Herklotzgasse 21

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Herklotzgasse 21 is a building in the 15th district of Vienna , Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus , and at the same time a historical research and exhibition project on Jewish Vienna .

The alley runs in an east-west direction between the Mariahilfer Gürtel ( Gumpendorfer Strasse underground station ) and Reindorfgasse south of the outer Mariahilfer Strasse and north of Sechshauser Strasse. It is a very densely built- up Wilhelminian-style district for petty bourgeois and proletarians .

The lives and fates of the residents are shown here in an exhibition with stations in the streets and buildings of the district, through a memorial on the site of the Turnergasse synagogue, which was destroyed in 1938, and through the restoration of the preserved stork school facade, as well as through film , publications, websites and guided tours : Herklotzgasse 21 and the Jewish rooms in a Viennese Graetzel .

History of the house

The primary school building, erected in 1869 and having lost its original function, and the gym in the courtyard were bought in 1906 by the philanthropist Regine Landeis. She was president of the Jewish feeding association for districts XII-XV and made the house available to the "Association for the Establishment and Maintenance of Horten for School-Age Children" (founded by the "Eintracht" association of the International Humanist Order B'nai B'rith ) .

From then on, numerous Jewish organizations replaced one another on three floors, mainly welfare institutions, but also those with other functions:

  • In 1906 there was a boys 'after-school care center with 49 and a girls' after-school care center with 65 schoolchildren, looked after by the Association for Feeding Poor Jewish Children for Districts XII – XV.
  • In 1909 the house became a home for Jewish children after the Makkabi XV gymnastics club became the new owner of the house.
  • 1916–17 the home was expanded as a war orphanage (1922 moved to a specially constructed building in Vienna 15., Goldschlagstraße 84)
  • In 1927 adaptation work followed to create accommodation for the homeless. Two years later, in 1929, three rooms were added for use during prayer meetings on high Jewish holidays for up to 398 people.
  • From 1932 to 1933 the house belonged to the Zionist District Section XII – XV.

Research and memory

The synagogue on Turnergasse (around 1900)

From 1906 to 1940, the house at Herklotzgasse 21 was a junction within a Vienna district that was relatively densely populated by Jews. In the Fünfhaus , which was incorporated in 1890/92 , the social organization of the Jewish Viennese in districts 12 to 15 was concentrated; A large synagogue , the Turnertempel , had existed in Turnergasse 22 since 1872 , and a prayer house, the stork school , which had been expanded several times in Storchengasse . Numerous clubs were housed in Herklotzgasse 21 and Turnergasse 22 as well as in other buildings in the district.

The trigger to use these historical facts for an exhibition was Inge Rowhani-Ennemoser's family history Message from the Loss of the World ( ISBN 9783854761136 , Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2004), which is located in the Jewish club house at Herklotzgasse 21 for one chapter.

The exhibition project was initiated by the office community Dieloop.at, the Coobra association and the federal umbrella association for social enterprises that work in this building.

The exhibition

The exhibition “The Triangle of My Childhood - A Jewish Suburban Congregation in Vienna XV” is about the Jewish community in this Vienna outer and working-class district, about its residents, about the associations that organized all aspects of social life and linked them regionally, nationally and internationally; of a destroyed synagogue and the remains of a prayer house . It is about a segment of the social space that was first exposed to the physical persecution, robbery and total disenfranchisement of the residents, in order to be erased from the public surface of the city and finally to sink into largely oblivion.

“In my childhood memories this triangle is Herklotzgasse 21, the gymnast temple and the stork school, similar to a castle with three towers, surrounded by a threatening volcano that could have rested or erupted at any time.” This is how Moshe Jahoda gave the exhibition its name as the first interviewee.

In Vienna, the architectural and urban structures in which the Jewish community had manifested have changed little since then. In cooperation with survivors, most of whom now live in Israel, as well as with historians and Jewish organizations, with filmmakers, photographers, artists and experts from the City of Vienna, traces are recorded, made visible, put up for discussion and in the sense of complex work and development processes in integrates urban development.

further reading

  • Michael Kofler, Judith Pühringer, Georg Traska (eds.): The triangle of my childhood - a Jewish suburban community in Vienna . Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85476-279-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Herklotzgasse 21 and the Jewish rooms in a Viennese Graetzel. Archived from the original on July 10, 2009 ; Retrieved November 28, 2009 .
  2. Herklotzgasse 21, article on: COOBRA. cooperativa braccianti. Association for the promotion of holistic perspectives on socio-political issues. Archived from the original on April 1, 2009 ; Retrieved November 28, 2009 .

Coordinates: 48 ° 11 ′ 22.8 ″  N , 16 ° 20 ′ 3.5 ″  E