Jewish Museum Vienna presents

Have You Seen My Alps?

A Jewish Love Story

16 December 2009 to 14 March 2010

Palais Eskeles
Dorotheergasse 11
1010 Wien

"Did You See My Alps? - A Jewish Love Story" is the title of an exhibition organized by the Jewish Museum Vienna in collaboration with the Jewish Museum Hohenems. Following the successful debut in Hohenems, the exhibition is being shown at Palais Eskeles in Vienna from December 16, 2009, until March 14, 2010. An unusual theme that calls for an unusual approach, not least in view of the fascination, puzzlement and sense of challenge that the mountains in the middle of the continent have always provoked in European Jews. The surfeit of nature, the abundance of beauty, ruggedness, and energy had to have a meaning that was surely worth discovering. Thus began a checkered relationship, an often unrequited love. The exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to find out about the stories of people, places and objects, and associations across time, with surprising and troubling connotations. The history of the Jews in the Alpine region actually goes back to the expansion of the Roman Empire, although Jewish communities did not settle in the Alpine valleys until much later and remained a rarity: Hohenems, Innsbruck and Merano, with Lugano and Lucerne coming later, or the seasonal Jewish life in the spas of Graubünden and Valais. The exhibition takes visitors on a journey of discovery through time and space-from Hohenems to Vienna, from Vienna to Switzerland, and finally to Merano, a journey through the worlds of Jewish Alpinism and the development of the mountains for international tourism, a journey to the intellectual childhood and adult dreams beyond the cities, through the contradictions of assimilation and migration, persecution and reappraisal.

The exhibition sheds light for the first time on the significance of Jewish mountaineers and artists, tourism pioneers and intellectuals, researchers and collectors, and their role in the discovery and development of the Alps as a universal cultural and natural heritage. The perception of the mountains as a place of intellectual and emotional experience is linked in many ways with the Jewish experience and the admission of Jews to European bourgeois society. Since Moses, the "first" mountaineer in history, Jews have sought spiritual experiences and the laws and limits of reason at the threshold of heaven and earth, nature and intellect.

It consists of several sections and deals with diverse aspects of Alpinism including:
- the significance of the Alps for the Jewish diaspora, and the perception of Jewish Alpinism by Austrian, German, and Swiss society,
- the dispute over national costumes and the Aryanization of the Alpenverein mountaineering club and the Austrian Ski Federation,
- the conflict between a humanistic perception of Alpine traditions and folklore and their appropriation by extreme chauvinists and racists, and
- the transformation of the mountains into a place of spiritual experience and scene of persecution and flight from National Socialism.

"Did You See My Alps?-A Jewish Love Story" can be seen from December 16, 2009, to March 14, 2010, at the Jewish Museum (A-1010 Vienna,  Dorotheergasse 11). The Jewish Museum, a member of Wien Holding, is open from Sunday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission €6.50 / €4.00 reduced. Free admission for school classes; guided tours and educational programs: tel. +43-1-535 04 31-130 or 131,  e-mail kids.school@jmw.at. Further information can be found at www.jmw.at.  The exhibition is curated by Hanno Loewy (Hohenems) and Gerhard Milchram (Vienna) and is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalog costing €29.80 published by Bucher-Verlag (ISBN 978-3-902679-41-3).

Weiterführende Informationen: