The collection of the first Jewish museum in the world was started 120 years ago, on February 24, 1893. The first object is missing – as is half of the original collection.More
Max Berger, born in 1924 in Poland, was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust, coming to Vienna in the early 1950s. In memory of his family and in search of the few remaining traces of a destroyed world, he began to tirelessly collect Judaica objects: by the time of his death in 1988, he had collected around 10,000 objects, which offer unique insight and an impressive testimony of Jewish life in Vienna and the Austro-Hungarian space.More
Despite its relatively short recent history, the Jewish Museum Vienna can boast extremely rich and diversified collections showcasing the spectrum of Austrian Jewish life and customs.More
In 1993, Martin Schlaff donated to the Jewish Museum Vienna his collection of around 5,000 objects to the Jewish Museum Vienna, which include figurines, everyday objects, postcards, documents and books reflecting anti-Semitic attitudes. The collector wanted to make the objects and documents available for research but also wished quite deliberately to remove them from the market and from buyers with anti-Semitic sentiments.More
Since 1992 the Jewish Museum Vienna has been responsible for the artistic estate of Heinrich Sussmann (1904–86) as a permanent loan. The collection includes 1,157 drawings, graphics, watercolors, posters, and paintings documenting his artistic output after 1945. Heinrich Sussmann was born in Tarnopol and came with his family as a refugee to Vienna after World War I. He studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts in the class given by Oskar Strnad and worked as a set designer and caricaturist.More
In 1994, the Jewish Museum Vienna acquired the extensive collection of Eli Stern, which comprises, among others, books, ritual objects, textiles and documents, as well as a particularly captivating assortment of some 2,300 postcards dating from 1900 to 1950.More
