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JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE
An Online Resource Centre
AUSTRIA 2
Innere Stadt
Judenplatz
Leopoldstadt
Stadttempel and Jewish community office
Tempelgasse synagogue
Floridsdorf cemetery
Rossauer cemetery
Vienna central cemetery
Währing cemetery
Memorial for the Victims of the Gestapo
‘Nameless Library’ Holocaust memorial
Monument against War and Fascism
Jewish Museum Vienna
Museum Judenplatz and Misrachi_Haus
Sigmund Freud museum
Arnold Schoenberg centre
Documentation Centre of Austrian resistance
Jewish Documentation Centre
As the historic capital of Austria and the wider Habsburg Empire alike, Vienna has for many centuries been an important centre of Jewish cultural life in eastern-central Europe. Judenplatz (Jewish square) still exists, near the site where Austria’s first known synagogue is known to have stood in the 13th century. The area became the focus of the ghetto established in the 15th century. This latter oppressive era saw a massacre of several hundred members of the Jewish community, burned alive at a meadow outside the city, the Gänseweide; and a mass suicide of Viennese Jews inside the city’s main synagogue. This synagogue was subsequently demolished and its stones used to build part of what is now the Old University (Dr Ignaz Seipel-Platz).
A new Viennese Jewish community was established after the Edict of Privileges of 1624. Settlement was permitted on part of a large island adjacent to the city walls, in an area that became known as ‘Im Unteren Werd’, today part of Leopoldstadt in Vienna’s Second District. A large synagogue was constructed. However within decades a second expulsion took place and the synagogue was rebuilt as St. Leopold’s Church (Alexander-Poch-Platz 6).
The community was not entirely destroyed, and Leopoldstadt remained the focus of Jewish life until the Nazi era. By 1753 about 500 Jews lived in Vienna, with many more in the Austrian provinces. By the 1900s the city was home to 175,318 Jews, comprising the third biggest Jewish population in Europe: only the communities of Warsaw and Budapest were larger. Ten per cent of the city’s population and 60 per cent of its doctors were Jewish. The cultural and scientific achievements of this community were at the forefront of international culture.
The impact of Nazism was disastrous: 22 synagogues and some 40 smaller prayer houses were destroyed during Kristallnacht in 1938 and afterwards. Of all these structures, only the Stadttempel survives; photos and drawings of many of the destroyed synagogues can be seen in Genée 1987.
Today Vienna again has a Jewish community, which is dispersed throughout the city and has many places of worship, almost all of recent creation and not covered in these pages. The Stadttempel is home to one of the world’s most spectacular synagogue choirs.
(historic inner Vienna)
Before the 17th century, Judenplatz (Jewish Square) was the centre of Jewish life in Vienna. The site was known as the Schulhof in the Middle Ages, becoming the Judenplatz only after the expulsion of the Jews. Excavations have revealed the line of a north-south mediaeval street running through the site of the square, lined first with wooden houses, replaced in stone from the 13th century onwards, when the synagogue was also built.
Judenplatz today is a singular place of remembrance. It includes Rachel Whiteread’s ‘Nameless Library’ Holocaust memorial, and underground, in the Judenplatz museum (accessed through the historic Misrachi-Haus), the important remains of the mediaeval synagogue, destroyed in 1421 and discovered during construction of the memorial. Also in the square is a mediaeval inscription of 1497 celebrating – literally – the destruction and reuse of stones from the synagogue in the building of the nearby university, and explaining that the Jews deserved the fate that befell them. In a more enlightened era a statue was built here to the dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81), a key figure in the German Enlightenment, good friend of Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), and defender of Jewish emancipation. The modern Mizrachi synagogue, a small prayer room in the Misrachi-Haus, was opened after the Second World War. Modern plaques also record the former existence of a mediaeval Jewish hospital and several historic dwelling places in the area; other Jewish structures, including a mikveh and slaughterhouse, are believed to lie nearby.
Within the rest of the historic old city of Vienna, the perimeter of which is marked by the Ringstrasse, stand further landmarks from Vienna’s later Jewish history, the 19th and early 20th centuries in particular. These include, for example, a plaque commemorating a stay by Franz Kafka and Max Brod, on the Graben Hotel at 3 Dorotheergasse; and one marking the former site of Moritz Perles’s publishing house and bookshop at 4 Seilergasse. Perles published many of the seminal works of science and medicine in fin-de-siècle Vienna, including several by Sigmund Freud.
Before the Second World War, one third of all Vienna’s Jews – approximately 60,000 people – lived in Leopoldstadt. As early as the 17th century, the area was known among Jews as the ‘Metropolis of Learning’. Now in Vienna’s Second District, the area today has about 1,500 Jewish residents. There is a Hasidic community, kosher shops and at least one street with three synagogues. The main historic monuments are the great Stadttempel and the remains of the Templegasse synagogue. Both are within the boundary of the 17th-century ghetto, which lies adjacent to modern Taborstrasse: three of its border stones also survive (one is displayed at the Vienna Museum on Karlsplatz). Among the more historically interesting modern monuments are the Sephardic House, Tempelgasse 7, the main religious and cultural centre for Jews from Georgia and Bukhara; the Georgian synagogue, with crystal lamps and oriental rugs; and the Bukharan synagogue, with a stone floor, marble central bimah and crystal chandelier.
Seitenstettengasse synagogue/Main synagogue
The historic Stadttempel is the only surviving pre-war Jewish place of worship in Vienna. Although badly damaged by the Nazis, it has been restored and is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful historic synagogues in Europe.
Stadttempel © Sam Gruber 2004
Stadttempel © Sam Gruber 2004
Founded in 1826, the Stadttempel was the first purpose-built synagogue erected in Vienna in modern times. Since the destruction of the mediaeval synagogue in the 15th century, worship – when possible at all – usually took place in private residences or small prayer rooms in buildings erected for other purposes. The building owes its survival in large part to the fact that it was deliberately constructed as part of a residential complex, so as to be invisible from the street.
The building’s architect, Josef Kornhäusel (1782-1860), was a leading designer, serving the imperial court and the Prince of Liechtenstein. Besides his work in Vienna, Kornhäusel was well known for rebuilding much of the city of Baden after a disastrous fire of 1812.
The synagogue has a distinctive oval plan. This was unique at the time it was created, and the combination of domed form and Neoclassical stylistic elements was highly influential. The elliptical sanctuary within has a blue dome and skylight supported by 12 large marble Ionic columns and a three-tiered gallery; the effect is one of great elegance.
Between 1895 and 1904, screens were removed from the galleries, which were extended all the way to the Ark. These changes were part of a remodelling by Wilhelm Stiassny (1842-1910), who designed many synagogues throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including the destroyed Polish Synagogue in Leopoldstrasse (1893) and the Ohel of Vienna’s main cemetery, the Zentralfriedhof.
Because of the danger of fire spreading to the structures around it, the building was not destroyed on Kristallnacht. It was re-opened for worship in 1945, and was fully repaired in 1963 under the direction of Otto Niedermoser (1903-1976), who largely returned the structure to its late 19th-century appearance.
The synagogue is part of a complex that also houses the offices of the Jewish community, the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien. In the foyer shared by both buildings historic religious objects are displayed. There is also a monument to Viennese Jews who died in the Holocaust, and the library of the Jewish Museum of Vienna; this contains about 30,000 books in German, Hebrew, Yiddish and English. Next door there is a community centre hall and a kosher restaurant.
For more on the library, see:
www.dartmouth.edu/~wessweb/LBI47-10-Hacken.pdf
Address
Seitenstettengasse 4
1010 Vienna 1
Great Synagogue of Leopoldstadt [alternative former title]
Agudas Israel [modern synagogue in part of the former complex]
Four years after the revolution of 1848, the Jewish community was officially recognised and permitted to build a second synagogue in Leopoldstadt. This impressive building, of which one wing remains, was designed by Ludwig von Förster (1797-1863).
Förster had been active in the modernisation of Vienna since 1839. He presented designs for the new building in 1854 and the new structure was dedicated on 15 June 1858. It was one of the first synagogues to use what later became known as the ‘Moorish’ or ‘Oriental’ style, and as such was extremely influential on the design of synagogues across mid-19th century Europe and America.
The main structure, with its impressive three-story sanctuary, was destroyed in 1938; four slim white columns in front of the building now on its site mark the proportions of the lost building. The surviving wing today houses a religious school, a mikveh and a modern synagogue belonging to Agudas Israel.
For images of the building before the war, see:
www.dartmouth.edu/~wessweb/LBI47-10-Hacken.pdf page 7
and
www.esra.at/en/temple.asp
Address
Tempelgasse 3
1020 Vienna 2
Paul-Hock-Park [Modern name]
This little-used Jewish cemetery was the first burial place of Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), founder of modern political Zionism. In his will, Herzl asked ‘to be buried in the vault beside my father, and to lie there till the Jewish people shall take my remains to Palestine’. In 1949 Herzl’s remains were moved to the new state of Israel and reburied on Mount Herzl.
Location
The 21st District lies on the left bank of the Danube, in the western Marchfeld area. The cemetery is now in a public park.
Spokesperson
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Rossau cemetery
This is the oldest Jewish cemetery in Vienna, in use from 1540 until the late 18th century. One passes through an old people’s home (itself formerly a Jewish institution) at Seegasse 9 and emerges into a recently-restored burial ground, with gravestones of marble and sandstone. Samuel Oppenheimer and other 18th-century Jewish financiers are buried here. The cemetery was devastated by the Nazis and restored in the 1980s. A document of 1670 records a commitment by the city authorities to maintain the cemetery forever, in exchange for a substantial fee. Ironically, at this time the Emperor Leopold was expelling Jews.
Address
Seegasse 9
1090 Vienna
Zentralfriedhof Wein
This cemetery, founded in 1874, has Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish sections. It is the largest burial site in Europe, covering about 2.4 square kilometers and contains some 300,000 graves, holding the remains of perhaps three million people. Gate One leads to the oldest part of the graveyard, near the old Jewish section. Gate Four (added in 1917) is the entrance to the newer Jewish section. This was consecrated in 1879 and used until 1928: approximately 100,000 people lie buried there, including various famous rabbis, authors and artists. The domed Ohel of 1877 is an early work of the prolific Jewish architect Wilhelm Stiassny (1842-1910). It was burnt during Kristallnacht but has been rebuilt. A series of stained-glass windows by Heinrich Sussmann (1904-1986) memorialise a death camp and the Theresienstadt ghetto, with flames seeming to metamorphose into tears and then into a burning menorah, an image of the rebirth of Jewish life.
Address
Simmeringer Hauptstrasse 234
Eleventh District, Vienna
The year after the Seegasse cemetery was closed, in 1784, this Jewish cemetery was built; it was used until 1878. It contains the graves of some 8,000-10,000 people, including many Jews whose prominence in national life led to their being ennobled by the Austrian court. Yet the cemetery – while often spoken of as a ‘cultural treasure’ by those who know it – remains largely unattended and unmaintained. Hundreds of its thousands of gravestones were knocked over by the Nazis in the Second World War; they still lie on their sides, entangled in weeds and vines. The cemetery has been restored twice since 1945, and was open to the public in the 1970s and 1980s. It has since fallen into disrepair, and the very trees that once added so much to its stately beauty have become a danger, with dead branches littering the area and further damage likely to result.
For a detailed discussion, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Cemetery,_W%C3%A4hring
Address
Semperstrasse 64a
Eighteenth District, Vienna
This memorial to victims of Nazi terror is located at the Leopold-Figl-Hof, on the site of the former Hotel Metropol, the Gestapo’s wartime headquarters. The building’s façade carries a relief representing the agonies suffered by the Gestapo’s victims. Inside is a commemorative chamber, its entrance marking the site of the rear door of the building. A line of footprints on the floor symbolise the steps taken by men, women and children into this place, a journey from which there was little chance of return. A glass case in the chamber contains documents on the activities of the Gestapo in Vienna. It includes a list of 150 prominent anti-Nazis arrested soon after the German invasion of Austria and sent to Dachau on 1 April 1938.
For further information, see:
www.doew.at/english/exhibition/morzin.html
Address
Salztorgasse 6
Morzinplatz
1010 Vienna 1
Judenplatz Holocaust memorial
This memorial, by the British artist Rachel Whiteread (b.1963), dominates Judenplatz; beneath it is the Museum Judenplatz, incorporating the remains of a mediaeval synagogue.
Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial © Sam Gruber 2004
The ‘Nameless Library’ is the result of campaigning by the late Simon Wiesenthal. He was concerned that no public recognition of the Holocaust yet existed in Austria’s capital city. Work began on the memorial in 1995. After several delays, it was completed and dedicated in October 2000.
This massive concrete monument, 10 metres long, 7 metres wide and 3.8 metres high, takes the form of an inverted library. The books’ spines face inward; their outer edges seem to line all sides of the structure. The unread pages represent the unlived lives of Holocaust victims. The names of the Nazi camps where so many of them died are inscribed around the base of the block.
Construction of the memorial took place in a bitter political climate. Jorg Haider’s right-wing Freedom Party was making gains, reminding Austria and the world that xenophobia and anti-Semitism were not things of the past. The remains of a mediaeval synagogue were revealed when the site of the monument was being prepared, causing debate as to whether construction was appropriate on this location; some argued it was against Jewish law. In the end, excavation of the mediaeval synagogue and presentation of its story became a necessary and valuable part of the process of commemoration and monument-making.
For more information, see:
www.jmw.at/en/museum/museum-judenplatz.html
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenplatz_Holocaust_Memorial
Location
Judenplatz
Mahnmal gegen Krieg und Faschismus
Alfred Hrdlicka (b. 1928), one of Austria’s most prominent and controversial post-war artists, designed this sculpture in 1988. Hrdlicka is particularly well-known for the creative form of his demonstrations against former Austrian president Kurt Waldheim, who, it was revealed, had served in an SS cavalry unit during the war. He is also known for his monument in Salzburg to Austrian police who resisted the Nazis (popularly known as the ‘crucifixion group’) and his monument to Friedrich Engels in Wuppertal, Germany. The Monument against War and Fascism came to be seen not only as anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist, but also as specifically anti-Waldheim.
The Albertinaplatz ensemble includes, among stone figures of concentration camp victims and dead soldiers, a bronze sculpture of a Jew forced to scrub political slogans off the street — a common scene following the Anschluss of 1938. ‘Walking through the gate, we come face to face with the street-washing Jew, prostrate on hands and knees. From a distance, the bronze sculpture is not easily identifiable as a human form: it sits rather Sphinx-like, its hands and brushes set upon the stones like lion’s paws. Even on a closer look, the figure is so roughly cut that only the bearded head, wearing a skullcap or yarmulke, and the hands and brush are clearly defined. Occasionally, elderly shoppers carrying bags stop to rest in the Albertinaplatz, taking a seat on the back of the Jew on their way home’ (Young 1993, 108).
There was some resistance to the monument being built on such a prominent site: the Albertinaplatz is in an area popular with tourists, close to the fashionable Café Sacher and other well-known coffee-houses. But, like the Judenplatz, the site has a long history associated with oppression, and seemed particularly appropriate to the artist and his political backers, who included Helmut Zilk, former Austrian Culture Minister and Mayor of Vienna. Indeed the site is thought be on the edge of a mediaeval cemetery, long buried beneath the city. It is also the place where, on 12 March 1421, Jews were burned at the stake.
Location
Albertinaplatz, in front of the Albertina museum and behind the Opera and the Sacher hotel
Vienna Jewish Museum © Sam Gruber 2004
Opened to great fanfare in 1994, this museum contains exhibitions and collections and hosts a range of events. The museum prides itself on its modern design, and on its use of work by contemporary artists. Its permanent exhibition includes a series of 21 holograms chronicling the history of Jewish Vienna, from mediaeval times to the present day. Accompanying this installation, American artist Nancy Spero has graphically reworked a number of images and texts from Viennese Jewish history: a mediaeval matzah bakery, Gustav Mahler, a synagogue destroyed by the Nazis, and stamped the resulting images on the walls of the museum in a series of fresco-like fragments. The resulting images represent ‘recovered memory’, and interact visually with the real cultural and ritual objects displayed in the museum.
Near the holograms is a chuppah stone, a large rock from a German synagogue, against which the groom threw a glass as part of the wedding ceremony. The museum’s upper floor includes a display of thousands of religious objects. The museum also holds an important archive, including a variety of documents relating to Jewish life in Austria, such as 17th-century marriage contracts and Holocaust-era diaries.
Address
Telephone
Fax
Website
Email
Palais Eskeles
Dorotheergasse 11
A-1010 Vienna
+43 (1) 535 04 31
+43 (1) 535 04 24
www.jmw.at
info@jmw.at
At one end of Judenplatz an elegant five-storey white building, the Misrachi-Haus of 1694 has been transformed into the entrance to the underground museum in which the remains of the mediaeval Judenplatz synagogue can be viewed. The house, which was archaeologically investigated during the creation of the museum, contains major elements of a mediaeval domestic building. Before the Holocaust it belonged to the Mandeles Family Trust, but from 1939 to 1942 the authorities turned it into a ‘General Foundation for Jewish Welfare’, with a soup kitchen on the ground floor. After this it was ‘aryanised’. The building was returned to the Jewish community in 1950, and today also houses the headquarters of Bnei Akiva, the Zionist religious youth organisation, including a small prayer room, the Mizrachi synagogue. On the façade there is a memorial plaque of 2001, which thanks and acknowledges in German and Hebrew those who helped Jews during the Holocaust.
Judenplatz Museum © Sam Gruber 2004
The underground Museum Judenplatz, a branch of the Jewish Museum Vienna, houses a computer archive with information on 65,000 Austrian Jews who died during the Holocaust, a photo gallery, and a range of displays. But its main focus is the remains of a mediaeval synagogue, revealed in 1995 during preparations for the creation of the ‘Nameless Library’ Holocaust memorial.
The mediaeval synagogue is believed to have been built in the 13th century, when it is first mentioned in documents. It was demolished in the pogrom of 1421. Its excavation has revealed much about the density of the Jewish ghetto, the stone houses which stood nearby, and the evolution of the synagogue itself, which developed into a grand, vaulted structure. It is one of the largest synagogues of its era so far discovered in Europe.
The building originated as a small, rectangular Männerschul or men’s synagogue, which included side rooms from a very early date. These were later enlarged, at the same time as the main central space was heightened, vaulted, and divided into two by columns. A platform was created in front of the Ark and an oval bimah constructed against the eastern column. Then, later still, the complex was extended as far as the edge of the road to its east. A hexagonal bimah, its sides two metres long, replaced the earlier one, and the platform in front of the Ark was enlarged. Further enrichments followed, including the raising of the floor level, the re-tiling of the eastern and western ends of the building, and the further raising of the bimah. This was now covered by a baldachin; smaller columns formed a balustrade around its edge. Further changes were made in the surrounding rooms, and a new room across the western end may have been an entrance vestibule, apparently with a schulhof — or courtyard — lying further west. The sanctuary may have been painted red and white. The building was levelled as a result of the pogrom of 1421. By this time the schul had, over several centuries, grown from a 12.15 x 9.4-metre rectangle to a 26.6-to-28-metre long complex at least 17.6 metres wide. For the following five and a half centuries, the only memory of the synagogue that the Viennese preserved was the nearby plaque celebrating its destruction.
Misrachi-Haus (centre building) © Sam Gruber 2004
Address
Judenplatz 8
Judenplatz museum:
Address
Website
Misrachi-Haus:
Address
1020 Vienna 1
This is located in the apartment building where Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), founder of psychoanalysis, lived and worked for 47 years. A small park at 01 Universitätsstrasse in front of the Votive church, not far from the Medical School of the University of Vienna, was named after Freud in 1985; it contains a memorial to him.
Address
Telephone
Website
Email
Schoenberg (1874-1951) was the father of 12-tone music. The centre holds his scores and other manuscripts, as well historic photographs and a reconstruction of the study at his home in Los Angeles, where Schoenberg spent the last 18 years of his life.
Address
Telephone
Fax
Website
The Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance was founded in 1963 by ex-resistance fighters and anti-Fascist historians. It mounts exhibitions and educational projects and houses a substantial archive, covering many aspects of persecution and anti-Fascist resistance in Austria since 1939. A large amount of this material covers the Holocaust; the organisation’s online database, for example, lists some 62,000 Austrians murdered by the Nazis. The centre is based in the Altes Rathaus, Vienna’s Old Town Hall.
Address
Website
Email
Documentation Centre of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime
Founded by the late Simon Wiesenthal (1908-2005), the centre is a primary source of information about Nazism in Austria. It was from here that Simon Wiesenthal spent decades documenting Nazi crimes, and locating the whereabouts of many unpunished perpetrators of crimes against humanity. It is expected to re-open at Rabensteig 3 as the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Historical Studies, a project run by the Viennese Jewish community with a range of partners and financial support from the state. The new location will place it next door to Seitenstettengasse 2, the offices and archive of the Holocaust Victims’ Information and Support Centre.
Address
(November 2008)
Salztorgasse 6
1010 Vienna 1
Jewish Documentation Centre websites:
www.vwi.ac.at/index_eng.htm?hauptebene_englisch/organisation.htm~mainFrame
and
www.wiesenthalarchiv.at/
Holocaust Victims’ Information and Support Centre website:
www.restitution.or.at
(Updated December 2008)
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