Guided tour on ‘excavation work’ of a dark past

Sponsored by KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien in cooperation with the National Fund and the Future Fund of the Republic of Austria.

In an almost grotesque way, the attribution of history regarding the fate of the Jewish population was marked by two contradictory cultural productions on the grounds of Vienna’s Northwest Station: in 1924 as the location of the (then still fictitious) deportation of Vienna’s Jews in the film “City without Jews” and in 1938 as the exhibition site of the anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda exhibition “The Eternal Jew” – which was deliberately held in the middle of the two districts with the highest Jewish populations.
In a large-scale open-air installation, “traces” of these two historical events have now been reconstructed at their original sites: Analogous to “excavations,” both the ground plan lines of the train station hall demolished in 1954 and the anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda exhibition “The Eternal Jew” set up in it in 1938 were traced on the ground on a scale of 1:1 and “uncovered” as a memorial. At the same time, with reference to the filming of the movie “City without Jews,” a camera set and train car are recreated in abstracted form. If the fictitious deportation in the 1924 film was still temporary, the inciting effect of the exhibition in 1938 showed its fatal effect in the real: in pogroms, deportations and mass extermination.

Following at about 16:00:

On Exhibiting Nazi Art and Propaganda
Panel discussionpanel discussion
at the Museum Nordwestbahnhof

with Rosemarie Burgstaller, Bernhard Hachleitner, Ingrid Holzschuh, Heidemarie Wenzel, Michael Zinganel

Moderation: Susanne Wernsing