Jewish Museum Hohenems

The Jewish Museum Hohenems first opened at the Villa Heimann-Rosenthal in the centre of the old Jewish quarter in April of 1991. The permanent exhibition “From the Middle Ages to the Present” was completely redone in 2007 and presents interesting stories and anecdotes from the lives of the local Jewish people.

The exhibition focuses on people, with all their contradictions, subjective experiences, life plans, and customs. One such individual is Salomon Sulzer, the founder of modern synagogue music, but also hawkers and innkeepers, rabbis and teachers, salesmen and manufacturers, or people like the Rosenthal family, who built the house in which the museum is now housed in 1864. Modern audio guides and video stations make “the inside story” accessible for the first time.

Dedicated children’s exhibition
This exhibition is available in German, English and French for an international audience. The dedicated children’s exhibition by Monika Helfer and Barbara Steinitz enables insights into history for a young audience and is the starting point for a dialogue between the generations.

Current special exhibition

“Taxidermied Jews?”
History, Present and Future of Jewish Museums
26 June 2022 until 19 March 2023

When the then chairman of the Jewish Community, Paul Grosz, was asked many years ago what he thought of the establishment of a Jewish Museum, he asked a bitter counter-question. Whether Jews should be marveled at there “like taxidermied Indians“?

Today, there are over 120 Jewish museums worldwide. However, even the definition of their designating adjective is by no means uniform. There are those to whom the institution itself is a Jewish one, to others the institution’s topic is Judaism – from the most diverse perspectives. For some, the adjective “Jewish” is unambiguous, for others, it is not just ambiguous but even full of contradictions. The question of definitions and perspectives are decisive for content and practices of museums – and thus also on the sovereignty of interpretation of what is “Jewish” in a social public sphere. The exhibition illuminates the history and present of the institution “Jewish Museum,” its collections and its canon – and thus reflects the urgent question of its role in society in the future.

• More information on the current exhibition