Category: Allgemein

The Departure of the Wanderer

„There, where you are not, lies happiness” sings the Wanderer in Schubert’s probably most famous song based on a poem by G.P. Schmidt von Lübeck. The „Wanderer“ was a major motive of the romantic period. Time and again the image of a the restless wayfarer, who remains a stranger wherever he wanders, recurs in Schubert’s œuvre. This alone could have been reason enough to give our program, planned to tour from Hohenems, a town known for hosting the international Schubertiade Festival, to Schubert’s birthplace Vienna and from there to Jerusalem, the title „Die Wanderer“. But there is a lot more to our story of „Die Wanderer“.

Schubert’s friend, the celebrated Hohenems born cantor Salomon Sulzer who was gifted with a legendary baritone voice, performed many of Schubert’s creations. According to Ludwig August Frankl, a writer of the time, Schubert asked Salomon Sulzer to sing his ‘Wanderer’ song and he must have done this so beautifully that Schubert begged him to repeat the piece several times declaring that only now he finally understood his own music and what he felt when he wrote it.
But Salomon Sulzer, the famous chief cantor of Vienna, was not only admired for his vocal performance which attracted people from all over the world to travel to Vienna only to hear him, he also happened to be a highly skilled composer himself. While he is recognized as one of the most important composers and arrangers of synagogal music, his secular compositions are nearly forgotten today. Among his many creations is his „Wandererlied“ which we decided to use as an overture to our concert program.

An Ensemble United in Diversity

Nowadays it is normal in the daily music business, that musicians from different corners of the world work together in one project. The language of music is international, and every single artist working on a professional level will soon find himself in ensembles of different nationalities, languages and cultural backgrounds. This is the world of music and for the future richness of the arts we may all hope that this openness and diversity will remain forever.

Nevertheless, even in today’s boundless music scene, you will find it hard to attend an event including Israeli and Palestinian artists. I do not want to immerse in politics, as this is not the place to discuss the reasons. But the many fears and legal obstacles sadly hinder many Israeli-Palestinian collaborations, even on artistic neutral grounds. The luckier we felt that for this project, starting in Hohenems, it was possible to bring together artists from Canada, Finland, Austria, Germany as well as from Israel and Palestine. A group of former strangers, wandering from now on together to present to its audience the works of Franz Schubert, Salomon Sulzer, Joseph and Julius Sulzer.
Joseph and Julius were sons of Salomon Sulzer, both of them accomplished composers themselves and their pieces felt like such precious, interesting and beautiful discoveries that we could not resist adding them to our program.

Our performances at the Salomon Sulzer Auditorium in Hohenems, the Hamakom Theatre in Vienna and at the Imperial Salon of the Austrian Hospice in the very heart of Jerusalem’s Old City where received by an audience full of curiosity and enthusiasm. We didn’t know how people would react to a program which was so unconventional, if not to say daring, building bridges between classic romantic Viennese and traditional Jewish and Palestinian creations presented by an ensemble reflecting this diversity, being at the same time united by a professional musical approach and the will to give birth to a sparkling musical solitaire.

The many administrative and organizational barriers were finally worth everything when hearing comments like „This was unforgettable“, „what a special evening“, „what a discovery“ and reading reactions of audience members about how moved they were, waiting for more concerts to follow.

Jerusalem

Jerusalem was in every respect the big final of our Wanderer tour. The Old City has an ambiance that is difficult to define. A friend of mine once said, this city offers you heaven and hell, more often the latter, but in the end, it is the salt and pepper of life. What would Jerusalem offer to us?

Our ensemble was hosted in the gracious historical setting of the Austrian Hospice situated on the Via Dolorosa, only a few steps from the Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family in Jerusalem opened its doors in 1863 during the Habsburg monarchy as the first national pilgrim’s residence in Jerusalem when pilgrimages to the Holy Land were undertaken by Catholic clergymen and orient travelers imbued with the spirit of Romanticism. We couldn’t have dreamed of a more suitable and atmospheric location for our last concert. At the same time, the Old City brings a certain unpredictability with it.

Also we had to ask ourselves, will we be welcomed or will people dislike the fact that our ensemble consists of European, Canadian, Israeli and Palestinian artists? In Europe we are able to look at the Middle Eastern conflict with a certain distance. Our young Palestinian singers had to face a tremendous amount of bureaucratic requests during their visa process and spent hours in security checks at the airport but then, as soon as we all arrived in Hohenems, we had the luxury to focus fully on the music. Here in the center of Jerusalem, the situation is different. People here live the conflict and, especially in the Old City, they are effected by it every single day of their life.

Due to experiences with former cultural projects in the region I couldn’t help myself but worry if there might be a prostest or some other problem arising from one side or the other at the last moment. There was in fact one impediment, although not related to the project: The Russian prime minister Dmitri Medwedew visited Jerusalem on the very day of our concert thus the Israeli police decided to block basically all roads that would lead to the Old City. Several of our expected guests got stuck in traffic jams and didn’t make it to the concert. The road blocks weren’t announced, another proof of Jerusalem’s unpredictability.

But once our pianists’ hands were set on the beautiful old Bösendorfer grand piano and our singers raised their voices in the venerable Imperial Salon, all worries and sorrows vanished in the melodies of Franz Schubert, Salomon Sulzer and his sons.
For us it was more than a project. More than a musical concept. And this is why we hope that our story will not end in Jerusalem. Because wherever he is, a true „Wanderer“ will never stop searching for happiness. After this project and all the unforgettable encounters we experienced together in Hohenems, Vienna and Jerusalem I wonder, don’t we all have a bit of a Wanderer in our hearts?
The Wanderer keeps traveling from land to land and – hopefully – so will the spirit of this unique project. So let us end with a quote from Sulzer’s Wanderer-song: „Beat happy my heart, be joyful and free, the world is big and wide!“

This week was marked by a moving evening event. Even if it wasn’t public at all. We were sitting with Pierre Burgauer and a little group of enthusiastic friends of the Jewish Museum Hohenems in the “Schlössli” in St. Gallen. Built in 1586 by Laurenz Zollikofer, a notable of St. Gallen and grandson of a leader of the Protestant reform in the city, the proud mansion today hosts a cosy restaurant. But we didn’t come for the food (even if the canapés served after our meeting were great. Thanks Pierre!).

What brought us together was the first session of a newly created foundation that shall support the museum, the initiative of Pierre and his family.

Exactly 140 years ago the Burgauers were the first Jews in St. Gallen who were granted citizenship in 1876. And while we expected serious business, coming together in the “Schlössli” with two well known lawyers and a financial expert, Pierre – with his wonderful humor – welcomed us with a protocol from 1860. On March 15, 1860 to be precise the council of the city of St. Gallen formally accepted the application of merchant Adolf Burgauer from Hohenems, his great-grandfather, to obtain the right to live in a private house and to have a stock of goods there for his trade. The positive decision was spiced with a few cautious remarks: Adolf Burgauer was informed not to host other Jews in his house and to be aware that this concession could be removed at any time and without conditions. A dry beginning of a great story. And a poignant beginning of a great evening. We hope we can report on this foundation soon. Our meeting at least was spiced with humor and heartfelt appreciation.

For today its time to look back into the Burgauer story. And you can find more about it in the newsletter of the American Friends of the Jewish Museum Hohenems and on the website of the Museum. But first let’s have a closer look on what has driven the Burgauer family history.

The Burgauer family first appeared in Hohenems in 1741, when Judith Burgauer, a young widow of twenty one and mother, grown up in the Burgau region near Augsburg, settled in Hohenems to marry for a second time. Jonathan Maier Uffenheimer from Innsbruck was a wealthy merchant and gave her a chance to begin a new life. And to have many more children. At least one child died young and there might have been more. A common fate at that time. But the others were better off. Their son Abraham married 15 year old Sara Brettauer from Hohenems and moved to Venice. Another daughter, Brendel, married Sara’s brother, Herz Lämle, later the patriarch of the Brettauer family and founder of the first banking business in Vorarlberg. Their daughters, Klara and Rebeka also married into successful families, the Viennese Wertheimstein and the Frankfurt Wetzlar family. Another daughter, Judith, married Nathan Elias, the head of the Hohenems community around 1800. This was a successful marriage policy and rather typical for a Jewish family at the upper end of the social hierarchy of the community. However, most of the Jewish families in that era had a hard time instead finding marriage partners and places for their children to settle and to make a living against all odds.

Of interest is what happened to Benjamin, Judith’s first son from Burgau. The sources as to when he definitely settled in Hohenems as well are scarce. Aron Tänzer mentions the year 1773, so it is possible that he grew up with relatives in the vicinity of Augsburg. In any case, sometime before 1772 already Benjamin Burgauer married Jeanette Moos, the daughter of Maier Moos, who for more then 20 years had served as head and representative of the Hohenems Jewish community. These were critical times; the family of the imperial counts of Hohenems died out and the countship fell back into the control of the Hapsburg Empire. Under difficult circumstances, new letters of protection needed to be settled. The Empress Maria-Theresa was known for her blatant anti-Jewish sentiments.

Even though Benjamin’s father–in-law successfully secured the future of the community and even though the dream of building a proudly visible synagogue took place while he was head of the kehillah, the community still had to survive restrictions and hardships. In the year of Maier Moos’ death, a great fire destroyed both half the Christian’s lane and the Jew’s lane. While the Jews were required to contribute financially to the reconstruction of the Christian quarter, support in the other direction was scarce. And the restrictions on settlement and marriage imposed on the Jewish communities, limiting the continuation of a family in Hohenems to one (and mostly the eldest) son and his offspring, continued until the middle of the 19^th century. These restrictions forced the vast majority of children to emigrate, if they wanted to marry and create a family.

Two of Benjamin’s daughters, Esther and Brendel, found husbands in Lengnau in Switzerland. Brendel married Baruch Guggenheim,on e of the many Burgauer-Guggenheim connections that were to come. His son Benjamin Maier stayed in Hohenems, but three of his other children started business in St. Gallen and moved their families to the vibrant hub of textile production. Two other children emigrated in the 1840s and 1850s to the United States of America, particularly to Philadelphia, as did so many other of their fellow Hohenemsers. Family members of subsequent generations continued this migration, even from St. Gallen. And in South America, too, there is a Burgauer line today.

Thanks to Stefan Weis’ study „Entirely Unbeknown to His Homeland- The Burgauers. History and Migrations of a Jewish Family from the mid-18th until the mid-20th Century“, written as a diploma thesis in 2013, today we know much more about the origins, migrations, and diversity of the Burgauer family. With a generous grant from the American Friends Jewish Museum Hohenems – made possible by the efforts of the Leland Foundation, supported by Jacqueline Burgauer-Leland and Marc Leland – we were able to produce an English translation of Stefan Weis’ book. Have a look on the chapter on the Burgauers in the Americas in the Newsletter of the American Friends (http://www.jm-hohenems.at/en/about/friends/american-friends) or go for the whole book on our website (http://www.jm-hohenems.at/publikationen/downloads). Enjoy.

You read about the night on the WWI front line? The Dolomites offer more comfortable places to stay too. And stories of another war. Two days after the Biwak of Peace we found ourselves just at the other end of the same “national park”.

The “Hotel Pragser Wildsee”, a Grand Hotel at the shore of a mountain lake that couldn’t be more scenic and impressive, made history only in the last minute of the second war that turned the 20^th century into a mess even more profoundly than the first one. Now even some of the brave Austrian  and German soldiers of the first war were only considered as the “other” as such, Jews… Like Robert Rosenthal from the Hohenems family who fought for Austria in the Alps not far from here in 1917 and was taken to Auschwitz to be killed in reward.

But while the fronts along the peaks of the Dolomites experienced all brutal aspects WWI had to offer, the episode at Pragser Wildsee and the neighboring village Niederdorf that took place in the last days of April 1945 bordered on satire – or melodrama. Subject matter for a film that would provoke criticism about offering an “unbelievable plot” and “trivial kitsch”. The story in short – and with some distortion – one can read on a placque at the little chapel on the shore of the lake: here the Wehrmacht liberated 133 Nazi prisoners from the cruelty of the SS. Okay that’s not the whole story. We come to that.

In the staircase of the Hotel you can sit at a desk with a history. It belonged to Henning von Tresckow, a high ranking German officer who initially supported the Nazis, later joined the resistance – while he still was involved in war crimes of the Wehrmacht in Belorus. Tresckow tried to kill Hitler in 1943 and took part in the plot of 1944, making an end to his life when the coup failed. By that he became one of the heroes of the myth of a “Wehrmacht” that remained “honorable” during the war while only the SS was taken responsible for the Nazi crimes. Its just a few years ago that Rüdiger von Tresckow, his son, handed the desk down to the Hotel. Obviously a good place for myths.

When in the last days of the war high ranks of the SS and the Party were dreaming of the “Alpenfestung”, more then 130 prominent prisoners of the Nazis were still waiting for their “fate” to be determined in Dachau. The Nazis were preparing to retreat into their “alpine fortress” as a last chance to either fight a glorious never ending battle – or to negotiate some better outcome for themselves with the US-Army. For instance offering them to join forces against “the Russians”. The prominent hostages in Dachau seemed to be a valuable stake in this last gambling. So 133 of them were put on busses and taken south, into the Dolomites. In Niederdorf, in the Pustertal, the caravan came to an end. The “Hotel Pragser Wildsee”, the intended final stop, was occupied by a Wehrmacht unit. And the SS run out of petrol, a new destination was not in sight. So the SS troupe and their hostages got stuck. Confusion among the guards increased the tension but also enabled one of the prisoners to sneak out and get to a phone. It was Bogeslaw Adolf Fürchtegott von Bonin, a Wehrmacht officer who fell in disgrace in January 1945.

The hostages were a colorful mixture of prominence, politicians like the French president Leon Blum or the last Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, activists of German resistance like Martin Niemöller and family members of von Stauffenberg and Goerdeler, foreign notables and German aristocrats, British intelligence agents but also former Nazis whose careers came to a dead end, like Hjalmar Schacht, the former minister of finance, or members of the Wehrmacht who at some point disagreed with Hitler or with other leading Nazis. Among them Franz Halder was probably the highest ranking officer, “Generalstabsschef des deutschen Heeres” (chief general of the German army), the mastermind behind the war against Soviet Russia and some of the criminal orders, paving the way to the war of racist and anti-Semitic destruction. A few weeks later Franz Halder would boast with reminding everybody that he belonged to a group of resistance in the Wehrmacht, that back in 1938 was opposing Hitler’s hurry to go to war, even being ready for a coup, now presentable as anti-Nazi “resistance”.

But in the last days of April 1945 it wasn’t time for that yet. The SS got uneasy and also more and more drunk as they had no idea where to take the prisoners – and the prisoners feared the worst. Von Bonin managed to get a line to the Wehrmacht in Bozen and asked for help. General Röttiger was not amused. He had other problems. Together with SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, the SS leader in occupied Italy since 1943, he was organizing a separate capitulation in Italy – and how to save their heads in the times coming. A Wehrmacht officer, Wichard von Alvensleben, was sent to Niederdorf to check the situation. And also Karl Wolff, the high ranking SS-leader, now was keen to “help” von Bonin and the SS-hostages. In the end the SS troups had to leave the prisoners to the Wehrmacht and hurried to Bozen. And the 133 prominent hostages enjoyed the end of the war on the lake and waited for the American troops.

Franz Halder made a good deal. He served the Americans as one of their major consultants when it came to the history of the war. He wasn’t put on trial in Nuremberg and the Americans took care that also his regular “Denazification”-trial ended with acquittal. When the West-Germans prepared themselves for building up a new army – now as American allies – his interpretations of the war became the canon of myths forming the basis of the “tragic” image of the Wehrmacht: being abused by the demonic Adolf Hitler, struck by fate, or fighting a preventive war against the Russians. In any case, having “no choice”.

Karl Wolff, once the SS chief of staff behind Himmler, also made a good a deal – with the US army, starting in March 1945 and finishing the war in Italy already six days before May 8, 1945. But also after the war, when the Americans spared him from prosecution in Nuremberg, because they now didn’t want to disclose the details of their secret negotiations with him. About the crimes of the SS, the murder of Jews and others, he claimed to have learned only in 1945.

He became active for the advertisement department of an illustrated paper and intended to spend the rest of his life next to another lake, in Starnberg in Bavaria. But the last word wasn’t spoken yet. In 1964 he was tried and sentenced in Munich for complicity in murder in more than 300.000 cases, when his active participation in the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the deportation and murder of its inhabitants in Treblinka was publicly disclosed.

In 1969 he was released “for health reasons” and enjoyed the last fifteen years of his life, making friends with journalists like Gerd Heidemann from the “Stern” magazine – and with a notorious forger, Konrad Kujau. So the last “project” Karl Wolff was involved in, was the publication of the fake diaries of Adolf Hitler. When he peacefully died, a few weeks after his conversion to Islam, the forged diaries already had become the subject of a major scandal in Germany. But Wolff missed the trial that followed.

One of the “special prisoners” of the SS in Dachau was not taken to Pragser Wildsee but killed already two weeks before: Georg Elser, the brave carpenter, who tried to kill Hitler and his entourage in 1939, when it was time still to stop the war. He wasn’t prominent enough to make a deal about with the Americans.

We enjoyed the three days at Pragser Wildsee. We learned a lot.

We already got used to run into rather gloomy chapters of history in the middle of the mountains. And into the military career of Harry Weil from Hohenems, who did not only fight on the banks of the Isonzo, but also in the Dolomites. Hundred years ago. The glorious mountains became a “theatre of war” – language can be so misleading – when Italy entered World War 1. The Austrian Empire was prepared. The conduct with their ally, and that’s what Italy was before the war, at least on paper, had become a matter of frictions and mutual slights. Italy wanted to achieve control of those parts of Austria with Italian speaking majorities, and even had some appetite for more. And Austria was treating the new nation state and neighbor in the South, dependent on the Austrians for so long in the past, with a mixture of resentment and hybris. Even the German initiatives to encourage the Austrians to seek compromise with Italy were in vain.

In 1915 the Dolomites and South Tyrol as a whole were prepared for war. And now on a sunny day in the fall we were hiking through the beauty of it, with our friends and their twins, to spend a night on the “front line”. Okay, that’s not exactly what we said to the kids. We were up for the Monte Castello and a Biwak, called “Biwak della Pace”, on 2750 meter altitude, facing the Italian lines on the other side of the valley, along the slopes of the “Tofanas”, two towering pyramides – now, in late October, already powdered white. In 1916, Harry Weil was fighting not far from here, next to the famous rocks of the “Tre Croci”. He had left his family in Hohenems to battle for emperor Franz-Joseph, who – until he died in the end of 1916, after 68 years on the throne – had somewhat convincingly played his role of a paternal protector of all of “his” peoples and minorities. Even the Jews.

We are schlepping heavy bagpacks through the national park of Fanes, the last meters are icy and slippery, but for the little girls its fun. And “adventure”. The biwak we are up to has no water, no light, no heating, no kitchen. But a view, an awesome sunset, and fragments of the old Austrian bunkers, shelters, caverns for canons and machine-guns and rifles and everything you need to prepare the hell for your enemies. The Italians on the other side had similar equipment. And both sides got stuck in their rocky, icy trenches, as in so many other places in the Alps between 1915 and 1918. Nothing really important happened here. Nothing, but the end of many lives, brought by bullets and falling rocks, shrapnels and avalanches, and the worst enemy, both sides fought against, the cold.

The only “event” though was an Italian triumph – that did not change anything with respect to the front. An Austrian outpost on a small peak between the fronts, the Italians did not want to tolerate. Instead of doing anything relevant, the Italian were digging a tunnel under the rock, half a kilometer long. The Austrians finally realized some strange noises – and that it was time to leave their outpost “for bad”, short before the Italian blew the whole peak away, with explosives deposited under the rock.

We comfortably succeeded to warm up the biwak from 2 to 6 grades Celsius. The night was long. The other day we examined the architecture of war. And still did not understand anything more about what kind of insanity men has invented in this “theatre”.

The invitation of the City of Hohenems was spiced with some involuntary irony: the new shared space in the Jewish quarter of the town was announced under the heading “The new Hohenems” as the “completion of the new Jewish quarter”. But no, Hohenems did not become the home of Jewish refugees and a newly built residential area for them. Its indeed the old Jewish quarter in the heart of town we talk about.

After many a year of discussion about the future shape of the towns center and its two streets, the old Jew’s lane and the old Christian’s lane, after public debates about alternative traffic solutions, neighbors protesting against still existing cross town traffic and local shops protesting against too much traffic calming, after a planning process of two years – and after half year of road work, the new design of the streets in the Jewish quarter is ready. And hundreds of Hohenemsers came to celebrate the 133.000 new cobblestones (all laid by hand), two fountains, benches and bike stands. An open square to fill with life, a space to share. And given the history of the quarter this also might be a space to share memories (pleasant and less pleasant), a multitude of heritages from diverse sources and conflicting ideas about the future.

The square in front of the synagogue now is the “Salomon Sulzer Square”. Once all the houses around the Hohenems synagogue had been the Salomon Sulzer Alley. Named after the cantor who left Hohenems young to become the chief cantor of Vienna, and soon to be a star in the Viennese music scene, adored by Schubert and Liszt. Sulzer became the major force of reform of Jewish liturgical music in the 19^th century – and a prototype of a pop star, for the first time attracting Non-Jews to listen to Jewish tradition, while 50 years later sons of Jewish cantors made the next step, and left synagogue for Broadway. But that’s another story.

Mayor Egger headed the opening of the square and unveiled the plaque. But it was in fact his predecessor Richard Amann, who fought for a decent redesign of the public space in the center of Hohenems for years and finally succeeded to get the project on track.

This celebration of the “Sulzer Square” though was also the moment to remember the history of street names. The old Jew’s lane of Hohenems in 1909 war renamed too: one part of the street memorialized the Hohenems’ Brunner family, who funded banks and insurance companies in Trieste, and played a role in liberal politics in Vienna, the other part remembered the Steinach family, three generations of medical doctors and scientists, with Eugen Steinach, the pioneer of hormone research being the last one of the family, dying in Exile. In 1938 the “Jewish names” were erased, the streets in the old Jewish quarter were now marked as “Friedrich-Wurnigk-Straße”, the name of the infamous Nazi-terrorist, who had murdered the head of the Innsbruck police in 1934, and now was a hero. In 1945, times obviously not ripe for a truthful exploration of the past, the street became the “Schweizer Straße”. One might guess how long it still will take to give the streets their name back. Let’s watch out for the future.

Michael Köhlmeier once dreamed of the “Hohenems Ring Parabel”, reminding Lessing’s plea for respect between the religions, as something coming to his mind, when standing once infront of the former Hohenems synagogue, when its still was the home of the fire brigade (between 1955 and 2000). And he did not forget to mention: its not just unsure who has the “right” ring, but Lessing was more radical. Probably the “original ring” is lost for long anyhow and we all play around with a substitute. When it came to blessings: the local Parish priest Thomas Heilbrun and Imam Seyran Ates gave them together with Rabbi Tovia Ben-Chorin from St. Gall (a rather uncommon pluralism still in Austria). And the agnostics would have their moment as well.

Three citizens were interviewed about their connection to this place. Pierre Burgauer though, is a citizen of St. Gall rather than Hohenems, today. He spoke how he found new connections to his roots in Hohenems through the activities of the Jewish museum in the last twenty-five years. His great-grandfather left his Hohenems mansion in the 1860s, offering the building to the Jewish community that turned it into the Jewish poorhouse. Today its one of the modest landmark buildings in the old Jewish quarter. Tudgce Celik spent part of her childhood in this house, not a poorhouse anymore but in poor condition, in the 1990s, as a child of Turkish immigrants, experiencing another form of otherness and cohabitation. The old Jewish quarter, bad in shape, was a territory of adventures for her – while today she is happy to work in the Jewish museum, when she is not studying in Innsbruck. Franz Sauer, active in the neighborhood today, politically and socially, told about his experiences with the new immigrants, and about his appreciation of their commitment to revive the old houses and to create something out of nothing.

School kids from the local primary school performed shadow plays – following stories by Monika Helfer – In front of the old Jewish school and the Villa Heimann-Rosenthal. It was a particular moving moment, when the little kids engaged in the Jewish history of the place with all their enthusiasm encouraged by the magic of light – and shadows. And this story has its shadows, they confronted as well. The city had invited cantor Shlomo Barzilai from Vienna, the late “follower” of Salomon Sulzer to accompany the ceremony. And the “Bauernfänger”, performing old songs with an ironic twist, and the “Bürgermusik” proudly presenting their folklore dress, they all led over into the party that followed, with a band named “roadwork”. In the end the Hohenemsers where dancing in the street. A day offering an outlook into another reality beyond the xenophobia and tension of today’s politics and resentments? A day of illusions?

Writing this the day America is going to vote and four weeks before Austria has to decide whether to elect a right wing populist who has no shame to support fascist views, is a challenge in itself.

In the middle of the Sulzer Square the art installation of Mariella Scherling is still present, though somewhat obscured, reminding everybody to the biblical quote that is more relevant than anything today: “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.“

On a rainy October day the border between Austria and Switzerland, more precisely between Lustenau and Diepoldsau, became a hub of curious folks from both sides of the Old Rhine. The association for the protection of nature (at least that’s my guess how to translate the „Naturschutzgruppe“) from Diepoldsau in Switzerland – next to Hohenems – presents a very special kind of outdoor exhibition along the Old and New Rhine. Our friends from Frankfurt are here for the weekend. In the summer we walked along the river Main with them, from the European Central Bank to the new pubs on the banks, where Frankfurt is posh and enjoying itself. The European Central Bank might be the true heart of Europe, but the innocent banks of the river Rhine might be the stomach. So we offered our friends a tour.

Three little cabins, or shelters so to say, that once helped border police to find refuge from rain and snow, are now neatly painted in red, green and yellow – and filled with installations about three subjects that informed the life of this region for many years: smuggle, refugees, and border control. Three perspectives on the same liminal space: the one of the locals, many of them having a story of smugglers in their own family. The one of those who try to find refuge from something more serious than bad weather. And the one of the state, and the young man engaged in what was considered the essence of Swiss sovereignty: the control of its borders.

Thousand of Jewish refugees were seeking a way to freedom here in 1938, some crossed the river where it was shallow. Some sneaked over the bridge in the night. There were many ways here, and nobody knew for sure which one was working, when, and at what time. Some of these refugees had their roots in Hohenems, like Alfred Munk and his sister Gertrud from Vienna, who crossed the border here already in April 1938. But the number of stories one could tell is endless. We’ll work on it, one by one by one.

The little exhibitions inside of the huts are simple and thoughtful, not partisan but emphatic, giving all these conflicting perspective their voice. And leave it to the eye of the beholder to draw conclusions. Who knows wether we are confronting only the past, or some future?

Margit Bartl-Frank, the artist and friend of the museum, living on the Swiss side of the Rhine, made the story of the Jewish refugees already several times a subject of her installations. This time she confronted the account of the Kreutner family, who succeeded to enter Switzerland in the fall of 1938 through Hohenems with the story of the Abdolzaher family from Herat in Afghanistan. Their odyssey lead them by foot through Iran and Turkey, on a boat to Greece, through Macedonia and Italy to France, and finally to Diepoldsau in Switzerland, where they now learn German and seek a job. Faride and her little daughter Setayesh answer questions patiently and stood beside the old border post in the rain. What will be their future? Nobody knows. But many got an idea: it will not only depend on them, but also on us.

Our friends are a bit ahead of us. In Frankfurt they have two kids from Afghanistan at home, giving them shelter and a bit of support for their possible start into a new life. Not easy at all. The boys have to start from scratch, they hardly visited school in their life before. Working on construction sites in Pakistan was their education. Faride might be better off, she was a nurse in a hospital, her daughter already speaks German with a heavy Swiss accent. A little later we see her on her little bike, riding joyfully between the yellow and the green cabin. She seems to be at home in Diepoldsau. Unbelievable.

Traveling south from Hohenems you run into into the Italian city of Merano—the place where North meets the South. Palms everywhere along the promenade, and the surviving glory of another epoch: this spa town was once the hotspot of Hapsburg and German elites and intellectuals looking for a decent retreat with Italian flavor—without leaving the German speaking world. It also became a meeting place for Jews from all over, who spent their month-long vacations here (as it was the habit of urban middle and upper classes of the time).

But a growing number settled and lived here on a permanent basis, being part of a more or less informal Jewish community, formally represented by the “Landesrabbiner for Tyrol and Vorarlberg,” who until 1915 was also the Rabbi of Hohenems. But when Italy changed sides during World War I and annexed Southern Tyrol, Merano was cut from its former ties and the Jewish community also became Italian.

Today the town is occupied by German tourists who are enjoying “Südtirol” – with not a particular interest in the idea of “European culture,” The region is officially named “Alto-Adige / Südtirol,” and is subject to autonomy agreement that allows the existing German speaking majority in some of the valleys to enjoy there cultural ego, and whatever is needed for that. History is a minefield in this atmosphere of “compromise.” In the 1960s, Tyrolian separatists still threatened the Italian “rulers” with explosives. And in Bolzano, the accord between Italian Fascists and communist partisans (or better: their offspring) sometimes seem still more profound than between the “Germans” and the “Italians.”

Strolling around the town, we still see many of the belle epoch Hotels and sanatoriums that made the fortune of Merano. While the memory of two world wars still inhabits some of the population, the wars have not left any visible impact. There are only traces of 1920s and 1930s modernism—which in Italy means the better part of Italian Fascist architecture. When Merano became well-known between the 1860s and 1914 among the medical doctors and tourism developers, the founders of Hotels, brewers and railroad pioneers in Southern Tyrol and Bozen Jews from Hohenems and elsewhere played a decisive role. The Biedermans from Hohenems opened the first bank in Merano, and the Schwarz from Hohenems did the same in Bozen, in addition to starting a modern brewery and developing a railroads and funiculars which enabled the growing tourism to explore the smoother hilltops and sunny plateaus between the valley and the high mountains. Others like Dr. Rafael Hausmann invented the “grape cure” and turned the town into a European center of spa and “wellness” before the term was coined.

With the beginning of the new century, right in 1900, a synagogue was built in Merano. It was inaugurated by Rabbi Aron Tänzer from Hohenems in 1901. A sanatorium for poor Jews had already opened, the “Asyl für mittellose kranke Israeliten.”All this without a formal Jewish community but due to a foundation, the “Königswarter Stiftung,” started by the parents of a young Jewish student from Frankfurt who had died in Merano. They also installed a Jewish cemetery, so the basic institutions were able to accommodate the almost 1000 Jews living here around 1900 (many more than the members of the shrinking Hohenems community). And for the growing number of observant or even orthodox Jews (living in Merano or coming for vacation and cure) the Berman family offered a luxurious hotel, the Bellaria, with kosher food, a Mikvah and a second—orthodox—synagogue. For a short time, Merano was a kind of Jewish paradise.

Back in the present day, the small contemporary Jewish community has run a Jewish museum in the basement of the synagogue for almost twenty years. We enjoyed meeting longtime friends Joachim Innerhofer and Sabine Mayr, who today take care of this place. The permanent exhibition they “inherited” from community president Steinhaus, they know, is rather poor and outdated and there are some ideas in the air to start a new project. They already published a great new book about the history of the Jews in Merano. A new museum could turn the contested history of Merano (and the unique role of Jews in that history) into a starting point for new discourse about Europe—something desperately needed in times where the economic foundations of Europe seem to be only a matter of business, the essential and hard fought for European values of peace, solidarity and human rights seem to be worn out, and some pray for right wing populists to rebuild walls inside and outside of the European community once more. Whether there will be political support for bringing this little utopia of Jewish history in Merano to new life (even in a museum) is far from settled. But at least there is a new generation of politicians on both sides who do not completely follow the old ideologies.

When we climbed the slopes of the Ortler, with its 3900 meter once the highest peak of the Hapsburg Empire (and subject of battles in World War I), we entertained some of these utopian ideas in the low pressure of the mountain. And we still had enough breath for that, as we didn’t meant it to serious with the “climbing”, ending our hike just over 3000 meter in the wonderful “Payer Cabin” with a glass of beer.