Lay Down Your Arms!

Installation Lay Down Your Arms! Photo: Dietmar Walser

Since 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to individuals who have “done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses” and thus, “during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” In 1911, the prize was awarded to two men who came from Jewish families: to the Dutch lawyer Tobias Asser (1838–1913) for the establishment of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) and the Austrian bookseller and publisher Alfred Hermann Fried (1864–1921) who had founded—together with Bertha von Suttner—the periodical “Die Waffen nieder! Monatsschrift zur Förderung der Friedensbewegung” (Lay Down Your Arms! Monthly for the promotion of the peace movement). The ardent pacifist Fried believed in the possibility of overcoming war. He viewed war as a structural “symptom of international anarchy” that must be met with “international organization,” that is, with the establishment of the League of Nations. The latter was intended to safeguard peace in cases of conflict.

^ Alfred Hermann Fried, n. d., © Austrian National Library-Picture Archive

< Nobel Peace Prize diploma for Alfred Hermann Fried, Stockholm 1911, © ÖNB

Mortar, 120 mm, Hirtenberger Defence Systems, Eurosatory (Land and Airland Defence & Security Exhibition), Paris 2018, © armyrecognition.com

After two world wars, the pacifist movement gained broad momentum. Time and again, appeals were made for complete disarmament. However, the arms industry is an important economic sector all over the world. The Hirtenberger munitions factory was, besides the Steyr-Werke, among Austria’s best-known arms factories. For an extended period, Hirtenberger was managed by Fritz Mandl (1900–1977). Already early on, he found also unauthorized ways to export weapons via Switzerland. Ideologically, he was close to fascist systems of the time. In 1933, he made an attempt at supplying weapons, captured in World War I and modernized by his company, to Italy, Hungary, and to the Heimwehr, which elicited an international scandal. Yet, following the Anschluss, his friendship with Nazis could not protect him from being defined as Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws; he immigrated to Argentina and became an adviser to the dictator Perón. Following his return in 1955, Mandl managed to secure for his restituted company major contracts with the Austrian Armed Forces. In 1999, Hirtenberger Defense Systems started its mortar program. Arms exports to warring states and to those that use weapons in ways that violate human rights are legally banned. Nevertheless, Austrian munition, also from Hirtenberger, keeps surfacing in warring countries such as, for instance, Afghanistan.

Michael Miller (Vienna) about the Pacifism of the Paneuropean-Union:

Europe’s Borders

Installation Europe’s Borders. Photo: Dietmar Walser

“We were able to travel without passport and permit, wherever we desired, nobody inspected our views, origins, race, and religion.” By the time Stefan Zweig completed his—albeit slightly idealized— Memories of a European in his Brazilian exile in 1941, he was faced with a radically altered reality in Europe. As early as in 1938, Switzerland had closed its borders to the rising numbers of Jewish refugees from Germany and refused them political asylum. In the period from 1938 until 1939, the St. Gallen police commander Paul Grüninger saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish refugees, also by forging the dates of border crossings. In early 1939, he was suspended from office and sentenced. Only in 1995, he was rehabilitated by Switzerland. While Grüninger is being honored as someone who came to the rescue of refugees, many helpers today are once again criminalized. One of the great achievements of the European Union was the Schengen Agreement of 1985, which enables the abolishment of border controls within the EU. In the meantime, also non-EU countries such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Iceland, and Norway participate in the Agreement. At the Austrian-Swiss border near Hohenems, the local border traffic in both directions has long since become part of everyday life. Some sectors such as agriculture, construction, or nursing are heavily reliant on “migrant workers” from Southeastern Europe. For them, special arrangements, independent of EU membership, have been put in place.

< Paul Grüninger-Bridge, as seen from Switzerland toward the Hohenems border crossing, 2020 © Dietmar Walser/Jewish Museum Hohenems

> Border fences between Hungary and Serbia, erected by Hungary in the summer of 2015 © Attila Kisbendedek/AFP

In 2009, on the occasion of the accession negotiations with the EU, the Republic of Serbia, too, was granted access to the control-free Schengen Area. This was to change in the wake of refugees moving in the direction of the EU. Numerous countries, among them also Austria and Germany, have reintroduced border checks. And since in the summer of 2015 about 160,000 refugees had reached Hungary, it erected a 300-km long and up to four-meter high barbed wire fence along its “external EU border.” In the meantime, the EU’s focus has shifted to the external border between Greece and Turkey. More than four million war refugees live in Turkey. In the framework of the EU-Turkey Agreement, the country has received financial support from the EU to stem the refugee flow toward the EU. Following the expiration of this agreement, Turkey brought refugees to the border in late February 2020 to put pressure on the EU. At that, Greece suspended, initially for one year, the right to asylum, which was openly in violation of the EU Human Rights Convention and the Geneva Refugee Convention. Then again, in the course of Corona, “migratory labor” in Europe is revealing its flaws: low pay, tough working conditions, and inhumane accommodations have unexpectedly been recognized as a problem for all of society.

Europe’s “Other”

Installation Europe’s “Other”. Photo: Dietmar Walser

In the European search for the “other,” the attempt to find Europe’s “counterpart” in the Orient, the academic discipline of Oriental Studies came into being already in the 18^th century. Among those driving forward linguistic and historical research of the entire Orient in the 19^th century were also many representatives of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism) , such as Lion Ullmann, Salomon Munk, Gustav Weil, Moritz Steinschneider, David Samuel Margoliouth, Felix Peiser, Josef Horovitz, and Eugen Mittwoch. Unlike the history- and philology-oriented Oriental Studies, Islamic Studies mainly dealt with Muslim religion and culture. The initial impulse to establish such field of study came from the pioneer of the Jewish reform movement in Germany, Abraham Geiger. However, the father of modern Islamic studies was—together with Theodor Nöldeke—Ignaz Goldzieher. Lew Nussimbaum (1905-1942) who converted to Islam and Hedwig Klein (1911-1942) also wanted to follow in the footsteps of these scholars. Klein studied Islamic and Semitic studies in Hamburg and completed her doctoral thesis in 1937 on a manuscript about the “History of the people of ‘Omān from their adoption of Islam until their dissensus”. Since she was Jewish, her PhD was not approved. After a failed attempt to escape Germany, she was still able to collaborate until mid-1942 on today’s most widely used Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic by Hans Wehr. Eventually she was deported and murdered in Auschwitz. In 1947, she was posthumously awarded her PhD degree. Was Hedwig Klein’s interest in the Orient and in Islam founded, like that of her male predecessors and colleagues, in the affinity between Hebrew and Arabic or else in the fact that both Judaism and Islam are considered to be law based monotheistic religions?

^ Hedwig Klein, ca. 1930, © Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden, Hamburg

< Den Orient im Herzen: Lew Abramowitsch Nussimbaum alias Essad Bey alias Kurban Said, Berlin 1921

> Anti-Islamic float at the Düsseldorf carnival parade, 2007, © Federico Gambarini/dpa/picturedesk.com

In any case, research carried out by European Jews on Islam was not motivated by the exoticism widespread in the 19^th and early 20^th century, by the superficial fascination with the “alien.” Nor was it prompted by the goal to use Orientalism as an ideology of difference and—as so often happens these days as well— to define the Orient as the negation of the Occident. On the contrary: Jews—themselves perceived as Europe’s “other”—were able to approach the Islamic world with much more insight and understanding than many Christians. Although the return to fundamentalism can be observed in all religions, these days, populist agitation expresses itself mainly in the promotion of the enemy stereotype of “Islam”: the image of the Orient as a counterdraft to the Occident, as Europe’s eternal adversary.

Brian Klug (London) about the inner and outer “other” of Europe and the heritage of Colonialism:

Escape the Corset!

Installation Escape the Corset!. Photo: Dietmar Walser

While in the wake of the French Revolution, equality for male citizens was met in Europe with acceptance, the emancipation of women had not been among the goals of those championing liberty, equality, and fraternity. Only around 1900, an international feminist movement began to emerge.

^ Rózsika Schwimmer, Budapest 1913, © Carrie Chapman Catt Albums. Bryn Mawr College Libraries, Special Collections

< Stamp on the occasion of the 1913 Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Budapest, © Jewish Museum Hohenems > Promotion of Orbán’s “family protection action plan,” 2019, © Gábor Ligeti

In 1912, Schwimmer wrote: “Although as wife, the Hungarian woman is in a much more advantageous position than the German, English, Dutch, etc., the mother in Hungary is subjected to the same laws of illogic, injustice, and cruelty that govern almost all of human society. Poetry and prose exalt motherhood, depict her as a type of earth mother. Yet, outside of these lofty regions, the mother, married or unmarried, is the carrier of the crown of thorns.” More than one hundred years later, her analysis is once again applicable. Following revolution and counterrevolution, Hungary is once more characterized by emigration and sealing-off against anything “alien” as well as by the dismantlement of democracy. In the spring of 2019, Viktor Orbán initiated a new family policy to combat the low birthrate: young Hungarian married women with several children would receive generous financial support. “Family policy” is intended to ward off the supposedly impending Überfremdung (excessive influx of foreigners). However, in the course of the campaign, the government had committed an embarrassing blunder: already long before this family-planning campaign, the “couple” depicted on an agency’s stock photograph had been circulating the internet in other versions under the slogan “distracted boyfriend” as a so-called “meme” to illustrate infidelity.

Andrea Petö (Vienna) about women’s rights, gender studies and Corona:

Moritz Julius Bonn

Moritz Julius Bonn was born on June 16, 1873 in Frankfurt am Main as son of the banker Julius Philipp Bonn and Elise Brunner of Hohenems. Following studies in Heidelberg, Munich, Vienna, Freiburg, and London as well as research visits in Ireland and South Africa, he started his successful career as a political economist. In Italy, he met Theresa Cubitt, a native of England and married her in London in 1905. That same year, he completed his habilitation on English colonial rule in Ireland. From 1914 to 1917, he taught at various universities in the USA. As a political consultant, he took part in numerous postwar conferences, wrote on the topics of free trade and economic reconstruction, and drafted critical studies on colonialism as well as European democracy, which he considered viable only if based on pluralism and ethnic diversity. As rector of the Berlin College of Commerce and head of the Institute of Finance, founded by him, he eventually became one of the leading economic experts of the Weimar Republic. In the wake of the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, Bonn was forced to emigrate, initially to Salzburg, then London, and finally to the USA where he began his autobiography Wandering Scholar (German: So macht man Geschichte). After the war, he permanently settled in London where he passed away in 1965. Moritz Julius Bonn had spent his childhood summers at his grandparents’ in Hohenems and also

Moritz Julius Bonn, So macht man Geschichte, 1953: Education of a liberal and synagogue service in Hohenems

Moritz Julius Bonn, So macht man Geschichte, 1953: Multicultural diversity in “Felix Austria”

Moritz Julius Bonn, So macht man Geschichte, 1953: Memory and Return from Exile?

„A Bird Comes A-flying“

Installation “A Bird Comes A-flying”. Photo: Dietmar Walser

A dense communications network transforms the world into a seemingly manageable space, delivers within minutes international news to our living rooms, and enables friends and family across continents to stay in contact. One of the pioneers of global communication was Paul Julius Reuter (1816–1899) who was born in Kassel as son of a rabbi and converted to Christianity in 1845. Early on, he recognized the significance of a rapid news transfer. He gained his first experience at the oldest European news agency, Agence Havas in Paris. In those years, the first telegraph lines were inaugurated, also between Paris and Berlin, though still with many gaps. Reuter seized the moment and invested in initially 45 and soon after in 200 carrier pigeons, hereby closing the missing links between Brussels and Aachen. In 1851, Reuter settled in London. He established a telegraph station in the stock exchange building from where he transmitted stock market news back and forth between Paris and London. Soon he was able to gain the trust of large media houses that tasked him with supplying them with important news from around the world. Reuter revolutionized international journalism by providing neutral and as far as possible objective news.

< Carrier pigeon, © Bettman, Getty Images > Pre-printed form of a free ticket for a brothel visit, © https://www.witzbold.org/bordell-gutschein.html The flipside of today’s global communications is the generation of fake news. Particularly via social media, bogus news is disseminated around the world in no time. Once online, it is almost impossible to revoke fake news brought into circulation. Meanwhile, serious journalism is in jeopardy also in several EU countries—due to the increasing enforced conformity of the press, but also the vilification and legal prosecution of journalists. In Austria, tabloid newspapers in particular receive funding from tax money, especially in the crisis year 2020. “Brothel vouchers” such as the one shown here have been in circulation since 1989. Originally conceived as a joke article for carnivals, versions of this voucher have swiftly spread around German-speaking Europe, nowadays mostly with the added remark “for refugees.” By publishing these “vouchers,” fake news about refugees is deliberately disseminated. Moreover, it is suggested that refugees are unable to control their sex drive and, therefore, receive vouchers for a free brothel visit from the government to prevent the rape of native girls.

Andrea Petö (Vienna) about closing the Central European University by the Orban governement:

Union Europe?

Installation Union Europe? Photo: Dietmar Walser

The European Union started out as an economic community after World War II. Its history dates back to 1952 when its predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community, was founded. Today, the EU is also a political community. The only directly elected body since 1979 is the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Its first president was the French politician and Auschwitz survivor Simone Veil (1927–2017). In addition, that same year, the French champion of women’s rights Louise Weiss (1893–1983) became an MEP for the Group of European Progressive Democrats. Already during World War I, she had founded the peace-oriented journal L’Europe Nouvelle and kept publishing it throughout two decades. Despite being highly vulnerable as the daughter of an Alsatian Jewish mother, she was active in the Résistance during World War II. Her efforts toward a united, democratic Europe were honored by appointing her the first Oldest Member of the European Parliament and by naming the parliamentary building after her. Indeed, Louise Weiss understood that the concept of the Union was limited in scope to economic aspects, and early on, she pointed to the lack of a European community of solidarity by stating: “The Community institutions have produced European sugar beet, butter, cheese, wines, calves, and even pigs. They have not produced Europeans.”

Also delegated to the European Parliament in 1979 was Stanley Johnson—grandson of the last interior minister of the Ottoman Empire, Ali Kemal. As MEP for the British Tories, he belonged to the same group as Weiss. In 1992, he vehemently endorsed the Maastricht Treaty, which endowed the European Union with its current form. Now, his son Boris Johnson is leading the United Kingdom out of this Union. Do the grandchildren of the World War II generation regard Europe as nothing more than a sentimental and obsolete peace project? Hostilities against the EU are also triggered by parties on the Continent. Are the demands for more national autonomy symptoms of a growing right-wing nationalism? At the same time, exit demands are multiplying also in countries at the edge of Europe that find themselves—despite all the lip services paid to a European community of shared values—confronted with Europe‘s de-facto erosion of solidarity. Is it thus already possible to consider European integration as having failed? Is this the beginning of the end of Project Europe?

Gerald Reitlinger

Following their enormous social ascent in Trieste, Carlo Brunner and his wife Caroline, née Rosenthal, married their three daughters to three Reitlinger brothers, bankers in Vienna, London, and Paris. Gerald Reitlinger (1900-1978) was born as the youngest son of Albert Reitlinger and Emma Reitlinger, née Brunner, and pursued cultural studies and art. From 1930 until 1931, he participated in an excavation in Iraq and subsequently undertook several research trips to Iran, Turkey, and China. After World War II, Gerald Reitlinger published the first complete overview of the National Socialist mass murder of the European Jews: The Final Solution. The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939–1945 appeared in 1953 in London. In 1956 followed The SS. Alibi of a Nation 1922 – 1945. Gerald Reitlinger was an enthusiastic collector of Asian and Islamic ceramics. He bequeathed his large collection, which was damaged by fire shortly before his death, to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford where it now forms the Gerald Reitlinger Gallery.

Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, 1953. Questions of Responsibility

“Domiciled in all EU Member States”

Installation “Domiciled in all EU Member States”. Photo: Dietmar Walser

There are numerous linguistic and ethnic minorities in Europe, among them, for instance, the Sámi, Bretons, Basques, Sorbs, Frisians, Sards, Pavees, Yenish, or the Roma. Also counting as part of the Roma are the Sinti, Manouches, Kalderash, Lovari, and Ashkali. With a total of 10-12 million people, the Roma constitute Europe’s largest minority and are, according to the European Commission, “domiciled in all EU member states.” Contrary to common stereotypes, the overwhelming majority of European Roma are settled. After roughly hundreds of thousands of Roma have fallen victim to National Socialist racial fanaticism, the European states are now officially aware of their human rights obligations to protect all their minorities. On February 1, 1998, a Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities entered into force in the member states of the European Union. In 2007, the artist Damian Le Bas (1963–2017) built together with his wife, Delaine, the first Roma pavilion at the Venice Biennale. < Damian Le Bas, Gypsyland Europe, Berlin 2017, © Delaine Le Bas > Deported Roma at Lyon Airport, 2010, © Philippe Desmazes/AFP In August 2010, as part of a “security crackdown” targeted and primarily directed at the Roma, French security forces dismantled forty illegal Roma camps. Seven hundred people from Romania and Bulgaria were forcefully deported although as EU citizens, they enjoy the right to freedom of movement. To enable frictionless deportations, special charter flights were organized. Not only the chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma saw in this an act of discrimination and violation of minority rights. French intellectuals such as André Glucksmann joined and demanded freedom for the “border-crossing mobile homes.” The Minister of State for European Affairs of France at the time, Pierre Lellouche, who is proud of his Tunisian-Jewish origins, not only defended the actions taken by the security forces, but also put up for negotiation the definition of the freedom-of-movement principle within the Union. He viewed criticism coming from the EU Commission as “interference from Brussels” although the mentioned Framework Convention of the European Council had been violated. On the other hand, Lellouche criticized the European Commission for shutting the eyes to the European phenomenon of a massive “antiziganism” and for not developing visions for an improvement of the life situation of the Roma everywhere in Europe.