Architecture & Memory: July 2014

Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Military History Museum - Vienna

Where: Arsenal Objekt 1, 1030 Vienna - Austria

What: Museum

When: 1891

Admission: Regular Fee: € 6,00

Reduced Fee: € 4,00

Guided Tour: € 4,00

Guided Tour Pupil: € 2,50

Video-Photo-Permission: € 2,00

Additional Audio Guide: € 2,00

The building: The Museum of Military History is part of the Vienna’s Arsenal, a military complex meant to house troops and weapons. The museum it self was designed to be what it is nowadays, its architects are Ludwig Foerster, Danish, and Theophil Hansen, Austrian. The museum was built between 1850 and 1856, but the first time it opened for visits was in 1891. It is one of the oldest military history museums in the world as well as the first museum of Vienna. It focuses on Austrian military history from the end 16^th century to 1945.

Context: The initial idea was to make it a weapons museum, showing the imperial weapons collection, but this were to big to fit in there, so they had to rethink what they would show, which took almost 30 years. When it opened for visit it showed a vast range of military objects, collected through the years. When the First World War came the museum was closed, but the search for new objects continued. It reopened in 1923 with a more complete collection including some fine arts paintings. During the Second World War it was held under the power of the director of army museums in Berlin and held propaganda exhibitions about the World War II. During this period many items were transferred and its northern wing was destroyed, and there was a significant loss in the inventory. After this time the museum was rebuilt and became a history museum.

The exhibition: There are four exhibitions rooms each one devoted to a different period of Austrian history, beginning with the Thirty Years War, the Ottoman Turks and Napoleonic Wars, in the first floor, and Franz Joseph period, World War I and World War II, in the ground floor. There is also a small temporary exhibition hall and a special part with ships miniatures and canons in the ground floor.

Personal impressions: When I visited the museum most of the rooms were closed for the public, there was an event in the two upper rooms, and the World War I room was being restored, so I only had access to the World War II room. This exhibited the many military objects used during the war, from cars, to uniforms and propaganda posters to chess boards. It is really informative, but don’t have emotional appeal, it doesn’t try to move you, it only informs about the facts. It tries to be more a history lesson then memory exhibition. It doesn’t have any dramatic light effect and the explanatory texts don’t seem to have any emotional appeal, they try to just stick with facts. This is expected from this kind of museum. The collection is vast and the appeal is that, as there is only objects from wartime, or really good reproductions, keeps you thinking about the ones who used them, and how they used it. The exhibition itself is a little disorganized, the objects are all together and there are many of them, so it gets a bit confusing.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Military_History,_Vienna

http://www.wien.info/en/sightseeing/sights/from-g-to-k/museum-military-history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophil_Hansen

Museum facade

WWII exhibition

WWII exhibition, uniforms

WWII exhibition detail, war plane

WWII exhibition detail, motorcycle

WWII exhibition detail, tank

WWII exhibition detail, bomb parts

WWII exhibition detail, uniforms

WWII exhibition detail, everyday objects

Jewish Museum - Vienna

Where: Innere Stadt, 1010 Vienna - Austria

What: Museum

When: 1993

Admission: Regular admission € 10,-
Reduced admission € 8,-
Students € 5,-
Children (18 and under) FREE
Group rate € 7,-
Guided tours € 40,- per group and hour
School classes Admissions free of charge, guided tour € 20,-

The building: The Jewish Museum of Vienna is located, nowadays, in the Palais Eskeles, owned by the jewish family Eskeles. Over the years Vienna had many different Jewish museums, in different locations. The first one, funded in 1895, was closed when the WWII started. The one active today, in the Palais Eskeles, was only established in 1993, its renovation was led by a Viennese team of architects called Eichinger oder Knechtl. The palais was in the Eskeles family since 1829, but it had other owners before. The museum displays the history of Jews in Vienna.

Context: Vienna had the first Jewish museum in the world, founded in 1895 by the private “Society for the Collection and Conservation of the Art and Historical Monuments of Judaism”. The focus was to present the cultural influences of the Jews in the Viennese society, the collection focused in the history and culture of Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and had a vast range of Zionist objects. It was closed in 1938 by the Nazis, and the collection was transferred to different museums in Vienna. From 1950 to 1990 some objects were returned to the Vienna Israelite Community (IKG), but many disappeared. All the objects now in the Palais Eskeles are on permanent loan from IKG. Only in 1986 a new museum was announced. The museum was founded in 1988 but only in 1993 it moved to Palais Eskeles.

The exhibition: The ground floor is reserved for their history from 1945 until the present, and the second floor, from ancient times until 1945. The first floor houses temporary exhibitions. There is also a third floor with many objects donated, they are part of the Jewish culture, there we can find candleholders, books, silver cups etc. The permanent exhibition has a vast range of documents, but mainly letters. The temporary exhibition was about Jews in the IWW, and was a compilation of personal and official documents, from photos and letters to posters, medals and crowns. The exhibition was divided in many categories, trying to show the many faces of war. Each room depicts an aspect, there is “ugly faces of war”, “anti-Semitism”, “youth movement”, “women in war” and others.

Personal impressions: The temporary exhibition has a really dark design, the walls are dark blue, and the lights are low, there are not many colours, which gives a dramatic tone to the exhibition, and enhances the feeling of importance and respect for what you are seeing. What I thought was most interesting about the organization was that, although they want to impose the feeling of gravely, they tried also to show a part of war that wasn’t as tragic, as the youth movement and how women participated. The content is also really good; you can see how many things are related, not only with the WWI but also with the WWII.

What I found most interesting in the permanent exhibition was the part of Vienna before 1945. Many is said about the IIWW and its afterwards, but I never really had thought about the before. What I think is well shown in this exhibition is that, at least in Austria, Jews already suffered a lot of prejudice and persecution. The exhibition shows that there was a time of relative peace and good coexistence, but not exactly, after 1780 Jews had to pay a tolerance tax to stay in Vienna. They played an important role in Vienna’s history, but were never well accepted. Only in 1867 that they achieved equal civil rights, but there were always a feeling of Anti-Semitism. This is also shown in the temporary exhibition, there is a part that demonstrates how the Jews helped in the War but were never really accepted in the Viennese society. This part was really reviling for me, for that’s the society Hitler grew up, he was Austrian and they never had accepted Jews as a part of their society. I think that in both exhibitions show clearly that there were always great xenophobic actions from Austria, not only with Jews, but also with other groups, as the Armenians. This also kept me thinking why?

References:

http://www.viennareview.net/news/austria/the-worlds-oldest-jewish-museum-looks-to-the-future

http://www.jmw.at/en/about-us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Museum_Vienna

http://www.wien.info/en/vienna-for/jewish-vienna/jewish-museum

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/arts/design/jewish-museum-in-vienna-said-to-lag-in-restitution.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_Eskeles
http://archive.today/3zqIJ#

Begining of the permanent exhibition, before 1945

permanent exhibition, before 1945

poster for the temporary exhibition, Jews in the WWI

entrance of the temporary exhibition, panels with war personalities and their history

temporary exhibition detail, patriotic badges produced for Jewish costumers and Franz Joseph I drawing

temporary exhibition room, "the ugly faces of war"

temporary exhibition detail, propaganda posters

temporary exhibition detail, injuries from war

temporary exhibition

temporary exhibition detail, newspapers compilations, guitar and testimonials video

temporary exhibition detail, map of the Armenian genocide (occured from 1915-1917)

temporary exhibition

temporary exhibition detail, war graves day appeal byt the comitee of War Grave Maintenance in Austria

temporary exhibition

Documentation Centre of the National Socialism (NS-Dokumentationszentrum) - Cologne

Where: Appellhofplatz 23-25, D-50667 Cologne - Germany

What: Museum and memorial

When: 13th December 1979

Admission: Adults: 4,50 €
Concession: 2,00 €

The building: The NS-Documentationszentrum is located at the EL-DE house, in Cologne. The house is named after its first owner and founder Leopold Dahmen (L-D). It had residential and commercial use, he lived there with his family, and sold clocks and gold. In 1934 it had a major renovation, led by the German architect Hans Erberich, still with both commercial and residential use, it has a strictly neoclassical style. From 1947 to 1949 annexes were built, replacing the residential part of the house and the other house next to it, and also one floor was added in the entire building. In 1991 the Cologne City Council decided to transform the place in a museum and memorial, the Germans, Professor Peter Kulka, Konstantin Pichler and Professor Gerd Fleischmann worked together to design the exhibition. In 1997 the place was opened for the public. In 2009 and 2010 some other modifications were made, but mainly to update some data (it is also a research centre, so they had new findings and material), and to update the media stations, that still had the 1997 technology, and were outdated.

Context: The Documentation Centre of the National Socialism is located at EL-DE house, in Cologne, Germany. Is considered de largest regional memorial site in Germany. It is the former prison and headquarters of the Gestapo, which had been located in this place from 1935 until 1945. Nowadays it has a prison memorial, a museum and an educational centre. The place opened as a memorial in December of 1991, and is dedicated to remember the ones who died during the Nazi regime, to communicate and to research the National Socialism regime. Before being used by the Gestapo it had had commercial and residential use. Then the living space was turned into offices and the EL-DE house prison was installed on the upper basement level. The Gestapo chose this building mainly because of its location, close to the city centre, near the Police headquarters and the central prison.

During the time Gestapo used it, the house suffered many interventions, but after this period it remained almost untouched, at least until it was turned into a memorial and museum. The house was used by tenants again immediately after the end of the war, mostly by the City of Cologne (The Occupation Office, the Pricing Authority, the Office for Defence Expenses, the Registry, the Pension Office and the Legal and Insurance Authority had their offices there).

The house is still owned by the same family that had it before the war. In 2010, its tenants were the NS Documentation Centre, the Legal and Insurance Office as well as the staff council of the Culture Department. The ground floor of the house used to host a gallery but became a part of the NS Documentation Centre by July 2012. The most significant changes were the refurbishments between 1993 and 1997 to accommodate the permanent exhibition ‘Cologne during National Socialism’ and the installation of the library, a meeting room as well as offices for the NS Documentation Centre. In 2009, two rooms on the ground floor were added to the entrance of the memorial and a multi-functional meeting room was created on the second floor, right behind the end of the exhibition. Once the ground floor premises of the building have been taken over, more refurbishments were necessary: The special exhibition space was moved and a pedagogical centre was created in its current space. The library was extended and the inner court as the former execution place was included in the memorial. It was only at the beginning of the 1980’s that the EL-DE House became a historically protected monument.

The exhibition: The prison is really well kept, it still has the inscriptions of the prisoners who were kept there. Some cells and the corridor are filled with panels, both in English and German, that explains who were some of the people that were kept there, and some transcriptions of the walls inscriptions. The exhibition, on the upper floors consists of a range of panels explaining what happened in the EL-DE House during the National Socialism in Germany, it also has a lot of documents, not only in paper, but also audios and videos, displayed through the rooms. The exhibition is only in German.

Personal impressions:

The prison is really well kept and it is quite big, but the ceiling is really low, which gives the feeling of enclosure. It is actually really impacting. The museum it self is really well organized and has a vast range of information, the three floors in which it is located are really big, and the panels give a great panorama of the time. The only problem with it was that this part is only in German, so many times you are not quite aware of what’s the message they are passing. The whole building gives the impression that it hasn’t been touched after the war. The walls have an old look, like they were abandoned, which enhances the feeling of being in a historically important place. What kept me intrigued was why they only had English explanations for the memorial prison and not the permanent exhibition, I imagine that this has to do with what they want to remember the most, maybe is more important to remember the ones that were kept there and tortured. They weren't Jews but also suffered with the Nazi regime.

References:

http://www.museenkoeln.de/ns-dokumentationszentrum/start.aspx?s=314

http://www.cologne-tourism.com/attractions-culture/museums/municipal-museums/ns-documentation-centre.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Documentation_Centre_of_the_City_of_Cologne

http://www.museenkoeln.de/ns-dokumentationszentrum/default.aspx?s=715

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EL-DE-Haus

http://eng.archinform.net/arch/21290.htm