|
Just off Graben, up Dorotheergasse, is the city's intriguing Judisches Museum (daily except Sat 10am-6pm, Thurs until 9pm; oS70/?5.00; www.jmw.at ), halfway up in the Palais Eskeles at no. 11. Vienna was home to the first Jewish Museum in the world, founded in 1896 but forcibly closed by the Nazis in 1938; it wasn't until 1989 that it was finally re-established in these state-of-the-art premises. On the ground floor, beyond the swanky cafe and bookshop, the covered courtyard is dominated by a giant glass cabinet of Judaica etched with quotations from the Torah and other sources, whose prophetic nature is revealed on the walls, over which are scattered photographic images from the Holocaust. On the whole, though, the curators have rejected the usual static display cabinets and newsreel photos of past atrocities. Instead, the emphasis of the museum's excellent temporary exhibitions on the first floor is on contemporary Jewish life. Special exhibitions also occupy part of the second floor, which contains the museum's permanent displays. Taking the Marxist Jewish critic Walter Benjamin's contention that "the past can only be seized as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again", the museum employs a series of freestanding glass panels imprinted with holograms - ranging from the knob of Theodor Herzl's walking stick to a short clip capturing an everyday instance of anti-Semitism from 1911. These ghostly images, accompanied by judiciously selected soundbites (in German and English) on Zionism, assimilation and other key issues, pithily trace the history of Vienna's Jewry, juxtaposing the enormous achievements of the city's Jews - from Gustav Mahler to Billy Wilder - with its justified reputation as a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Taking something of a different tack, the third floor contains the museum's Schaudepot , or storage depot. The displays of Hanukkah candelabra and other ritual objects in large moveable glass cabinets, are deliberately haphazard - they constitute all that is left of the pre-1938 Jewish Museum and the community it served, and include many items pulled from the burnt embers of the city's synagogues, torched in Kristallnacht .
Your Tip for Judisches Museum
Help other backpackers! Write your own guides and backpacking tips to Judisches Museum - they will appear instantly on this page - Please only write a tip/guide to Judisches Museum - visit the main Judisches Museum forum to ask a question!
Please do not post links to your site here (they won't work) - please use the Judisches Museum webguide section below! Thanks.
| 
