“The Last Europeans” open at Jewish Museum Munich

European Diary, 22.11.2022:

Today saw the opening of the exhibition “The Last Europeans. Jewish Perspectives on the Crises of an Idea” at the Jewish Museum Munich.

An expanded version of the Hohenems exhibition will be shown here until May 21, 2023, with additional thematic stations, media and a large installation by artist Arnold Dreyblatt, which was created especially for the Munich exhibition.

Katrin Habenschaden, Mayor of the City of Munich, Hanno Loewy, Director of the Jewish Museum Hohenems, Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek and Michaela Feurstein-Prasser, curators of the exhibition, and Bernhard Purin, Director of the Jewish Museum Munich, spoke at the opening.

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek und Michaela Feurstein-Prasser,
Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Photo: Eva Jünger

Arnold Dreyblatt, Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

The Last Europeans, Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Photo: Eva Jünger

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Arnold Dreyblatt: Last Europeans?

3 lenticular transparent prints
Berlin 2022

An Installation for the Jewish Museum Munich.
With texts in German, English and Esperanto by: Agnes Heller, Ludwik Zamenhof, Bernard-Henri Lévy, André Glucksman, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Jaques Derrida / Jürgen Habermas

Arnold Dreyblatt: Last Europeans?
Photo: Eva Jünger

Daniel Cohn-Bendit
We are still in a phase of overcoming the nation state. Basically, it took us five hundred years to conquer the nation state and the cultural identities that emerged with it, with all their contradictions—revolutions, terrible historical moments—and to transform them into something new. Against this background Europe is a unique project.The question is not whether, but how quickly we accomplish the necessary transfer of national sovereignty to the European level. And how we shape this democratically.For the first time many people are realizing that there is not only their nation state and that the EU is not an abstract playground in the far distance. People are realizing that Europe has a very concrete impact on our everyday life. For the first time we have a European public. This is a decisive step towards a European democracy.

André Glucksmann
The crisis of the European Union is a symptom of its civilization. It doesn’t define itself based on its identity but, rather, on its otherness. A civilization isn’t necessarily based on a common desire to achieve the best but, rather, on excluding and making the evil taboo. In historical terms, the European Union is a defensive reaction to horror.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/philosopher-andre-glucksmann-a-dark-vision-of-the-future-of-europe-a-851266.html

Jacques Derrida / Jürgen Habermas
Today we know that many political traditions, which in the semblance of their naturalness demand authority, have been “invented.” In contrast, a European identity born in the light of the public would have from the beginning a feeling of something constructed. But only something constructed arbitrarily would bear the stigma of arbitrariness. The political-ethical will, which is expressed in the hermeneutics of self-understanding processes, is not arbitrariness. The distinction between the heritage we take on and the one we want to reject requires as much circumspection as the decision on the reading in which we appropriate it. Historical experiences are candidates only for a conscious appropriation, without which they do not acquire an identity-forming force.

Today’s Europe is scarred by the experiences of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and by the Holocaust—the persecution and extermination of European Jews, in which the Nazi regime also implicated the societies of the conquered countries. The self-critical debates about this past have brought to mind the moral foundation of politics. A heightened sensitivity to violations of personal and bodily integrity is reflected, among other things, in the fact that the council of Europe and the EU have made renunciation of the death penalty a condition of membership.

Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas, “Nach dem Krieg: Die Wiedergeburt Europas”, FAZ, Mai 31, 2003 (excerpts)

Ludwik Zamenhof

I call patriotism or service to the fatherland only service to the welfare of all my compatriots, regardless of their origin, language or religion. I must never call patriotism the service to particularly the non-Jewish interests, language or religion of that population which constitutes the majority in the country. In accordance with the principle that citizens—even if they constitute a larger majority in the country—have no moral right to impose their language or religion on other citizens, I must advocate that in my country every people has the right to establish schools and other institutions for their members with their language and their religion if they so desire, but that in all public institutions, which are not exclusively for one people, only a neutral human language and neutral human or state stability should prevail. As long as this is not possible, I must work to ensure that there are schools and other institutions in my country with a neutral human language for those subjects who do not want or cannot use institutions with this or that vernacular; and from all mutual struggles of tongues or religions for supremacy I must abstain, for it is only a struggle between one wrong and another.

I am aware that in countries where the population is more or less ethnically homogenous the injustice that lies in the domination of one language or religion over others will not be understood for a long time, and the population will fight with all means against equal rights for all languages and religions and will persecute and sling mud at those who advocate equal rights. But I will never let myself be confused by this persecution and remember that I am fighting for absolute truth and justice, that no people can know what will happen to them tomorrow, that equal rights for all languages and religions will eliminate the cause of all wars and conflicts between peoples, that any action against the principle of “the empire for the citizens” and violence among citizens will always remain violence, even if committed by an overwhelming majority against a marginal minority, and that lasting happiness for mankind is only possible on the condition of equal and absolute justice for all people and countries, regardless of place and time and strength, and when in every empire there will be only human beings, only citizens regardless of their ethnicity.

I call my nation the totality of all people who live in my homeland, regardless of their origin, language or religion. But to my nationality I must always add the words “human being” to show that I do not count myself among my nation in a chauvinistic sense. The multitude of all people who have the same origin as me I call my people. I must not call my nation by the name of any people, I have always to call it—at least in conversation with like-minded people—by the neutral geographical name of my empire or country. If my interlocutor wants to know not only which political-geographical, but also which ethnic group I belong to, then I name to him my people, my language, my religion etc. separately. Example: Swiss individual, Petersburg individual, Warsaw individual.

Ludwik Zamenhof, Hillelismus, 1901

Ágnes Heller
Nationalism’s victory came in 1914—against the internationalism of the working class and the cosmopolitanism of the bourgeoisie. Europe’s “original sin” was the ugly child of nationalism. All previous empires began to break up into nation states. This trend is being continued to this day.

The exclusionary character of nation states is best illustrated by the history of European Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries and the history of the two world wars. Modern antisemitism (as opposed to earlier anti-Judaism) is a product of nation states. The shift from nationalism to racism was no accident, as the aspect of racism is inherent to ethnic nationalism.

After the devastation of the Second World War, some European states drew the consequences from the dark side of being nation states and established the European Union. The importance of this grand design should not be downplayed. Member states are obliged never to even start a war among themselves. Nonetheless, a sense of European identity has not, to this day, gained the same strength or significance as the national identities of the member states.

The European Union was founded on the decision to uphold certain values. However, even among those values chosen there are contradictions. First and foremost, because the Union is a union of nation states. As a Union, the value of solidarity must prevail; as a Union of nation states, on the other hand, it has to respect national interests due to a nation’s values, so nationalism will usually be stronger than solidarity.

Ágnes Heller, Paradox Europa, Wien 2019

“Libération” / Bernard-Henri Lévy
“Enough of ‘building Europe’!” is the cry. Let’s reconnect instead with our “national soul”! Let’s rediscover our “lost identity”! This is the agenda shared by the populist forces washing over the continent. Never mind that abstractions such as “soul” and “identity” often exist only in the imagination of demagogues.

Europe is being attacked by false prophets who are drunk on resentment, and delirious at their opportunity to seize the limelight.

Europe as an idea is falling apart before our eyes.

For those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe and Comenius there will be only ignominious defeat. A politics of disdain for intelligence and culture will have triumphed. There will be explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism. Disaster will have befallen us.

Our faith is in the great idea that we inherited, which we believe to have been the one force powerful enough to lift Europe’s peoples above themselves and their warring past. We believe it remains the one force today virtuous enough to ward off the new signs of totalitarianism that drag in their wake the old miseries of the dark ages. What is at stake forbids us from giving up. Our generation got it wrong. Like Garibaldi’s followers in the 19th century, who repeated, like a mantra, “Italia se farà da sè” (Italy will make herself by herself), we believed that the continent would come together on its own, without our needing to fight for it, or to work for it. This, we told ourselves, was “the direction of history”. We must make a clean break with that old conviction. We don’t have a choice. We must now fight for the idea of Europe or see it perish beneath the waves of populism.

Copyright: “Libération” / Bernard-Henri Lévy (signed by: Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Elfriede Jelinek et. al., 25.01.2019)

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Esperanto:

Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Ni daŭre estas en fazo de lukto por superi la nacian ŝtaton. Fakte ni bezonis kvincent jarojn por venki la nacian ŝtaton kaj la kune kun ĝi disvolviĝintajn kulturajn identecojn kun ĉiuj ties kontraŭdiroj – revolucioj, teruraj historiaj momentoj – kaj transformi ilin en ion novan. Antaŭ tiu fono Eŭropo estas unika projekto.

La demando ne estas ĉu, sed kiom rapide ni efektivigos la necesan transiron de nacia suvereneco sur la Eŭropan nivelon. Kaj kiel ni aranĝu tion demokratie.

Por la unua fojo multaj homoj konsciiĝas, ke ne nur ekzistas ilia nacia ŝtato kaj la EU ne estas abstrakta ludejo en fora malproksimeco. Oni rimarkas, ke Eŭropo tre konkrete difinas nian ĉiutagan vivon. Unuafoje ni havas eŭropan publikecon. Tio estas decida paŝo al eŭropa demokratio.

André Glucksmann
La krizo de la Eŭropa Unio estas simptomo de ĝia civilizacio. Ĝi ne difinas sin per sia identeco, sed, multe pli, per sia alieco. Civilizacio ne devige baziĝas sur komuna deziro akiri la plej bonan, sed, multe pli, sur la volo ekskludi kaj tabui la malbonon. En historiaj terminoj, la Eŭropa Unio estas defenda reago al hororo.

Jacques Derrida / Jürgen Habermas
Hodiaŭ ni scias, ke multaj politikaj tradicioj, kiuj en sia ŝajno de natura deveno postulas aŭtoritaton, estas „inventitaj“. Male eŭropa identeco, naskita antaŭ ĉies okuloj, dekomence surhavus ion konstruitan. Sed nur io arbitre konstruita portus la makulon de ajneco. La politik-etika volo, kiu montras sin en la hermeneŭtiko de procezoj de memkomprenigo, ne estas arbitro. La diferencigo inter la heredaĵo, kiun ni akceptas, kaj tiu, kiun ni volas refuti, postulas samkvantan diligenton kiel la decido pri la interpretado, per kiu ni alpropriigas ĝin. Historiaj spertoj kandidatas nur por konscia alpropriigo, sen kiu ili ne atingas identec-formigan forton.

La nuntempan Eŭropon karakterizas la spertoj de la totalismaj reĝimoj de la dudeka jarcento kaj de la Holokaŭsto – la persekutado kaj pereigo de la eŭropaj judoj, en kiun la NS-reĝimo implikis ankaŭ la societojn de la konkeritaj ŝtatoj. La memkritikaj konfrontiĝoj al tiu pasinto rememorigis la moralajn fundamentojn de politiko. Kreskinta sentemo pri lezoj de persona kaj korpa integrecoj inter alie speguliĝas en tio, ke Eŭropa Konsilo kaj EU rangigis la rezignon pri mortopuno je membriga kondiĉo.

Ludwik Zamenhof
Patriotismo aŭ servo al la patrujo mi nomas nur la servadon al la bono de ĉiuj miaj samregnanoj, de kia ajn deveno, lingvo aŭ religio ili estas; la servadon speciale al la gentaj interesoj, lingvo aŭ religio de tiu loĝantaro, kiu en la lando prezentas la plimulton, mi neniam devas nomi patriotismo. Konforme al la principo, ke unuj regnanoj, eĉ se ili prezentas en la lando grandegan plimulton, ne havas moralan rajton altrudi sian lingvon aŭ religion al aliaj regnanoj, mi devas penadi, ke en mia lando ĉiu gento havu la rajton fondi por siaj membroj lernejojn kaj aliajn instituciojn kun sia lingvo kaj sia religio, se ili tion ĉi deziras, sed ke en ĉiuj publikaj institucioj, ne destinitaj sole por unu gento, regu nur lingvo neŭtrale-homa kaj festoj neŭtrale-homaj aŭ regnaj. Tiel longe, kiel la atingo de tio ĉi estos ne ebla, mi devas penadi, ke en mia lando ekzistu lernejoj kaj aliaj institucioj kun lingvo neŭtrale-homa por tiuj regnanoj, kiuj ne volas aŭ ne povas uzi instituciojn kun tiu aŭ alia genta lingvo, kaj de ĉia reciproka batalado de lingvoj aŭ religioj pro regado mi devas teni min flanke, ĉar ĝi estas nur batalado inter unu maljustaĵo kaj alia.

Mi konscias, ke en tiuj landoj, kie la loĝantaro estas pli-malpli unugenta, ĝi longan tempon ne komprenos la maljustecon de regado de unu lingvo aŭ religio super la aliaj kaj ĝi per ĉiuj fortoj batalados kontraŭ la egalrajtigo de ĉiuj lingvoj kaj religioj, kaj la defendantojn de tiu ĉi egalrajtigo ĝi persekutados kaj superĵetados per koto. Sed mi neniam konfuziĝos per tiu ĉi persekutado, memorante, ke mi batalas por absoluta vero kaj justeco, ke nenia popolo povas scii, kio fariĝos kun ĝi morgaŭ, ke la egalrajtigo de ĉiuj lingvoj kaj religioj forigos la kaŭzon de ĉiuj militoj kaj malpacoj inter la popoloj, ke ĉia ago kontraŭ la devizo „la regno por la regnanoj“ kaj ĉia perfortaĵo de unuj regnanoj kontraŭ aliaj restas ĉiam perfortaĵo, eĉ se ĝi estas farata de grandega plimulto kontraŭ malgrandega malplimulto, kaj ke fortika feliĉo de la homaro estas ebla nur tiam, kiam por ĉiuj popoloj kaj landoj ekzistos justeco egala kaj absoluta, dependanta nek de loko, nek de tempo, nek de forto, kaj kiam en ĉiu regno ekzistos nur homoj kaj regnanoj kaj ne gentoj.

Mia nacio mi nomas la tutecon de ĉiuj homoj, kiuj loĝas mian patrujon, de kia ajn deveno, lingvo aŭ religio ili estas; sed al mia nacia nomo mi devas ĉiam aldoni la vorton „Homarano“, por montri, ke mi alkalkulas min al mia nacio ne en senco ŝovinista. La aron de ĉiuj honoj, kiu havas saman devenon kiel mi, mi nomas mia gento. Mian nacion mi ne devas nomi per la nomo de ia gento, mi devas ĉiam nomi ĝin – almenaŭ en parolado kun homaranoj – per la neŭtrale-geografia nomo de mia regno aŭ lando. Se mia interparolanto deziras scii ne sole al kiu politike-geografia, sed ankaŭ al kiu etnografia grupo mi apartenas, tiam mi aparte nomas al li mian genton, lingvon, religion k.t.p. Ekzemploj: Sviso-Homarano, Peterburgia Homarano, Varsovilanda Homarano.

„Libération” / Bernard-Henri Lévy
„Sufiĉe de ‘konstrui Eŭropon’!“ estas la krio. Anstataŭe ni rekonektiĝu kun nia „nacia animo“! Ni remalkovru nian „perditan identecon“! Jen la komuna agendo de la popolismaj fortoj, kiuj inundas la kontinenton. Ne gravas, ke abstraktaĵoj kiel „animo“ kaj „identeco“ ofte ekzistas nur en la imago de demagogoj.

Eŭropo estas atakata de falsaj profetoj, kiuj estas ebriaj pro rankoro, kaj deliras pro sia ŝanco okupi la spotlumon.

Eŭropo kiel ideo disfalas antaŭ niaj okuloj.

Por tiuj, kiuj ankoraŭ kredas je la heredaĵo de Erasmus, Dante, Goethe kaj Komenio, estos nur hontiga malvenko. Politiko de malestimo kontraŭ intelekto kaj kulturo estos triumfinta. Estos eksplodoj de ksenofobio kaj antisemitismo. Katastrofo estos trafinta nin.

Nia fido estas en la grandioza ideo, kiun ni heredis, kiun ni kredas la sola forto sufiĉe potenca por levi la popolojn de Eŭropo super ili mem kaj super ilia militema pasinteco. Ni kredas, ke ĝi restas la sola forto aktuale sufiĉe virta por kontraŭstari al la novaj signoj de totalismo, kiuj kuntrenas en sia kil-ondo la malnovajn mizerojn de la mallumaj epokoj. Tio, kion ni riskas, malpermesas al ni rezigni. Nia generacio eraris. Kiel la adeptoj de Garibaldi en la 19-a jarcento, kiuj mantre ripetis „Italia se farà da sè” (Italio faros sin mem), ni kredis, ke la kontinento kuniĝos memstare, sen nia bezono batali por ĝi, aŭ labori por ĝi. Jen, ni diris al ni mem, „la direkto de la historio“. Ni devas fari klaran rompon kun tiu malnova konvinko. Ni ne havas alternativon. Ni devas nun batali por la ideo de Eŭropo aŭ vidi ĝin perei sub la ondoj de popolismo.

Ecology and Crisis

In 1871, the term nature conservation was first used in Germany. That same year one of the pioneers of German nature conservation was born: Benno Wolf. While employed first of all as a judge in Berlin from 1912 onward, he also worked for the State Office for the Preservation of Natural Monuments in Prussia, initially as a volunteer, and from 1915 on a full-time basis. Wolf’s drafts for an act for the preservation of nature were groundbreaking, such as for the “Feld- und Forstordnungsgesetz” (Field and Forest Ordinance Law) of 1920, which created the possibility, for the very first time, of designating nature conservation areas. His second passion was the exploration of caves. The Nazis defined nature conservation as the protection of people and their homeland—to the exclusion of those who were not considered “Volksgenossen” (fellow Germans). Wolf had to resign from his official positions after the Nazis seized power in 1933 due to his Jewish roots. His preparatory work, used anonymously, found its way into the formulation of the Reich Nature Conservation Act of 1935. His archival material on caves that was of importance to the underground armaments industry, was confiscated by the SS “Ahnenerbe” (ancestral heritage division). Wolf himself was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1942, where he died as a result of the inhumane prison conditions. Decades passed before his achievements in the field of nature conservation and speleology were recognized.

^ Benno Wolf, about 1930, © Verband der deutschen Höhlen- und Karstforscher

< Benno Wolf, Das Recht der Naturdenkmalpflege in Deutschland, Berlin 1920

Map of the Green Belt and map of Europe with the Iron Curtain, Collage: Atelier Stecher, Götzis; © European Green Belt bzw. Michael Cramer

The Nazi “blood and soil” ideology in nature conservation was passed on after 1945. It is even to be found, thinly veiled, in some new environmental movements. Not only occultism that has become topical once again, but also renewed forms of nationalism and militarization pose a threat to environmental protection and nature conservation. In the 1970s, a growing biodiversity could be seen in the no-man’s-land along the Iron Curtain. The death strip between East and West had become an important ecological habitat. As a result, nature conservationists and environmentalists met on the Bavarian-Czechoslovakian border on December 9, 1989, and demanded the protection of the “Green Belt.” In 2002, all the countries bordering the former Iron Curtain joined forces. As a network of biotopes, now the world’s longest, the “Green Belt” extends over a length of 12,500 km along 24 European countries, 16 of which are EU members, from the Norwegian Arctic Sea to the Black Sea. However, since the outbreak of the war in the Ukraine, the long border between Finland and Russia is once again threatened with becoming a military deployment area. Europe has a responsibility to ensure that ecology and social justice for all, democracy, human rights and peace cannot be played off against each other.

Ariel Brunner, in conversation with Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, on “The EU’s responsibility in view of the ecological crisis”, Hohenems, October 5, 2020

The Validity of the Social Question

Industrialization and capitalism brought profound changes to European society in the 19th century, not however to forms of government. Since the revolution of 1830, workers had been the vanguard on the barricades. Nevertheless, it was only the upper middle classes which benefited from their struggle. The proletariat began to see itself as a social class. Workers’ associations and parties were formed at the initiative of men like Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl Marx. Exploitation, illness-inducing working and living conditions, and high infant mortality motivated many Jews, such as Leon Trotsky, Eduard Bernstein, Rosa Luxemburg, Roosje Vos, Hilda Monte, and Mire Gola, to actively involve themselves in the social democratic and communist parties—as did the Bulgarian-Greek journalist and strike leader Avraam Benaroya (1886–1979). He played a leading role in the founding of the mainly Jewish Socialist Workers Federation or, in Ladino, “Federacion” in Thessaloniki, in which Jews, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Turks were represented. It was only during the constant changes in more recent Greek history that his achievements in the struggle for the welfare state were recognized, albeit belatedly.

^ Avraam Benaroya, no date given, © E. Benaroya, www.avraambenaroya.com

< Macedonia, May 12th, 1936. Photographs of the bloody suppression of the worker’s strikes in May 1936, © Digital Archive Parliament Athens

> Greek health care employees are protesting financial cuts, 2015, © Yannis Kolesidis /EPA/picturedesk.com

In 2010, Greece had to ask the EU for help to avert financial collapse. The Troika, a consortium comprising the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, granted aid with stipulations which involved radical social cuts: The wage level in Greece is now lower than in 2010, pensions are less than half of what they were then, and hospital budgets were cut by more than 40 percent. In most EU countries, especially during the Corona crisis, the strengths of the welfare state could be seen; in Greece, however, the dismantling of the health care system resulted in an increase in police operations and the re-equipping of the police force. Cutbacks in the health care system have not yet come to an end as further economic-liberal reforms and privatization measures are supposed to be implemented. The community clinic at Helliniki, for example, where not only asylum seekers but above all destitute Greek citizens were cared for, fell victim to these measures. The greed of a real estate holding company carried more weight.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, in conversation with Hanno Loewy, on 
“A European Social Union? Learning from Greece”
https://youtu.be/GKZZ_K2zxiY

Many answers to many European questions – and some new questions

European Diary, 17.2.2021: The Jewish Museum Hohenems has been open again for a week. Time to document which traces and comments our visitors have left behind so far in our exhibition The Last Europeans. For this purpose, we have created space on two large maps under the questions: “Which states should belong to the European Union in the future?” and “What is Europe for you?”.
This is the place for your answers and reactions to many European questions and, of course, also for new questions. Now the maps are full and we now make room for new answers and questions – and the game starts all over again.

Here a few insights: traces of visitors on our maps in the exhibition.

The Brunner Family. An Estate

Photo: Dietmar Walser

Four years ago, the Jewish Museum received an extensive permanent loan: the estate of Carlo Alberto Brunner. Paintings, letters and documents, photographs, memorabilia and everyday objects of this Hohenems family enable a critical look at a European century. And they open a panoramic view on a family that in the first half of the 19th century set out from Hohenems to Trieste to contribute to the development of the Habsburg Monarchy’s Mediterranean metropolis. From here, members of the Brunner family went on to Vienna and Switzerland, to England, Germany, and the USA. Their steep social and cultural ascent ended in Europe’s catastrophe, in the ravages of a continent filled with mutual hatred, and in the devastations of two world wars, which dispersed parts of the family around the world.

Prologue: European History of Violence in the 20th Century

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Our list of the dead of European violence in the 20th century counts 125,300,000 people. It is not complete.
By the end of the exhibition “The Last Europeans” on May 21, 2023,  they will have disappeared from the display.

Foto: Eva Jünger

1888–1908: The atrocities committed by the Belgian colonial power in Congo claim approx. ten million Congolese victims.

1900: In the course of the Second Boer War, 22,000 Britons and 32,500 Boers perish.

1900: The Russian invasion of Manchuria claims 112,000 lives.

1903/04: During the British expedition to Tibet, more than 600 Tibetans are killed.

1903–1906: In various Russian cities, 4,245 Jews are murdered during pogroms carried out by Russians, Ruthenians, Greeks, or Cossacks.

1904/05:  The Russo-Japanese War ends with 90,000 casualties on the Russian and 75,000 on the Japanese side.

1904–1908: In German South West Africa, approx. 70,000 members of the Herero and Nama fall victim to the genocide at the hands of the “German Schutztruppe” (protection force).

1906: Dutchmen kill 1,000 Balinese in today’s Indonesian Badung.

1906–1911: The Wadai War in today’s Chad and western Sudan claims 4,000 French and 8,000 Wadai victims.

1908: In Bali, Netherlanders kill 194 Balinese.

1909: The second Melilla war in Morocco claims 2,517 Spanish and an unknown number of Kabyle victims.

1911/12: In the course of the Italo-Turkish War,  1,432 Italians and 14,000 Arabs and Berbers meet their death in the territory of today’s Libya.

1911/12: In the East Timor war, 289 Portuguese and 3,424 Timorese are killed.

1912/13: The Balkan Wars claim 71,000 Serbian, 11,200 Montenegrin, 156,000 Bulgarian, 48,000 Greek, and 100,000 Turkish lives.

1914–1918: In the course of World War I, about 20 million people of all belligerent nationalities perish in Europe.

1914–1921/23: During the Zaian War, 782 French and 3,600 Moroccans die.

1915: More than one million people fall victim to the Turks’ genocide of the Armenians.

1917–1923: The Russian civil war results in seven million dead.

1918–1920: The Latvian independence war claims 17,000 victims.

1919: Cossacks murder 1,700 Jews in Proskurov in today’s Ukraine.

1919: The Third Anglo-Afghan War claims 236 British and 1,000 Afghan lives.

1919: In Amritsar, India, British soldiers shoot and kill at least 379 Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus.

1919/20: In the Hungarian-Romanian War, 3,670 Hungarians und 3,000 Romanians lose their lives.

1919–1921: The Irish War of Independence claims 714 lives.

1920: In the Polish-Lithuanian War, 454 Lithuanians die.

1920: In the course of the Turkish-Armenian War, 198,000 Armenians and an unknown number of Turks perish.

1920/21: The Polish-Soviet War claims the lives of 431,000 Russians, 202,000 Poles, and 60,000 Jewish civilians.

1921–23: During the Greco-Turkish War, 9,167 Turks and 19,362 Greeks lose their lives.

1921–1926: The Rif War ends with 63,000 Spanish, 18,500 French, and 30,000 Riffian victims.

1922/23: The Irish Civil War claims around 2,000 victims.

1932-33: Famines in Ukraine and other areas of the Soviet Union, exacerbated as a means of repression, claim more than 3,000,000 lives.

February 1934: In the Austrian Civil War, 357 people die.

1935–1941: The Italian war against today’s Ethiopia claims between 350,000 and 760,000 Abyssinian victims.

1936–1939: During the Spanish Civil War, thousands of interbrigadistas and more than 400,000 Spaniards die.

1936–49: The revolt against the British mandatory power, the Arab-Jewish civil war in Palestine until May 1948, and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war until 1949 claim the lives of 165 Britons, 6,000 Jewish Palestinians and Israelis, 9,000 Arab Palestinians, and 5,000 Arab allied soldiers.

1939: In the Slovak-Hungarian War, 22 Slovaks and eight Hungarians perish.

1939–1945: In the course of World War II, approx. 50 million people of all belligerent nations meet their death in the European theaters of war.

1939–1945: In the context of the systematic annihilation of the European Jews by the German Reich’s National Socialist regime, approx. six million Jews are murdered.

1939–1945: In the context of the systematic annihilation of the Roma by the German Reich, approx. 200,000 members of these groups are murdered.

1941–1945: The Croatian Ustasha murder 500,000 Jews, Serbs, and Roma. 1945: The Battle of Surabaya, East Java, claims 1,000 British and 12,000 Indonesian lives.

1945–1949: In the Indonesian War of Independence, 1,200 British, 6,125 Dutch, and approx. 60,000 Indonesian soldiers perish.

1945–1950: In the context of the expulsions from Central- and Eastern Europe, more than 500,000 Germans perish.

1946: Inhabitants of the Polish city of Kielce kill forty Jews.

1946–1949: In the Greek Civil War, 50,000 people die a violent death.

1946–1954: In the course of the First Indochina War, 130 000 French and one million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians lose their lives.

1948–1960: During the Malayan Emergency, Britons kill more than 10,000 Malaysians.

1952–1956: In the course of the Tunisian independence war, 17,459 French soldiers and at least 300,000 Tunisians perish.

1952–1960: During the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, 200 British soldiers and 20,000 guerilla fighters perish.

1954–1962: In the Algerian War of Independence, approx. 24,000 French soldiers and approx. 300,000 Algerians lose their lives.

1961: The French police carry out a massacre against 200 Algerians in Paris.

1963–1964: The Cypriot civil war claims 174 Greek and 364 Turkish lives.

1968–1998: In the Northern Ireland conflict, 3,500 people perish.

1974: The Turkish invasion of Cyprus claims the lives of 3,000 Turks as well as of 5,000 Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

1979–1989: In the course of the Soviet-Afghan War, 14,453 Soviet soldiers and approx. one million Afghans lose their lives.

1982: In the Falklands War, 258 British and 649 Argentinian soldiers die.

1991–1995: The Yugoslav Wars claim 52,800 Bosnian, 18 530 Croatian, 30,000 Serbian, 4,000 Kosovar, and 800 Albanian lives.

1995: In Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbs carry out a massacre against 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks.

1992–93: In the Georgian Civil War, 10,000 people perish.

1998/99: The Kosovo War claims the lives of 2,170 Serbs and 10,527 Albanians.

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

A Collection

The estate of Carlo Alberto Brunner includes his study library with approx. 1,500 books, his own correspondence and that of his parents Leone and Tea Brunner, business letters and other correspondence of the family, documents, certificates, medals, photographs, numerous memorabilia, hunting and smoking utensils, walking sticks, the family silverware of several generations, porcelain with the noble coat of arms of Segré-Sartorio, as well as oil paintings from Hohenems and Trieste, some by well-known Trieste painters such as Arturo Rietti and Alfredo Tominz.

Jewish Perspectives on the Crises of an Idea

Opening Jewish Museum Munich, November 22, 2022, Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

 

What was the “Project Europe“ and what has become of it? And what will become of it? Has the European Union drifted apart even further in times of alarming global challenges instead of moving closer together? Are national interests increasingly pitted against European solutions?

Against the background of these questions, we look at Jewish individuals who in the face of Europe’s devastations and the attempted annihilation of the European Jews in the 20th century transcended national and cultural borders, demanded anew the universal application of human rights, and vigorously pursued a European dream. Based on their commitment to a united and peaceful Europe, the exhibition examines at the same time the renewed threats.

For this look at European utopias and disenchantments, the exhibition starts off by recalling the powerlessness and by looking back on the history of violence of the 20th century, on wars, genocides, and civil wars in Europe and under the banner of European colonialism.

The European project has seen itself also as a comprehensive peace project not only in view of the almost inconceivable amount of sacrifices the boundless violence of Europe’s “civilized” societies had exacted. Nowadays, the EU increasingly emerges as a defensive alliance, limited to security- and economic interests. Is Europe therefore, doomed to fail?
Our list of the dead of European violence in the 20th century count 125,300,000 people. It is not complete. By the end of the exhibition “The Last Europeans” they will have disappeared from the display.

Epilogue: What if?

Photo: Eva Jünger

What if we were asked what Europe actually means to us?
How do we want to define Europe?

Is Europe our home, a “Heimat”? Is it more or less home than Central Europe, Austria, Germany, Bavaria, Munich, Hohenems?

Is Europe a continent or, indeed, just a subcontinent? Does it constitute a geographic entity? Is it the sum total of individual nation states or a historical-cultural entity?

Is there such a thing as the European canon of values? And are all of Europe’s borders in Europe? What if we were asked with which countries further EU-accession negotiations should be conducted? With all 47 European countries or just with a few selected ones? And according to which criteria should they be invited?

What if we could resume travel within Europe without any restrictions? Where would we definitely refuse to travel? Where would we rather not be? How important is freedom of movement in Europe to us?

Which borders do we need—and which do we not want?What if we had a European parliament with true authority? What if there was a European sovereign? How democratic would Europe then be?

What if we perceived Europe in a completely different way? If we perceived it as a historical responsibility? Then, cities like New York, Tel Aviv, Beirut, and many others might be European cities.

If we perceived it as a social responsibility? Then all societies working for Europe then and now would simultaneously be European societies as well. What needs to happen so that Europe can act in unison? What if we perceived Europe as a global responsibility?

 

What will our visitor’s comments be in Munich? 

Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Here is what our visitors left on the maps in Hohenems by February 17, 2021 (update will follow):

Many answers to many European questions – and some new questions

The Last Europeans. Jewish Pespectives on the Crises of an Idea

Jewish Museum Munich
November 22, 2022 – May 21, 2023


„One wonders whether history is not in the process of forging a witty synthesis of two Nietzschean terms, namely that of the good European and that of the last man. This could result in the last European. We all struggle not to become one.“
Walter Benjamin in a letter to Stephan Lackner, Paris, May 5, 1940

Seventy-five years after the end of World War II, Europe is threatened by a relapse into nationalistic and inhumane ideologies.
 

The European imperative of “Never Again!” is being challenged by many, also here in Austria. At the same time, Europe’s nationalists are discovering their own fantasy of the “Judeo-Christian West”—as a battle cry against immigration and integration. The purportedly universal values of the Enlightenment, which were part of the foundations of European rapprochement in the wake of the catastrophes of the 20th century, show their flipside, hereby becoming means of seclusion and exclusion.

In collaboration with the Jewish Museum Hohenems the Jewish Museum Munich opens up as a place for debate on the future of Europe by calling for a discourse on the actual and the ideational substance of the European Union, on threats and opportunities, on future-oriented and outdated concepts. Here, it will be possible to argue about European Enlightenment as well as about its offspring: secularization and modernity, emancipation and participation, nationalism and chauvinism, colonialism and capitalism.

With an art installation by Arnold Dreyblatt consisting of three lenticular prints that he has chosen as an interactive means of representation. Each work contains up to six text layers, which can be seen as text fragments from different viewing positions and which seem to “overwrite” each other as in a deconstructed “palimpsest”.

An exhibition of the Jewish Museum Hohenems in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Munich.

Curators: Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, Michaela Feurstein-Prasser
Project Coordination: Lilian Harlander in collaboration with Sarah Steinborn
Exhibition Architecture: Martin Kohlbauer

www.lasteuropeans.eu offers not only a tour of our exhibition, but also interviews on the development of Europe, recordings of events – and a critical European diary.

Photo: Eva Jünger

Opening in Munich on November 22, 2022: The Last Europeans
Photo: Daniel Schvarcz

Heinrich and Helene Brunner

Portrait of Heinrich Brunner, about 1830, Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner Estate Portrait of Helene Brunner, about 1830, Jewish Museum Hohenems, Carlo Alberto Brunner Estate

Heinrich Brunner (1784 – 1867) was born as Henle Wolf in Hohenems. When Jews became obliged to adopt a surname, he took, as did his brother Arnold, the name of Brunner. He became a butcher and cattle dealer like his father and married Helene Marx (1785-1855) of Reckendorf in Bavaria. In accordance with marital divisions of labor common in the early 19th century, Heinrich managed all matters of business outside the home, while Helene was in charge of overseeing the household and the children’s education in line with the religious commandments, but also of representing her husband during his probably frequent extended periods of absence. Heinrich and Helene Brunner had nine children; in the early 1830s, four of them moved to Trieste for good where they founded the Brunners’ Triestine business empire. He probably gave up his occupation as butcher and opened himself a colonial goods store in Trieste in 1836, yet continued living in Hohenems. Here, he was active as council member of the Jewish Community, as chairman of the commission for the poor, and as board director of the burial society of the Hohenems Jewish Community. Being the first “Brunner,” he assumes the role of patriarch on the genealogical tree, which was likely commissioned by his grandson Lucian.

Genealogical tree of the Brunner family. From the estate of Lucian Brunner, loan of Francesca Brunner-Kennedy, Virginia

 

“Never Forget!”

Installation “never Forget”. Photo: Dietmar Walser

The imperative “Never Forget!” is a warning that endeavors to keep the memory of the National Socialist regime’s crimes and the Shoah alive. Indeed, as early as in 1946, Communist Vienna city councilor for cultural affairs Viktor Matejka mounted a large exhibition with that title at the Vienna Künstlerhaus. It was organized by the “Austrian federal association of former politically persecuted anti-fascists,” the umbrella organization of Austrian victims of National Socialism that existed until 1948, which had been joined by the “Austrian federal association of individuals persecuted for reasons of origin.” Yet, it was only at the last moment that Heinrich Sussmann (1904–1986), a Jewish Auschwitz survivor, was commissioned with designing a poster and exhibition room VI, “Persecution of the Jews.” It was not, however, Sussmann’s poster, which addressed the suffering in the concentration camps, but rather Victor Slama’s resistance fighter forcefully destroying the swastika that became the main advertisement vehicle. Even beyond that, exhibition preparations proved to be conflict-ridden. The Austrian People’s Party was unwilling to see the events immediately preceding the National Socialist period addressed, that is, the authoritarian corporate state, which had started with Austrians shooting at Austrians; and both large parties wished to have the Austrian victim theory underscored. No party was interested in dealing with the active participation of Austrians in the pogrom and murder of the Jews.

^ Sussmann family tomb at the Vienna Central Cemetery, Vienna 2020, © Oskar Prasser

< Heinrich Sussmann, poster for the exhibition “Never Forget,” Vienna 1946, © Austrian National Library-Picture Archive

> Anti-Semitic “game” anonymously sent by mail to Simon Wiesenthal, n. d., © Archive of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)

v Simon Wiesenthal, Vienna 1988, © Archive of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)

Throughout his entire life, Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal (1908–2005) implored to never forget that the Shoah had been a consequence of the dismantling of democracy and human rights. Through the “Documentation Center of the Association of Jews Persecuted by the Nazi Regime,” which he had founded, he collected and documented Nazi crimes and searched for escaped perpetrators around the world. Politically, Wiesenthal was close to the ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party). His protest against former Nazis being ministers in the FPÖ-supported (Freedom Party of Austria) minority government of the SPÖ (then: Socialist Party of Austria) under Bruno Kreisky—who in turn had found himself berated as “Saujud” (sow of a Jew) by an ÖVP member of parliament in 1966—prompted the Federal Chancelor to maliciously insinuate that Wiesenthal had been a Nazi collaborator. Now, two Austrians of Jewish descent were attacking each other in public, and the republic watched. Despite all the educational efforts and all the affirmations of their anti-fascist convictions automatically uttered by politicians, Wiesenthal was repeatedly exposed to rude anti-Semitism. When in 1990 an FPÖ mayoral candidate let it be known in an interview: “I’ve said to Simon Wiesenthal: We are already building ovens again, but nor for you, Mr. Wiesenthal —you have plenty of space in Jörgl’s pipe,” it only was the tip of the iceberg.

 

The Idea of Europe

Installation “The Idea of Europe”

The concept of the “United States of Europe” has been around already since the 18th century, based on the model of the United States of America. So far, it has not materialized. Walther Rathenau (1867–1922) was among those who pursued this idea.

The son of the well-known founder of AEG—himself a prominent entrepreneur—was responsible for the supply of raw material for the German Reich during World War I. He also demanded the use of Belgian forced laborers to offset the lack of manpower in Germany caused by the war.

Already before the war, Rathenau had made the case for the establishment of a Central European customs union with a German-Austrian economic community at its center; he envisaged that in the long run its appeal would be irresistible to Western European countries. After 1918, he pursued in various political functions the normalization of the relationship between Germany and the allied victorious powers as well as a settlement with Soviet Russia. In 1922, the Pan-European Movement was founded based on the “return to Christian, Western values.” Its first major donor was German-Jewish banker Max Warburg. To the present day, however, it has remained largely ineffective. By contrast, Rathenau’s idea of a European Economic Community became reality in 1957, which eventually evolved into the European Union in 1992.

^ Walther Rathenau, presumably Berlin, ca. 1920, © Jewish Museum Berlin

< Walther Rathenau, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, 1918, excerpt, © Montage Günter Kassegger

> Commemorative stone for Rathenau’s assassins in Saaleck, 2012, © Torsten Biel

Rathenau did not live to witness Europe’s unification or World War II. He was labeled as “compliance politician” by the ethno-centric right of the Weimar Republic, his actions as foreign minister were construed as evidence of the “power of international Jewry,” his negotiations with Russia vilified as “Jewish Bolshevism.” The extreme right’s hatred of anything Rathenau represented was vented not only by chanting the slogan “Gun down this Walter Rathenau, the godforsaken Jewish sow!” In fact, on June 24, 1922, he was assassinated by members of the right-wing extremist terrorist “Organization Consul.”

The perpetrators Erwin Kern and Hermann Fischer perished in the course of their arrest in Saaleck in Saxony-Anhalt and were hastily buried at the local cemetery. Hitler had a monument erected for these “heroes” with an inscription that was removed in GDR times. Following German reunification, the tomb became a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis. As a result, the army removed the stone and the local parish abolished the burial plot. In 2012, on the 90th anniversary of the assassins’ death, a boulder was placed here by unknown individuals featuring—in runelike script— the name of these two men.

Michael Miller (Vienna) about Antisemitic accusations after WW 1 and the Paneuropean-Movement: