What skin colors do Jews have – and which are ascribed to them? How do they position themselves? The exhibition Black Jews, White Jews? explores these questions and shows historical and contemporary examples of external and self-perception. It examines the topic of Jewish identity in the charged relationship between self-definition, antisemitism, and racism.

In 2020 the Austrian constitution celebrated its 100th anniversary. Praised by the Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen for its ‘elegance and beauty,’ its contents are not well enough known, and the devotion to the constitution that in countries such as the USA is rare in Austria.

The Zionist-oriented SC Hakoah inscribed a “Jewish football” success story in the history of Viennese football during the interwar period: the club won the first professional football championship in Austria in 1925. Little is known, however, that other Viennese and European football clubs likewise have a “Jewish history,” and that Jewish sports officials, coaches, and players contributed to the clubs’ early successes.

The photographer Maria Austria, actually Marie Östreicher, was born in Karlovy Vary in 1915 and came to Vienna in the mid-1930s to study at the Higher Federal Institution for Graphic Education and Research.

The image of Jewish women and men is shaped by misunderstandings in large sections of the majority society. Whether it concerns the exaggeration of the “Jewish sense of family,” “Jewish learning,” a clichéd notion of “Jewish life,” or the sadness inherent in anything “Jewish,” all of this is based on misconceptions that later translate into prejudice and express stereotypical images.