Member´s events in Winter 2013
Guided tour of the Palais Hansen construction site
Sunday, January 13
The Ringstrasse residence built as a hotel for the World’s Fair in 1873 is one of the most significant examples of Viennese Historicism. Like Palais Epstein, Palais Todesco, and the Parliament, it was designed by Theophil von Hansen. Palais Hansen will be reopening as a hotel in early 2013, two hundred years after Hansen’s birth.
Before it is handed over to the new owners, the Kempinski Group, a Jewish company founded in Berlin in 1872, we will be offering a guided tour by project manager Otto Raschauer of the future hotel, which combines the history of a listed building with the modern comforts of today.
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Lecture: “All-round education: learning and teaching rabbinical wisdom after Pisa”
Monday, January 21
Traditional Jewish texts contain not only religious laws but also advice on how to live on an everyday basis. Although some of them are very old, they still offer interesting points of contact with the current discussion on education and in some respects could even act as a model for us today.
Prof. Gerhard Langer, chairman of the Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Vienna, explains how rabbinical traditions place emphasis on the scholar as the ideal person. Without all round education, our society is in danger simply of training machines to carry out tasks. There is a need to develop a rounded personality with moral competence who can make a solid contribution to society.
In cooperation with the Society of Friends of the University of Tel Aviv.
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Visit to the Setzer-Tschiedel photo studio
Thursday, January 31
To accompany the exhibition “Vienna‘s Shooting Girls,” the photo historian Gerald Piffl and genealogist Georg Gaugusch open the door to a hidden aspect of Austrian photographic history. The Setzer-Tschiedel studio, founded in 1909, has survived until today at its original site, along with its equipment and archive.
From the 1910s to the 1930s it was the meeting place of Vienna society, including artists like Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, and Arnold Schönberg, as well as representatives of Vienna’s most prominent Jewish families. One of around 20,000 glass plate portraits shows the young Ignaz Ephrussi (1906–94), who would later inherit the hare with amber eyes. But that’s another story.
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Current perspectives: Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)
Wednesday, February 6
Like the person it is named after, the VWI is devoted to all aspects of anti-Semitism, racism, and the Holocaust, including its antecedents and consequences. It started up in 2009, when the basic communication and documentation foundations were laid. In fall 2012 the work entered a new phase with the start of a fellowship program and the development of research capabilities.
VWI managing director Béla Rásky talks of the current perspectives of this international documentation and research center, its pioneering spirit, and the urgent shortage of space.
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Guided tour of the Presidential Chancellery in the Hofburg
Monday, February 18
History is still written today in the center of Vienna behind the most famous concealed door in the country. Maria Theresa worked for sixty-three years in the magnificent rooms, which are not normally open to the public. Two paintings with scenes from a Gluck opera recall the golden era of her son, Joseph II, whose motto was “by virtue and example.”
In his study is the desk of Federal President Heinz Fischer. He graduated in 1956 from the Humanistischer Gymnasium in Vienna and later co founded Amnesty International Österreich and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Tel Aviv. Our tour with the director of events Markus Langer opens up perspectives that are not generally visible.
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From Babylon to Vienna and Hannover: exclusive presentation of Esther scrolls
Thursday, February 28
Over 2,300 years ago Esther rescued her people from extermination on the rivers of Babylon. On February 23 and 24, Purim, one of the most important Jewish festivals, recalls this miracle. The Book of Esther is traditionally written on magnificently illustrated scrolls.
Emile Schrijver, director of the Biblioteca Rosenthaliana in Amsterdam and an international expert in Jewish manuscripts, and Gabriele Kohlbauer, who is responsible for the JMW collections, will present selected Esther scrolls from the Museum archive that are not usually put on display. The reference is a magnificent six meter long Esther scroll from the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hannover, which was written in German (!) in 1746. It has recently been facsimiled in an elaborate process and can now be seen for the first time in Austria.
In cooperation with TASCHEN Verlag.
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Early Wiener Werkstätte metal objects in the MAK
Tuesday, March 5
In the cosmos of fin-de-siècle Vienna, the Wiener Werkstätte (WW) shines particularly brightly. Its foundation and development were possible only thanks to the patronage of its long-standing managing director Fritz Waerndorfer, issue of a wealthy Jewish textile family.
Elisabeth Schmuttermeier, WW expert and curator at the MAK, will show unique WW metal objects that today enjoy cult status. In the display on fin-de-siècle Vienna, which reopened in November 2012, we can learn about the contribution of the Mautner, Wittgenstein, and Zuckerhandl families to the development of the Wiener Werkstätte.
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Fundraising gala in connection with the exhibition “All Meshugge? Jewish Wit and Humor”
Wednesday, March 20
The Verein der FREUNDE consistently supports the Jewish Museum Vienna in the accomplishment of its tasks. We are proud of the highlights, small and large, in the Museum collection that it has been able to purchase with our assistance.
We are currently planning the acquisition of a key object for the new permanent exhibition to be opened in the fall. The necessary resources will be obtained through find-raising events like this gala. We offer companies the opportunity to invite guests to the Museum for a special evening with Jewish wit and humor, Chief Rabbi Chaim Eisenberger live on stage, and a gala dinner. FREUNDE can also book individual seats which, as donations to the Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna, are tax-deductible.
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Curator guided tour through the exhibition “All Meshugge? Jewish Wit and Humor
Thursday, April 11
Humor is an essential component of Jewish life. It can be warm-hearted and human and, since the Holocaust, black as pitch and cynical. The exhibition highlights different facets of Jewish humor, from its roots in Eastern Europe to Ephraim Kishon in Israel, Billy Wilder, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Sasha Baron Cohen in Hollywood.
With the curators Marcus Patka and Alfred Stalzer we shall follow in the footsteps of Karl Farkas, Fritz Grünbaum, Friedrich Hollaender, Hermann Leopoldi, Ernst Lubitsch, and Kurt Tucholsky, representatives of the heyday of entertainment culture in interwar Vienna and Berlin. Georg Kreisler, Gerhard Bronner, Hugo Wiener, and once again Karl Farkas managed to continue the Jewish tradition of humor in postwar Vienna.
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Background discussion with Julya Rabinowich
Wednesday, April 17
Julya Rabinowich, born 1970 in St Petersburg, has lived since 1977 in Vienna, where she also studied. She is the author of numerous plays, a painter and simultaneous interpreter. She was awarded the Rauriser Literature Prize for her debut novel Spaltkopf (2008). Splithead, the English translation of the novel, gave her an international audience. Her much acclaimed book Herznovelle was published in 2011, to be followed a year later by Die Erdfresserin.
In connection with the JMW exhibition meeting jedermann : rabinovich revisited curated by her, which presents works by her father Boris Rabinowich (1938–88), the author will describe her childhood in Russia, her time as a punk girl in Vienna, the importance of family, and her current projects.
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Burning books: censorship and portents
Tuesday, April 30
Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn human beings said a character in a novel by Heinrich Heine in 1823, commenting on the burning of a copy of the Koran. This year is the 80th anniversary of the book burning in Berlin, and on this day 75 years ago the only Nazi book burning on Austrian soil took place on Residenzplatz in Salzburg, a barbaric act with a sad historical tradition.
Domagoj Akrap, member of the JMW library staff, will look at the historical antecedents of the Nazi book burnings. The burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1242 led to the destruction of almost all Jewish writings in France. Selected books from the unique inventory of the Jewish Museum document examples of censorship that appears absurd to us today.
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Guided walk through Matzo Island
Sunday, May 5
The 2nd district of Vienna is known as “Matzo Island”, referring to the unleavened bread that is an important component of the Jewish Pesach celebration. In connection with the exhibition “Today in Vienna 2012 – Photographs of Contemporary Jewish Life by Josef Polleross,” which is being shown at Museum Judenplatz until May 12, we follow Josef Polleross and Eduard Konrad, specialist in the Jewish history of the 2nd district, on a tour of Leopoldstadt.
The first Jewish ghetto in Vienna was established there in 1624 and became the center of a flourishing Jewish culture to which Jews returned again and again, even after they had been expelled. Today Leopoldstadt is still rightly known as Matzo Island.
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Study trip to Jewish Dresden
May 17–20
Das Auge sieht sich nimmer satt, sagt Salomo in seinen Sprüchen.
Ach, dass er Dresden nicht gesehen hat! (D. Triller, 1732)
Since the influx of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union to the reunited Germany, Dresden has developed into a vibrant center of Jewish life in Germany. The most visible sign of this connection with the pre-1933 era is the magnificent new synagogue built in 2001.
Friday, May 17
The program starts with a stopover in Berlin, where we will visit two projects: the Jewish Girls’ School built in 1927 in the Bauhaus style and now revived as Gallery Space and a culinary hotspot, and the Bildungsakademie des Jüdischen Museums by Daniel Libeskind, which opened in November 2012.
After lunch we will continue to Dresden by train. After arriving at the hotel we will round off the day with a city tour to give us an idea of the highlights to be seen, followed by dinner.
Saturday, May 18
On a tour of the Old Town we will discover what Solomon missed. Apart from the Frauenkirche, castle, and opera we shall see the famous Zwinger, where in 1732 August the Strong founded the “Juden-Cabinett,” probably the first Jewish ethnographic museum in the world, with its impressive wooden model of Solomon’s temple and other objects. After lunch, the tour of the legendary Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vault) will highlight often unknown Jewish links with the works of art and objects in the treasury. In the Hygiene Museum we will talk with the curators on the infamous role of this institution, which through films and exhibitions propagated the Nazi ideology defining those persons who were deemed “worthy of living” and those who were not. The evening is free.
Option: dinner together
Sunday, May 19
Our Jewish tour of the city continues with a walk through the vibrant New Town and a visit to the oldest Jewish cemetery in Saxony. After lunch there will be a meeting in the synagogue with the first full-time rabbi since 1945, officially inaugurated only three weeks previously. He will talk about the community and show us the impressive new Jewish Center.
The rest of the day is free.
Option: bus trip to Meissen. Here we will visit the picturesque Albrechtsburg, where European porcelain was invented in 1708. A walk through the Old Town will introduce us to the Jewish history of Meissen, followed by dinner in an atmospheric restaurant.
Monday, May 20
The morning is free.
Option: Discussion in the Museum of Military History which opened in 2011 after modifications by Daniel Libeskind and is regarded as one of the most innovative museums in Germany.
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Annual General Meeting
Tuesday, May 28
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Guided curator tour of the exhibition “Manfred Bockelmann – Drawings as Memory
Thursday, June 6
The large-scale charcoal drawings by Manfred Bockelmann (born 1943) show child and juvenile victims of the Nazi terror. He seeks “to give a face to at least a few names and numbers, to single out a few people from statistical anonymity.”
The exhibition curator and chairman of the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung, Diethard Leopold, will introduce us to a work block by Bockelmann being exhibited in the Leopold Museum for the first time. The archaic, fragmentary charcoal in the hand of the artist contrasts with the cold objectivity of the photographs by the Nazi intelligence service and a murderous arrangement that brooked no dissent.
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Study trip to Jewish Moravia: Třebíč and Telč
Sunday, June 9
Moravia is always worth a visit for our FREUNDE. It takes us this time by tour bus to two remarkable places listed as UNESCO Cultural Heritage sites.
The Jewish quarter in Třebíč – with its winding lanes and river gravel paving, different building styles, passages and small square – is one of the few completely intact Jewish quarters in Europe. It used to hold over 1,200 Jews, who represented almost 60 percent of the population. The town hall, almshouse, hospital, two synagogues, and a school document the importance of this Jewish settlement in Moravia. The 17th century Jewish cemetery has over 2,600 gravestones and is the largest and best preserved cemetery in the Czech Republic outside Prague. The oldest legible inscription goes back to the year 1625.
Another site is the magnificent 13th century St Prokop Basilica with its Romanesque and Gothic style elements. It is the impressive remnant of the Benedictine monastery that formed the nucleus of the town of Třebíč and was destroyed during the Thirty Years War.
After lunch we continue to Telč, whose main attraction is the result of a disaster. A terrible fire in 1530 caused massive damage and led to the uniform construction of the Renaissance-style houses on the historical market place, which is listed as a UNESCO Cultural Heritage site. The work was carried out by Italian craftsmen, who decorated the facades in the arcades with frescos and sgraffiti. Of particular note is the picture cycle with themes from the Old Testament.
Return to Vienna after dinner.
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Preview of the new permanent exhibition
Wednesday, June 26
Great events cast a shadow in advance. On November 18, 2013, the new permanent exhibition at the Jewish Museum Vienna will be inaugurated. Director Danielle Spera and head curator Werner Hanak-Lettner will give the FREUNDE an advance preview and will present sketches of the layout, whose design will encompass all of the floors.
A propos: the Verein will support “its” museum as always through the acquisition of a key object.
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NOTE THE DATE!
September 8, 2013
Excursion to Jewish Styria
