Architecture & Memory: Military History Museum

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