Welcome ladies and gentlemen,
As the director of the Jewish Museum Vienna I‘d like to welcome you warmly and thank you for visiting our homepage.
Vienna’s history is inextricably linked with the Viennese Jews who have lived here since the 10th century. Few other cities in Europe are as closely associated with the Jewish history and population as Vienna. Many of the people who have written history have been expelled or perished in the Shoah: from Sigmund Freud to the small Jewish merchant of the second district.
After 1938 Vienna lost thousands of people – people who have all contributed in one way or the other to the blossoming of this city. They lost their roots, their language, their identity. Their belongings, their houses and apartments were taken from them. All those who go leave a gap that can never be filled.
Both at our Museum Dorotheergasse (Palais Eskeles) with its turbulent history and at our second location on Judenplatz, you can get a unique overview of the Jewish community in Vienna.
Among the many owners of the building in Dorotheergasse was also the proprietor of the banking house Arnstein and Eskeles and founder of the Austrian National Bank, Bernhard Eskeles whose name the Palais bares today.
The Jewish Museum Vienna at Dorotheergasse presents itself as an open house with innovative insights into its collections and a unique annual program. The museum´s collections document the former size and intensity of Viennese Jewish life before the disruption of 1938. They also give insights into the revival of Jewish presence in Vienna in recent decades. In its current special exhibitions the Jewish Museum Vienna combines the city´s Jewish history with global issues such as social history and migration.
I would very much like to invite you to our museum on Judenplatz 8. There we present our new permanent exhibition dedicated to the Jewish life in Vienna during the middle ages. Additionally we show temporary exhibitions on the ground floor that provide further insight into Jewish life.
My team and I look forward to your visit, but in the meantime enjoy browsing our homepage.
