewy and team

Reopening on June 1, 2020

Dear friends of the Jewish Museum Hohenems, Ladies and Gentlemen,

from June 1, 2020, the doors of the Jewish Museum of Hohenems will once again be open to visitors, at the usual times from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Of course, all the prescribed hygiene and safety measures will be observed and our exhibition “End of Testimony?” , which we had to interrupt in March, can now be extended until August 16. This exhibition can be visited from June 1 to August 16, 2020!

Our new exhibition “The Last Europeans” , which was originally to start in May, has been postponed to the fall, and is expected to open on October 4.

The permanent exhibition and the children’s exhibition will also be open again from June 1, and the caféteria and our beautiful garden will then invite you to relax and communicate, naturally with a little physical distance. We look forward to welcoming you back to the Museum from June 1! Until then we wish you all the best, stay healthy!

Hanno Loewy and the Jewish Museum Team

 

Exhibition

November 10, 2019 until August 16, 2020

An exhibition of the Jewish Museum Hohenems and the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial, in cooperation with the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ)

The era of eyewitness accounts about the Holocaust is approaching its end. Only few survivors of the Nazi regime can still speak from their own experience—or talk about those people who were murdered in the Holocaust. What remains are literary testimonies and countless video interviews with survivors—as well as the question of how we want to deal with this legacy in the future.

Reason enough to focus on the history of Holocaust testimonies, to explore the complex relationship between eyewitness and interviewer, medium and society. Here, the focus is placed on the memory of the Shoah as it has been passed on in interviews and recordings of public appearances of survivors. It becomes a narrative—wrested from a trauma and, at the same time, the product of relationships and interests, depending on its respective context in politics and society, in court or school classes, for research, television, or cinema.

The exhibition “End of Testimony?“ scrutinizes the “making of“ interviews and their social role since 1945; and provides insights into the video collection of the Jewish Museum Hohenems, with interviews that have never been shown before.

Current Exhibition

October 4, 2020 until October 3, 2021
Seventy-five years after the end of World War II, Europe is threatened by a relapse into nationalistic and xenophobic ideologies.

The European imperative of “Never Again!” is being challenged by many, also here in Austria. At the same time, Europe’s nationalists are discovering their own fantasy of the “Christian-Jewish Occident”—as a battle cry against immigration and integration. The values of the Enlightenment, which constituted the foundation of European rapprochement in the wake of the catastrophes of the 20th century, are reversed into their opposite and turned into means of seclusion and marginalization.

Exhibition – Preview

October 14, until November 17, 2019 | Im Rahmen eines Projekts der Architekturfakultät der Universität Liechtenstein haben 13 Studierende sich intensiv mit der Stadt Hohenems und seinem Jüdischen Museum auseinandergesetzt. Das von der Stadt Hohenems und dem Land Vorarlberg geförderte Projekt soll dazu dienen, mögliche Entwicklungsperspektiven für das Museum und den städtischen Raum, der es umgibt, auszuloten.

Old Liberties of Hohenems

The second edition of the newspaper of the Jewish Museum Hohenems

The annual newspaper of the Jewish Museum Hohenems (its title refers to a note in Yiddish and Hebrew on the writ of privilege of 1617) is presenting reports on crucial dimensions of our museum’s activities. The second edition of 2018 includes speeches, reports and a photo documentation of the grand Reunion of descendants in 2018 – and exemplary family stories of Hohenems descendants all over the world, namely the Brunners, Rosenthals, Kahns, Hirschfelds, Burgauers, Sulzers and Landauers. The newspaper can be ordered through the museum (shipping costs).

“Power”

European Summer University for Jewish Studies, Hohenems

Quite frequently, Jewish history, especially in the context of the Diaspora, is perceived as a history of powerlessness—or to put it with an anti-Semitic tinge, as a history of “clandestine power.” From July 22 until 27, 2018, the 10th European Summer University for Jewish Studies Hohenems will delve into the question of whether, in fact, it might be possible to discover important facets beyond this black-and-white approach.
 more 

Summer University 2018—Public Events (in German):

So 22. Juli 2018, 17.00 Uhr
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Langer (Wien)
Macht der Rabbinen. Eine innerjüdische Erfolgsgeschichte mehr 

So 22. Juli 2018, 19.00 Uhr
Prof. Dr. Moshe Zimmermann (Jerusalem)
„Shimshon der Nebechdiker“. Das Selbstbild Israels zwischen Souveränität, Macht und Gewalt mehr 

Di 24. Juli 2018, 20.00 Uhr
Dr. Ole Frahm (Frankfurt)
Retter, Ding, Monstrum: Golems und Superhelden im Comic mehr 

Mi 25. Juli 2018, 20.00 Uhr
Prof. Dr. Alfred Bodenheimer (Basel)
Macht und Ohnmacht des Geldes. Realität und Bearbeitungen des Jud Süss mehr 

Sommeruniversity 2018
Information and Registration 
Program 2018 (pdf) 

Reunion 2017

A Meeting of Hohenems descendants

The ORF-documentary of Markus Barnay about the Reunion 2017: „Heimat Diaspora – Das Erbe der Juden von Hohenems“ 

Photographic impressions of the reunion you find here. 

Already for the third time descendants of Jewish families from Hohenems from July 27 – 30, 2017, met for a reunion in the town on the Austrian-Swiss border. Many of their ancestors already emigrated in the 19th century. Or escaped the Nazi persecution. Now they live in Italy and in the US, in Switzerland, Germany or Australia, in Israel or Middle America, in Brussels, London or Paris, and some even in Vorarlberg. For all Hohenems is still a meaningful location, and the Jewish Museum their mutual family archive.

2017 naturally is an important year, 400 years ago the Jewish history of the town began. So the number of descendants participating in the reunion this year was particularly high: more than 180 people, from age 1 to 91, from all generations and from all corners of the world. Together they explored their past but also the prent situation of Hohenems, took part in guided tours in the museum and the Jewish quarter, but also on the traces of escape routes of 1938 along the “old Rhine”. They discussed family biographies and cosmopolitanism, the misery of refugees today and the growing nationalism of today. Workshops and music (i.e. with Sulzer descendant Danny Blaker from Australia), celebration and reflection, a kaddish on the cemetery and a kiddush in the former synagogue where part of the program, as much as excursions into the mountains, on lake Constance or to St. Gall.

The climax was a white table, 100 Meter long, in the former Jewish Quarter. This “lunch with locals” offered encounters with the neighbors and the dedicated friends f the Museum in the Museum’s association. Moving moments that no one will forget. The descendants became cosmopolites – and remained Hohenemsers.

News – Maecenas Preis

Das Jüdische Museum Hohenems erhält den begehrten Maecenas Preis

Das unabhängige Wirtschaftskomitee Initiativen Wirtschaft für Kunst (IWK) vergab heuer bereits zum 28. Mal zusammen mit dem ORF den Österreichischen Kunstsponsoringpreis MAECENAS für die Förderung von Kunstprojekten. Dabei werden Unternehmen für ihr vorbildliches und erfolgreiches Engagement in Kooperation mit der Wirtschaft geehrt. Bereits zum dritten Mal wurde dieses Jahr auch ein Sonderpreis an österreichische Kulturanbieter vergeben.

Diesen Sonderpreis “Kunst & Kultur – für erfolgreiche Engagements in Kooperation mit der Wirtschaft” erhält heuer das Jüdische Museum Hohenems. Zwei weitere österreichische Initiativen, die “Diagonale, Forum österreichischer Film” und die “Neue Oper Wien” erhielten Anerkennungspreise.

Gemeinsames Engagement und Verantwortung für eine gelingende zivile Gesellschaft nimmt das Jüdische Museum Hohenems seit vielen Jahren wahr. Schon 2007 wurde für die Zusammenarbeit die Firma Collini mit einem Maecenas-Preis ausgezeichnet. Aber auch mit anderen Wirtschaftsunternehmen kooperiert das Museum eng, mit der Firma Tectum in Hohenems und der Dornbirner Sparkasse, mit Eisenstein Textil in Feldkirch und mit den Vorarlberger Kraftwerken, den Österreichischen Lotterien, mit vielen Hohenemser Dienstleistungsunternehmen und nicht zuletzt mit der Hohenemser Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft.
Eine langjährige Zusammenarbeit verbindet das Jüdische Museum mit der Vorarlberger Wirtschaftskammer und den Tourismusinstitutionen in Vorarlberg. Gemeinsam engagieren wir uns für innovative Konzepte eines kultur- und geschichtsbewussten Tourismus und für einen offenen Umgang der Region mit Menschen, die zu uns kommen. Gemeinsam mit unseren Sponsoren arbeiten wir daran, das Museum zu einem Ort des zivilen Miteinanders zu machen, geprägt von der Anerkennung des “Anderen”.

Der “Maecenas” wurde in folgenden Kategorien vergeben:
* Bestes Kunstsponsoring “Klein- und Mittelbetriebe”
* Bestes Kunstsponsoring “Grossunternehmen” und
* Sonderpreis “Kunst & Kultur – für Kulturanbieter”.

Jurybegründung:
Ein Museum des 21. Jahrhunderts sammelt nicht einfach gerahmtes oder verglastes Gedächtnis. Das Museum ist eine Brücke zwischen Erinnerung und Engagement – also genau das, was das Jüdische Museum in Hohenems schon seit 25 Jahren ist. Hier wird die historische Vielschichtigkeit Europas erlebbar. Hier wird diese zum Vergrößerungsglas, durch das aktuelle Entwicklungen wie Immigration und Integration betrachtet und begriffen werden können. In den letzten zwei Jahren reflektierten Ausstellungen die Lebenswelt der Juden im Habsburgerreich ebenso wie die jüdischen Beiträge zur globalen Musikkultur. Bis Februar 2017 werden die Museumsbestände vor Augen geführt. Wer die Gegenstände sieht, prüft zugleich die Werte des Sammelns. Was soll, ja darf übrig bleiben? Das ist eine materielle Frage. Vielmehr ist es aber eine geistige. Und ein Auftrag für ein Museum, das seinen Platz in der Mitte der Gesellschaft sieht. Die Vielzahl der weiteren qualitativ hohen Projekte wie Ausstellungen, Museums-vermittlung und Kulturtourismus-aktivitäten sowie die professionelle Einbindung der Sponsoren fördert die Kultur des Zusammenlebens und die Attraktivität des Standorts Hohenems in Vorarlberg, lobt die Jury.

Foto v.l.n.r.:
Peter Schernhuber und Sebastian Höglinger (Diagonale), Hanno Loewy (Jüdisches Museum Hohenems), Walter Kobéra (Neue Oper Wien), Martin Traxl (ORF)

www.maecenas.at 

“Jewkbox” in London

Our exhibition is on tour through Europe

Our exhibition Jukebox. Jewkbox! A Century on Shellac and Vinyl (a cooperation with the Jewish Museum Munich) is on tour through Europe. After Munich and Frankfurt Jewkbox is now shown in the Jewish Museum London, in Camden town, the heart of British Pop.

Hundreds of guests came to the opening on July 13 and enjoyed our global record shop, on a journey of encounter with the Jewish history of pop music. The exhibition is displayed in London till October 16. From February to May 2017 Warsaw and its Jewish Museum Polin will be the next station, followed by the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, from June 2017.

Taking Hohenems as a starting point for this surprising rediscovery of pop history makes sense, ironically. With Salomon Sulzer, who 190 years ago left Hohenems and went to Vienna to become chief cantor of the new city temple, the history of modern synagogue music began. And with Sulzer the first star of the synagogue appeared on stage, who attracted not only his fellow Jews with his voice and his compositions, but also non-Jewish music connoisseurs. Hundred years later it has been cantors and their children like Joseph Schmidt and Leila Mourad, Al Jolson and Kurt Weill, Irving Berlin or Harold Arlen, who left tradition behind and invented the popular music of the 20th century, on Broadway and film.

Until October 16, 2016 at the Jewish Museum London 

Jewkbox_web

Impressions of the exhibition in London 
Fotos: Copyright Jon Holloway/Jewish Museum London