R.I.P. – Memorial Cards Collected by Josef Schwarzbach
Our collection holds over 1,000 memorial cards. These are small, individually designed slips of paper or cards, often including prayers, created to commemorate the deceased and distributed at funerals. The memorial cards preserved at the Volkskundemuseum Wien date mostly from the 19th and early 20th centuries. They speak of people, lives, death, beliefs, moral concepts, mourning, and remembrance. Taken together, they are valuable historical and socio-cultural sources; individually, they provide genealogical insights. The collection at the Volkskundemuseum can be traced back above all to one person: more than 900 examples were gathered by school principal and teacher Josef Schwarzbach (1853–1896). In 1898, they were inventoried as a generous donation.
This article will be published in English soon.