16/04/2026
Gerade in der israelischen Tageszeitung Haaretz erschienen: ein ausführlicher Bericht über das Jüdische Museum Hohenems:
An Austrian Jewish Museum Like No Other:
'People Said, What Do You Want to Exhibit? Stuffed Jews?'
by Liam H***e
The small Austrian town of Hohenems hasn't had a Jewish community since the Holocaust, but its Jewish museum is the heart of cultural and intellectual life in the town. Now, as its visionary director of 22 years steps down, a new leader has the opportunity to shape the museum's next chapter.
HOHENEMS, Austria – It is spring in Hohenems, a town of 17,000 located at the foot of the Bregenz Forest in Vorarlberg, Austria. Daffodils bloom by the brook that runs through the town center. In the window of the local confectioners is an abundant display of chocolate eggs and bunnies for Easter. The ski season that brings tourists to Austria's picturesque westernmost state is over, though the hiking season has not yet begun.
It is a time of new beginnings – including for the town's Jewish museum, where after 22 years, director Hanno Loewy is about to hand the reins to his successor, historian Irene Aue-Ben-David.
"Melancholic," Loewy says when I ask him how he is feeling. "It's a weird mixture of confidence, melancholy, and pleasure. After 22 years, I've been involved in so many projects that I'll have to cut loose. I think anybody would have a difficult time doing that."
Born in Germany, Aue-Ben-David arrives in Hohenems having spent the past 22 years living in Israel, the last 10 of which she has led the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of German-Jewish History and Culture in Jerusalem. "I wanted something new," she says of her decision to leave Israel for Austria, "and obviously the past two years [since October 7, 2023] have been incredibly complex and difficult, both professionally and personally."
Aue-Ben-David takes over a Jewish museum quite unlike any other in the German-speaking world – and perhaps in Europe. "I knew the museum from afar," she says, "and I knew what Hanno and his team had managed to build up here: a museum very much rooted in this borderland – not in Berlin, not in Vienna; a place where you can unpack new topics, try out things, be critical and still have a dialogue."
'Widely neglected'
Werner Dreier, an educator who co-founded Erinnern.at, a state-sponsored Holocaust education initiative, remembers guiding a group interested in the local history of National Socialism through Hohenems in the mid-1980s when a police car pulled up and the officer asked him what he was doing there. "There was no understanding of the importance of Jewish history. It was widely neglected," Dreier says.
It was at that time, however, that things began to change both locally and nationally. The Waldheim Affair revealed that a former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim – who was running for and subsequently became president –had lied about his wartime service during World War II and may have known about war crimes committed at the time. This omission forced a confrontation with Austria's N**i past. In Vorarlberg, historians began researching the local history of National Socialism and the fate of Hohenems' former Jewish community.
Exhibitions at the museum have included "Yalla," which focused on the history of Arab-Jewish encounters in Tel Aviv-Jaffa and "A Place of Our Own" which documented the lives of four young Palestinian women living and working in Tel Aviv through the work of an Israeli photographer.
Jewish life in Hohenems began in 1617 when Jews were granted the legal right to settle in the town. Over time, a Jewish quarter developed with a synagogue, school, alms house, and mikveh. Trade and the crafts formed the economic backbone of community life, though some local Jews rose to establish textile enterprises and banks, railroads and breweries, bookshops and insurance companies. Hohenems' Jewish population went into decline beginning in the mid-to-late 19th century; by 1935, only 16 Jews remained. Jewish community life in Hohenems concluded with the Holocaust.
The Jewish Museum Hohenems – which uses objects and biographies to place this archetypal diasporic story in both a local and European context – was founded in 1991. It is housed in a villa built in 1864 and once owned by heiress Clara Heimann-Rosenthal, who came from a wealthy industrial family. The only member of the family living in Hohenems when World War II broke out, Heimann-Rosenthal was deported and subsequently died in Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942.
Johannes Lusser, chief executive consultant at surface coating manufacturer Collini – one of the largest employers in Hohenems – was active in communal politics at the time. He remembers some of the arguments that took place in the town over the proposed museum: "The society was very conservative and didn't want to talk much about the N**i era. There were questions about what would be shown in the museum. People said, 'What do you want to exhibit here? Stuffed Jews?' Some said it would be too expensive, too big."
Both Lusser and Dreier attribute then-mayor Otto Amann from the conservative People's Party – the dominant political force in Vorarlberg – with guiding the museum idea through local opposition and bringing it to fruition. Lusser calls Amann a "visionary" who understood that though what was done could not be undone, a Jewish museum in Hohenems offered the possibility of a better future.
Open dialogue
The Jewish Museum Hohenems is now 35 years old, with Loewy having been there for 22 of them. More than a museum, it has become the heart of cultural and intellectual life in the town with its own community and the atmosphere of a salon, which Brigitte Plemel, who runs the Association for the Promotion of the Jewish Museum Hohenems, feels is especially important in a state that doesn't have its own university.
When I ask locals who support the museum what it is that makes Hohenems unique among Jewish museums in Europe, the most commonly-used word is "dialogue": They say the museum is an open place of discourse and exchange in which a panoply of views are welcome and difficult topics from Israel to immigration aren't avoided, but examined with a steady eye. Loewy, says Israeli architect Ada Rinderer who has worked in Hohehems, is someone "who is always willing to listen to you, hear what you have to say, and talk about topics intellectually down to their roots."
The current temporary exhibition, "Jewish Orientalists," looks at the Jewish role in the development of Islamic, Arabic, and Oriental studies and the connection between Orientalism and Jewish emancipation and reform. Other temporary exhibitions at the museum have included "Yalla," which focused on the history of Arab-Jewish encounters in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and "A Place of Our Own," which documented the lives of four young Palestinian women living and working in Tel Aviv through the work of Israeli photographer Iris Hassid.
For Lisabell Roth, an educator who works at the museum, "A Place of Our Own" was especially meaningful. "My parents are from Tunisia. They immigrated to Vienna, and I grew up there in a Muslim family. 'A Place of Our Own' was part of my introduction to this museum, and I felt so connected with the pictures and the women depicted in them, because what was shown was also what I know from my own experiences, my own life, my own trips back home. There was a feeling of belonging."
Loewy talks about how the museum approaches the issue of Israel-Palestine. "The Hohenems story is a metaphor for the story of the Diaspora, for the whole, and if you discuss Jewish life as a whole, it would be crazy if we didn't do anything about Israel," he explains. "This museum has developed a perspective on Israel, which is trying to follow the truth, and the truth is that Israel is called a Jewish state, but it is not, because it's a state that's 75-percent Jews and 25-percent others, and those others are not strangers. Israel and Palestine," he continues, "are intermingled, intertwined, and we talk about the complexity of this."
"Part of being brave as a Jewish museum is to touch the subject of Israel," Loewy thinks, and he is discouraged by the state of the European Jewish museum landscape right now. He calls the Jewish Museum Berlin "politically non-existent" and mourns the closure of the Jewish Museum London in 2023. "That was really a brave place," Loewy reflects. "Looking around in the world of Jewish museums, there's not that much at the moment that encourages [me]."
Friends and foes
It may be that Hohenems' geography has offered Loewy the freedom to explore topics often taboo in the German-speaking world. The town has no organized Jewish community, the nearest ones being Innsbruck to the east and St. Gallen, Switzerland to the west. The Swiss proximity is important, Loewy thinks, he believes the culture there, including in Jewish communities, is "consensus-oriented and less polarized."
Loewy has used his freedom to speak out on political issues, whether it be Israel, historical memory, or the rise of the far-right in Austria. That's part of what friends of the museum admire him for. "He's never been afraid of controversial situations," says Petra Klose, who lives in Hohenems and previously worked at Al-Quds University and the W***y Brandt Center in Jerusalem, "even knowing that there might be a backlash." Or, to put it in Rinderer's terms: "He has the right chutzpah."
To be outspoken, however, is to make not only friends but foes. In 2009, the far-right Freedom Party of Austria's Dieter Egger – who at the time was running to be Vorarlberg's governor – lashed out at Loewy at a campaign kickoff event held in Hohenems, calling him a "Jewish exile from America" ( though Loewy has no American lineage). The antisemitic incident five years into Loewy's tenure caused uproar and left him considering his future at a time when allies in Vienna were trying to lure him to the Austrian capital to run the Jewish museum there.
Loewy didn't leave and in 2015 Egger overturned decades of People's Party rule in Hohenems to become the town's mayor. But Egger sought to reconcile with Loewy. "Looking back, the choice of words was inappropriate. I have apologized for that," the mayor tells me in a statement. "Different perspectives are part of an open society, but what matters most is how we treat one another and learn from such situations."
Over the past decade, Egger and Loewy "have developed a respect for each other because of what he's doing in Hohenems," Loewy tells me. Despite Egger's political affiliation he has in some instances adopted a more moderate approach than in the past. "When it comes to things that have to do with how you treat foreigners, immigrants, or asylum seekers, or how you develop a climate of tolerance and respect in a town, he's doing a rather good job," the museum director thinks, though this "doesn't change anything about my opinions about or judgement of his party as a whole."
"As mayor, he is responsible for all the people of Hohenems – regardless of their background, religion, or immigration status. His goal is to promote respectful coexistence and find solutions that work for the people of Hohenems. Local government responsibilities naturally differ from political positions at the federal level," Egger's spokesperson told me
Today, Egger sees his town's Jewish museum as "a key cultural institution in our town with a reputation that extends far beyond the region. What is particularly valuable is that the museum not only commemorates the past, but also stimulates current debates and creates spaces for dialogue. In doing so, it makes a significant contribution to cultural life and mutual understanding in our town."
Difference without fear
"I think the role of the Jewish Museum has always been not only to represent Jewish life, but also to ask questions about how coexistence works," says Franziska Völlner, who works at the museum. "What questions do minorities in a society ask themselves? How do they relate to the majority? What does belonging mean?"
In Vorarlberg, almost 30 percent of the population comes from an immigrant background with the largest immigrant group hailing from Turkey. Lusser – whose firm Collini has been one of the museum's biggest sponsors – recalls working with the museum from early on to establish workshops for his company's apprentices in which they not only learn more about local Jewish history, but also wrestle with their own identities, backgrounds, and histories and how they fit into the local society.
In 2022, the museum launched a project called (Being Different Without Fear). Directed at young people, its workshops and educational programming address identity, belonging, and coexistence, racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia, and Israel-Palestine, the latter of which has been in high demand since October 7 as teachers are often nervous to address this topic in their classrooms.
"All our workshops, including on Israel-Palestine, are about reaching young people on an emotional level," Völlner, who has led the project since 2024, explains. "What have you seen on TikTok? Or on Instagram? What did those images do to you? What feelings did they give rise to? We try to open up a space and make it possible to talk about feelings, and then after we have discussed things on an emotional level, we contextualize it historically."
Roth, who leads workshops with , describes taking young people through the museum after October 7, when "A Place of Our Own" and later "Yalla" were showing. "Young people experienced big a-ha moments. We could go into the exhibition and say, okay, it's not so polarised. It's not just one or the other. The whole thing is much more complex that it might seem on social media."
'In good hands'
Navigating communal politics, creating daring exhibitions, fostering local cultural life, bringing communities closer together: This is now Aue-Ben-David's work. After handing her the keys on April 1, Loewy departed with his wife for southern Europe for a few months, leaving his successor, as he put it, to "work in peace – to work on her own with my colleagues and really build up relationships inside and outside of the museum."
After "Jewish Orientalists," the next temporary exhibition has already been set: "Everything Forgotten," a collaboration with the Jewish Museum Vienna on historical memory that "looks at the power but also the powerlessness of forgetting from a cultural history perspective and asks whether it merely denotes loss, or whether it can also be a form of liberation." (An expanded version of "Jewish Orientalists," incidentally, will transfer to Vienna as "Everything Forgotten" heads to Hohenems.)
This gives Aue-Ben-David ample time to consider her first moves as she and her family settle into life in Hohenems after more than two decades in Jerusalem. Not only will she have to think about the work of the museum, the exhibitions and workshops it will put on, but also what kind of director she wants to be: whether she wants to have a public profile as large and combative as Loewy's or let her work speak for itself.
One project Aue-Ben-David already knows she will shepherd is a cross-border collaboration to open a Holocaust memorial in Diepoldsau, Switzerland, on the other side of the Rhine to Hohenems. Barbara Thimm, the project's coordinator at the Jewish Museum Hohenems, explained the plan to establish an educational center on one floor of what is now a customs facility on the Swiss-Austrian border that will deal with the flight of Jews to Switzerland from 1933 to 1945.
At a time when cultural budgets are being cut in Austria, Aue-Ben-David may also find herself having to do more with less. Hohenems mayor Egger assures me the museum "will continue to receive appropriate support. As in all areas of public administration, we are faced with managing resources responsibly. At the same time, there is a clear commitment to safeguarding the museum's work in the long term and, together with partners at regional and national level, to ensuring a stable foundation for the future."
For Loewy, his departure has been made easier knowing, he says, "that the museum will be in good hands. When the process [of finding the next director] started, the whole team and I were all pretty nervous. But with Irene – she's somebody with a spirit, who has a point-of-view. She'll get off to a good start."
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2026-04-13/ty-article-magazine/.premium/a-jewish-museum-like-no-other-people-said-what-will-you-show-stuffed-jews/0000019d-487c-d759-ab9d-79fdee0b0000
The Small Austrian Town of Hohenems Hasn't Had a Jewish Community Since the Holocaust, but Its Jewish Museum Is the Heart of Cultural and Intellectual Life in the Town. Now, as Its Visionary Director of 22 Years Steps Down, a New Leader Has the Opportunity to Shape the Museum's Next Chapter
