Jewish Museum Vienna

**Das erste Jüdische Museum in Wien**
Jüdisches Museum Wien

The collections of the Jewish Museum Vienna and their significance

The preservation of Jewish culture despite persecution and expropriation

The Jewish Museum Vienna is a place that reflects the city’s diversity. Through the religious holidays and customs, it communicates the full extent of Jewish life in Vienna. The relationship between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations addresses questions of identity, integration, and exclusion.

First Jewish Museum in the World

The Jewish Museum Vienna was the first of its type in the world. Opened in 1895, the museum frequently changed locations until it found a permanent address at Malzgasse 16 in the second district. It remained there until its closure by the Nazis in 1938.

**Bensamin-Büchse aus Holz**
Sebastian Gansrigler

Spice box from the Jewish Museum with labels from the anthropological department of the Natural History Museum Vienna.

The Etrog box was put up for auction by Sotheby's New York in 2000 and was restituted to the Jewish Community.

History of the Museum after 1938

Immediately after the Nazis came to power, they confiscated the museum’s collections. The objects were incorporated in the collections of the Museum of Ethnology (today the Weltmuseum Wien). Some of them were shown in 1939 in the antisemitic propaganda exhibition 'The Physical and Psychological Appearance of the Jews'.

In the early 1950s, most of the objects were returned to the Jewish Community of Vienna administration (IKG). The collection remained in the following years in various depots. The IKG opened a Jewish museum in Ferdinandstrasse in 1964, but it was closed again three years later.

**Keter Tora der Rabbinerfamilie Meisels**
David Peters

This Torah crown from Galicia was on display in a showcase at the Natural History Museum Vienna.

Reopening of the Jewish Museum Vienna

Under the aegis of mayor Helmut Zilk, the Jewish Museum Vienna was re-established in the late 1980s and reopened in Palais Eskeles in Dorotheergasse on November 18, 1993. Apart from the collection of the First Jewish Museum, the IKG offered Judaica from Viennese and Austrian synagogues, prayer houses, and Jewish institutions on permanent loan. These objects bear witness to the events of 1938 and the November Pogrom, when the synagogues and prayer houses in Austria were set on fire and destroyed and Jewish assets seized.

What are Judaica?

Judaica are objects that are associated with Jewish life, religion and tradition. They tell the story of Jewish communities and document religious customs, persecution and migration. Judaica include, for example, Torah crowns and Hanukkah Menorahs.

Other important items in the Jewish Museum Vienna holdings include the Max and Trude Berger collection, mostly consisting of Judaica from Austria-Hungary, and the Schlaff, Stern, and Sussmann collections. The collections continuously grow through acquisitions and donations from family archives. All of these items will be gradually included and made publicly available for viewing in the museum’s online collection.

**Schautafel mit zehn Wiener Synagogen**
Jüdisches Museum Wien

Of the 10 Viennese synagogues depicted on this Jewish Museum display board, only the City Temple in Seitenstettengasse has survived to this day.

**Porträt des Museumskurators Jakob Bronner**
Jüdisches Museum Wien

Jakob Bronner in the Jewish Museum in Malzgasse, 1930s.

Items from the First Jewish Museum

There are 5,414 entries in the two inventory books of the First Jewish Museum. Not all objects must have been systematically recorded, however, because the typewritten list that Jakob Bronner, the last curator, was required to submit to the Gestapo in 1938 contained 6,474 objects.

Since World War II, at least one-third of the original collection of the First Jewish Museum has disappeared. Items sometimes turn up on the international Judaica market that were part of the First Jewish Museum’s collection, but many objects have been lost forever.