"Turks in Vienna" (working title)

12 May to 17 October 2010

The year 1492 was a fateful one for Spain. It was the year in which the Reconquista finally ended eight hundred years of Arab Muslim rule, the Jews were expelled from the country, and Christopher Columbus set off on a journey that was to lead to the discovery of the New World.

The exhibition "The Turks in Vienna" looks at the impact of one of these significant historical events that marked the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, namely the expulsion from Spain of the Jews, who found refuge in North Africa, some Italian cities and, above all, in the Ottoman Empire. They fled initially to Portugal before leaving the Iberian Peninsula for Holland and northern Germany. Following the Ottoman conquests, Jews of Spanish descent-called "Sephardim"-were able to form culturally and economically significant communities in the Balkans. There were contacts between the Jews in Vienna and the Sephardim, or Turkish Jews, even during the era of the ghetto in Unterer Werd, but it was not until the peace treaties between the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the eighteenth century that Turkish Jews were able to move freely in the Habsburg Empire.

After the establishment of the Turkish Jewish community in Vienna, an imperial patent gave it permission to hold religious services. The community had its prayer house from the outset in the 2nd district. In 1887, the impressive Moorish-style Sephardic-Turkish temple was inaugurated in Zirkusgasse, with portraits of the Habsburg and Ottoman regents in the foyer as indication of the community's loyalty to both rulers and countries. In November 1938, this jewel of Jewish sacral architecture was destroyed along with practically all other synagogues and Jewish prayer houses in Vienna, and most of the community was subsequently deported and exterminated.

The Sephardic Jews in Vienna were in many ways communicators between East and West, Orient and Occident, Asia and Europe, a role that was performed in the first place as merchants and dealers importing wool and cotton, silk and tobacco, sugar and spices to the West. Their function as active exponents of the Austrian post office in Constantinople and the Levant, Austrian Lloyd, and the Orient Express is also highlighted in the exhibition "The Turks in Vienna." The Sephardic Turks played this communicating role at the cultural level as well. They set up the first printing works in Constantinople and the Sephardic press in Vienna. There rabbinical tradition also received significant stimulus from the Sephardic Jews. The treasures of medieval Spanish-Turkish poetry were passed on and translated, and the Sephardim were also responsible for developing Jewish mysticism. Moreover, they were the first to make Arab philosophy and medicine available to the Western world. Sephardic scholars became famous as scientists and rabbis, as translators, philosophers, and Hebrew studies specialists. Sephardic publishers distributed their writings throughout the Ladino-speaking world and produced writers of the caliber of Elias Canetti, to mention but one example.

All of these facets of the Sephardic Diaspora and its contribution to the cultural history of the Eastern and Western world can be seen in the exhibition "The Turks in Vienna" from May 12 to October 31, 2010, at the Jewish Museum Vienna.

Ernst Toch

Life as Geographical Fuge

23 June to 31 October 2010

Ernst Toch (1887 Vienna - 1964 Santa Monica) was one of the main musical equivalents of New Objectivity alongside Paul Hindemith. In spite of a number of awards-including the Austrian State Prize for Music on several occasions, the Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy award-he called himself "the world's most forgotten composer of the twentieth century". Between the wars there was hardly a festival of contemporary music in which Toch's works were not performed. Some of these works were highly original, such as the unconventional Geographical Fugue or his first piano concerto. He was a self-taught musician, having studied philosophy and medicine in Vienna. In 1909 he moved to Germany, obtaining his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1921 with a thesis entitled "Contributions to the study of melodic style". His works were performed regularly from 1922 onwards in the Donaueschingen Chamber Music Performances for the Advancement of Contemporary Music, forerunner of the Donaueschingen Festival. He concluded an agreement with the music publishers Schott und Söhne and the 1920s were his most successful years. His style is not immediately classifiable and he created a new form of polyphony, as illustrated in the spoken chorus of the Geographical Fugue. He became well known in America through concerts by Erich Kleiber and Serge Koussevitzky and through a concert tour as a pianist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1926.

In 1933 he left Florence for Paris and ultimately exile in London, where he composed film music. Like Hanns Eisler, he was later to be awarded a teaching post at the New School of Social Research in New York, before moving to California where he continued to compose film music and to teach at the University of Southern California. His guest lectures at Harvard were published in 1948 in The Shaping Forces in Music. His seven symphonies reflect Austrian traditions, and he also investigated his Jewish roots. His family relations, letters and acquaintances are all notable for their strong links with the old country, and throughout his life he spoke with a marked Viennese accent. Like Korngold, Zeisl, Krenek, Eisler and others, Austria showed little inclination to welcome him back after 1945.

Eugenie Schwarzwald

Doing good and doing yourself good

24 November 2010 to March 2011

Eugenie Schwarzwald (1872-1940) was born in Galicia and is one of the most fascinating women of her generation. She devoted her persuasive personality and indefatigable energy to reforming the education system, in particular schools for girls, and to social work in the form of community kitchens and holiday camps. She was also a journalist and had what in many respects was the most progressive salon in Vienna. She founded the first coeducational primary school in Austria, which was notable for its realistic curriculum and absence of repressive measures. She thought that school should be fun and that boredom was "poison", as she put it. Through her contacts with artists and Modernist pioneers she was able to summon the assistance of the likes of Adolf Loos, Hans Kelsen, Helmuth James von Moltke, Arnold Schönberg and Oskar Kokoschka. The education authority, however, found that "genius does not belong in the curriculum". Pupils included well known women such as Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer, Elisabeth Neumann-Viertel, Hilde Spiel, Helene Weigel-Brecht and Emmy Wellesz. It was not until after 1918 that many of her initiatives were included in the school reform by Vienna city councillor Otto Glöckel. Until 1938 authors like Thomas Mann, Jakob Wassermann, Sinclair Lewis and his wife Dorothy Thompson, Egon Friedell and Franz Theodor Csokor, and musicians like Josef Matthias Hauer, Rudolf Serkin and Egon Wellesz frequented not only her house in Vienna but also her villa on Grundlsee. The exhibition is being organised in cooperation with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography, in which Deborah Holmes is currently preparing a comprehensive biography of Eugenie Schwarzwald.