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.

‘The lights were like a sea – and the sea is invincible.’

It was with these impactful words that Friedrich ‘Fritz’ Verzetnitsch, then President of the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB), described one of the greatest civil society events in the history of the Second Austrian Republic: the ‘sea of lights’, which took place in Vienna on 23 January 1993.

Up to 300,000 people gathered on Heldenplatz square and in the adjacent streets in Vienna’s First District to send out a powerful signal against xenophobia, exclusion and an increasingly polarising migration policy using candles, torches and their silent presence.

Lights off, spotlight on: 1,000 glass slides and the first slide lectures of the Volkskundemuseum Wien

The first 1,000 slide numbers in the inventory of the Volkskundemuseum Wien (Austrian Museum of Folk Art and Folk Life) were primarily produced between 1900 and 1927 for (popular) scholarly slide lectures, often focusing on geographical and cultural aspects of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. As early as around 1900, many of these glass slides were used by museum staff in so-called "sciopticon lectures" (from Greek dia = through, skopein = to look). However, a systematic cataloguing and inventorying of the slides only began around 1915. The corresponding entries are usually limited to a brief description of the depicted subject. Additional information – such as details on production or use – is almost entirely lacking.

Only the clear thematic structure of the inventory book provides clues about the content of the lectures illustrated by these images. Lecturers with backgrounds in folklore studies – such as Michael Haberlandt (1860–1940), Arthur Haberlandt (1889–1964), Rudolf Trebitsch (1876–1918), Marianne Schmidl (1890–1945), and Konrad Mautner (1880–1924) – presented their slide shows primarily at the Wiener Urania, the University of Vienna, various associations, and at the Volkskundemuseum Wien itself. After the founding of the State Office for Adult Education (Volksbildungsamt) in 1919, the slides were increasingly used in educational courses for teachers.

Between Documentation and Staging: Photographs of Galicia and Bukovina in the Volkskundemuseum Wien Photo Collection

The first inventoried item in the Volkskundemuseum Wien (Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art) photo collection, pos/1, was taken by Josef Szombathy (1853–1943) in Bukovina in 1894. It shows Austriaplatz square in Chernivtsi (Czernowitz). Additional photographs from the former Austrian crown lands, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, and the Duchy of Bukovina, were added to the photo collection from 1896 onwards, which at that time was still part of the Museum für österreichische Volkskunde (Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art) library.

The name Galicia refers to a historical region that stretched across what is now southern Poland and western Ukraine. At the eastern end of Galicia was the smaller historical region of Bukovina. Today, this region belongs to Ukraine and Romania. The former territory of Poland-Lithuania was divided into three parts (1772, 1793 and 1795) following armed conflicts between Prussia, Russia and Austria. Galicia and Bukovina were the names given to the territories that were assigned to Habsburg rule.

Beehive Front Panels

Apiaries equipped with box-shaped beehives became increasingly popular in Carniola (Krain), Carinthia and northwestern Slovenian Styria in the 19th century.

A special feature of the beehives in this region are painted beehive panels mounted on the front of the wooden boxes, which have an entrance hole at the bottom edge. Volkskundemuseum Wien (Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art) possesses more than 230 of these painted panels with different decorative images. The paintings depict religious motifs, peasant life, satirical scenes, technical innovations and historic events.

Franz Gaul and Josef Löwy – The Collectible Picture Series "Austro-Hungarian National-Costumes" (1881–1890)

The collectible picture series Austro-Hungarian National-Costumes (1881–1890) consists of 72 illustrations depicting regional costumes from various areas of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It was produced by Franz Gaul (1837–1906), a historical painter and costume expert, and photographer Josef Löwy (1834–1902). The series was published in various formats, including leather-bound portfolios and individual images in the rarely used Carte de Boudoir format. It was aimed at the wealthier circles of society, with a single image costing the equivalent of approximately 25 euros in today’s purchasing power.

With its focus on Alpine regions, particularly Tyrol and South Tyrol (now part of Italy), the series soon became a source of inspiration for the bourgeois costume movement. The Volkskundemuseum Wien (Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art) houses 145 images related to the series, including duplicates and drafts, providing valuable insights into production processes. These holdings not only enable comparative analyses but also inspire new research questions.

Old Gmunden Faience

During the period between the museum's foundation and the end of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the museum consistently acquired Gmunden objects. In an era of increasing industrial production, museums collected handcrafted objects in order to save them from disappearing and being forgotten. Every now and then, extensive collections from private individuals would also find their way into the museum’s collection. The majority of today's holdings of around 350 objects had already been catalogued by 1918.

Acquisition activity continued on a smaller scale from then on, with holdings from the period between 1938 and 1945 now being investigated by restitution research. Hardly any major new acquisitions were made after that, apart from some green-flamed bowls from a private collection, which were purchased in 2005.

Right From the Start – The First 1,000 Positives of the Photo Collection

The origins and early history of the photo collection are best and most impressively shown when we look at positive inventory numbers pos/1 to pos/1000 (see Hammer 2020). The photographs in this collection were acquired in the first ten years after the museum was founded, i.e. between 1895 and 1905.

Collecting these photographs was important to the museum from the very beginning. After all, photographs were seen as witnesses to a ‘disappearing’ culture as well as a medium for depicting or ‘collecting’ what was intangible or too bulky for the collections (see Haberlandt 1896), e.g. small monuments or houses.

Prinzess-Keramik

Prinzess-Keramik is the name of a company that produced ceramics in Vienna during the post-war period. In addition to utility ceramics, such as mirror frames, lamps and candlesticks, the company mainly manufactured figurines based on both secular and religious motifs. Being exported to many countries around the world, these ceramic figures used to shape the image of Austria at home and abroad.

In 2005, the Volkskundemuseum purchased a group of Prinzess-Keramik objects by a private collector couple. These objects were added to the ceramics collection and given the inventory numbers ÖMV/83123 to 83193. At the time, there was no literature on this type of ceramics and no objects were known to exist in other museums.

Pencil Drawings by Leopold Forstner

The 29 pencil drawings were created between April 1917 and May 1918. During this time, Leopold Forstner was travelling on behalf of the Austro-Hungarian army administration as a collection officer in the Balkans occupied by Austria-Hungary.

Mythenbibliothek

The so-called Mythenbibliothek has been on permanent loan from the federal government to the Volkskundemuseum Wien since 1946. According to the inventory book, it comprises 1.629 copies or binding units. The publications focus on myths, fairy tales and legends – hence the designation of this library collection as the Mythenbibliothek. Since the loan agreement was signed in November 2019, the collection has been digitised and made accessible online.