Judenplatz

In the Middle Ages, Judenplatz (German for ‘Jewish Square’) was the hub of Jewish life and the Viennese Jewish Community. It is close to the Am Hof plaza, the Schulhof, and the Wipplingerstraße. It represents the city’s lengthy and exciting history, as well as the Jewish community’s attention on this location. Archaeological excavations of the medieval synagogue may be viewed underground via the Misrachi-Haus museum on the plaza. Around the area are two sculptural pieces, a carved relief, and various engraved writings, all of which deal with Jewish history. A statue of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing is one of these sculptures. The other is a memorial to Austrian Holocaust Victims, which was inaugurated in 2000 and was inspired by Simon Wiesenthal’s vision. The memorial, designed by British artist Rachel Whiteread, is a reinforced concrete cube resembling a library with its volumes flipped inside out.

The square is home to the Austrian Supreme Administrative Court.

History

Around 1150, Jews began to settle in Vienna and the area that would become Judenplatz, coinciding with the arrival of the House of Babenberg. The location was first mentioned in writing as “Schulhof” in 1294, a name that remained until the 1421 pogrom.By the year 1400, there were 800 people living here, including merchants, bankers, and intellectuals.The Jewish city extended north to the church Maria am Gestade, the west side became Tiefer Graben street, the east side was restricted by Tuchlaubenstreet, and the south side became the plaza “Am Hof”. The Ghetto had 70 dwellings that were placed in such a way that their rear walls formed a closed delimitation wall. The Ghetto was accessible via four gates, with the two major entrances located on the Wipplingerstrasse.

The Jewish hospital, Synagogue, bath house, Rabbi’s residence, and Jewish school were all located on Judenplatz and were among the most significant in German-speaking nations.The synagogue was located between Jordangasse and Kurrentgasse. As it was a playground at the time, the plaza was named “Schulhof” because of the school. This name was then moved to a smaller plaza in the adjacent area, and the neighborhood is still known as such today. The initial playground was given the name “Neuer Platz” in 1423, and it has been known as Judenplatz since 1437.

Vienna Gesera

The persecution of Jews in Vienna under Duke Albrecht V began in the fall of 1420 and reached a terrible peak in 1421. There were numerous imprisonments at first, with hunger and torture culminating to executions. Children were starved and tricked into consuming unclean foods, and those who refused were “sold into slavery” or forced to be baptized.The impoverished Jews were expelled, while the affluent Jews were imprisoned.The few Jews who remained free took sanctuary in the Or-Sarua Synagoge in Judenplatz, in what would become a three-day siege, resulting in a collective suicide due to starvation and dehydration.The “Wiener Geserah,” translated from German and Hebrew as the “Viennese Decree,” is a contemporaneous chronicle. It was stated that Rabbi Jonah set fire to the Synagogue in order for the Jews of Or-Sarua to die as martyrs. To avoid religious persecution and forcible baptism, this was a sort of Kiddush Hashem.

The approximately two hundred remaining survivors of the Jewish community were accused of crimes such as dealing arms to the Hussites and host desecration and were burned alive on 12 March 1421 at the so-called goose pasture (Gänseweide) in Erdberg.At the time, the Duke decreed that no more Jews would be permitted in Austria in the future. The remaining assets were confiscated, the dwellings were sold or given away, and the stones from the synagogue were used to construct the old Viennese university.However, Jewish settlement in Vienna did not stop as the Duke anticipated, and a second major ghetto emerged in the seventeenth century in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt neighborhood.

Holocaust Memorial

The Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial, created by English artist Rachel Whiteread, sits in the center of the square’s northern end commemorating Austrian Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It is made up of a 10 by 7 metre block that is 3.8 meters tall.It lies at the northwestern end of the square, before the Misrachi-Haus, and faces the Lessing Monument to the southeast, with its walls running parallel to the length of the square. In many aspects, the monument is site-specific and so dependent on the environment of Judenplatz. The fact that it was created on a household scale is one aspect of its site-specificity. It was believed that one of the nearby buildings had a room cast inside out and put in the middle of the plaza for public viewing.The memorial’s walls mimic petrified book library walls. The spines of the books on the walls, however, are illegible; they are all turned inwards. The names of the 41 locations where Austrian Jews were murdered during Nazi authority are inscribed on a concrete pedestal. This “nameless” library has a symbolic entry but is inaccessible. The monument is closely related to the Holocaust museum erected at the nearby Misrachi-Haus, where the names and data of 65,000 dead Austrian Jews are documented and accessible via computer terminals.

From July 1995 to November 1998, excavations were conducted to build the Memorial; these are regarded as the most significant urban archaeological research in Vienna.Quarrystone walls, a well, and basements from a medieval synagogue were discovered on the eastern part of the square. The placement of the memorial above the archaeological digs sparked debate, resulting in the memorial being moved one meter from its original location on the site.The area was completely reorganized and transformed into a pedestrian plaza in the fall of 2000, with the unveiling of the Holocaust monument.

Misrachi-Haus

The Misrachi-Haus is located at Judenplatz 8. It was constructed in 1694 and now serves as a section of the Jewish Museum Vienna. Archaeologists discovered and revealed the foundation walls of one of Europe’s largest medieval synagogues beneath the area in 1995.The archaeological discoveries sparked the idea of combining the memorial and excavations into a commemorative museum complex.

In 1997, the idea of constructing a museum sector in the Misrachi-Haus to augment the display area at Judenplatz 8 was born. Aside from the archaeological discoveries, displays by a section of the Jewish Museum Vienna would chronicle Jewish life in the Middle Ages, as would a database established by the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance with the names and fates of Austrian Holocaust victims.

The exhibition places a special emphasis on the Jewish experience during the “Wiener Geserah,” or 1421 pogrom. The synagogue’s pre-pogrom remains may be observed in three areas: the men’s teaching and prayer space known as the “men’s shul,” a cultivated smaller area used by the ladies, and the foundation of the hexagonal bimah, the elevated platform for Torah reading.

Lessing monument

Siegfried Charoux (1896-1967) constructed a monument to the German poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the heart of the square’s southern end. In a competition with eighty-two other sculptors, Charoux received the contract in 1930. The monument was finished in 1931/32, presented in 1935, and quickly dismantled by the National Socialists in 1939 to be melted down for armament. Lessing was in Vienna in 1775/76 and had an audience with Joseph II, allowing him to influence and create the Viennese cultural scene. Lessing’s “Ringparabel” from the play “Nathan der Weise” is regarded as a major Enlightenment work that aided in the formation of the concept of tolerance. Charoux worked on a second Lessing monument in bronze from 1962 to 1965, which was inaugurated at Ruprechtskirche in 1968 and transferred to Judenplatz in 1981.This is the monument that now sits in the square.

Bohemian Court Chancellery

The old Bohemian Court Chancellery, Judenplatz 11, now houses the Austrian Supreme Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgerichtshof). Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach designed the structure, which was built between 1709 and 1714. Following 1749, the other properties on the block were purchased, and Matthias Gerl was tasked with expanding the palace from 1751 to 1754, symmetrically doubling the building westward.Further reconstruction occurred in the nineteenth century, and the palace largely gained its current appearance at that time. The façade on Judenplatz was originally the back of the building; it was only after alterations in the twentieth century that the main entry gate was discovered there.The female figurines adorning the gates of this structure represent the Cardinal qualities (moderation, knowledge, justice, and bravery), while the coats of arms of Bohemia and Austria appear above. An angel with a trombone stands in the midst of the attic line, at whose feet a Putto crouches. At the angel’s feet are four vases and two male figurines, likely Bohemian Kings Wenceslaus I and Wenceslaus II.

The structure was once the official seat of the Bohemian Court Chancellery, which was merged with the Austrian Court Chancellery in 1749. The Ministry of the Interior took over the palace in 1848 and stayed there until 1923. The Oberste Justizstelle, the ancestor of the Austrian Supreme Court (Oberster Gerichtshof), was also located in Vienna from 1761 to 82 and 1797 to 1840.The Bundesgerichtshof moved into the palace in 1936, and a bomb strike on March 12, 1945, damaged a portion of the structure. The reconstruction was overseen by architect Erich Boltenstern and was finished in 1951. From 1946 to 2014, the palace housed both the Supreme Administrative Court and the Constitutional Court; the Constitutional Court relocated to the Freyung in 2014.

Vienna, Austria