The Hohenems Jewish Museum
Located near both the German and Swiss borders, this relatively small Austrian town boasts fascinating Jewish heritage and a unique Jewish museum. The Heimann-Rosenthal Villa at first stands out as a rather grand family home; inside, it examines the diverse history and later persecution of Hohenems’ Jewish residents.
Why go there?
A large part of the museum’s charm is its home in the Heimann-Rosenthal villa, built in 1864. Once home to a prominent Jewish family, the site provides an intriguing aura of authenticity: the villa is simultaneously an intrinsic part of the Hohenems streetscape and a conspicuous outlier, a reminder of a Jewish community that is no more. The nearby synagogue survived Kristallnacht but was later converted into a fire station, stripped of any signifiers of its original purpose. The museum admission fee includes entry to the Jewish ritual bath (the mikweh) and the Jewish cemetery, and you can stroll around the former Jewish quarter of the town with the aid of a map.
The museum caters well to an English-speaking audience, with an audio guide to help you understand the exhibition, as well as an extensive English translation of the website and an English-language catalogue. It is also impressively child friendly: comic-strip panels at child’s height use the story of a friendship to talk straightforwardly about anti-Jewish discrimination and the fate of Jews under National Socialism. An on-site café means there is opportunity for a break.
What’s inside?
The family origins of the buildings mean it is a natural setting for highly personal, individual stories. This makes for an emotive experience despite the relatively small number of traditional historical objects. Handwritten postcards from Clara Rosenthal, for instance, are placed on a set of French windows, allowing visitors to look out over Hohenems while thinking about what it means to be inside or outside, locked in or locked out. The ornate furniture of the former family home is also part of a unique visual trick, preserving the original look of the villa in an unexpected way -we’ll leave you to find out how.
However, the museum isn’t content with functioning as just a relic of Jewish life in Hohenems. It is different from museums in Berlin or Munich, for example, as its Jewish community has nearly ceased to exist. It responds to this situation by once again looking outwards, both literally and metaphorically, examining the diaspora of Hohenems Jews and the dispersal of their possessions across Europe and even the world. The dearth of Judaica from the former Jewish community of Hohenems helps pose important ethical questions, with the museum boldly turning its lens on itself as well as its local community. Possessions were seized, stolen or sold on by the Nazis, often ending up in non-Jewish households. A memorable quote is printed along one window: a member of the Hohenems diaspora states that the opening of a Jewish museum would result in local residents having to bring their Jewish objects to the museum in the dark.
German History Museums 