Jewish Cemetery Währing

The Jewish Cemetery in Währing, the 18th district of Vienna was the main Jewish burial Vienna from 1784, when it was established, until 1897 when the Jewish section at the Vienna Central Cemetery was completed. The cemetery was partly destroyed during the Nazi era. But even after it was restored to the Jewish community after the war, a portion of the cemetery was required to be donated to the municipality of Vienna. Since 2010 civil society initiatives are taking steps to restore the cemetery and make it accessible. In the long term the association coordinating the restoration and the Jewish Community Vienna also aim at the establishment of a museum at the site. Only in 2020 the republic of Austria decided to support the restoration with funding for the next three years. For SoPHIA the case study represents a civil society driven case of intervention at a historically critical site of remembrance.

[Credit of the pictures:„Jüdischer Friedhof Währing“ © library_mistress/flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0]

Case Study: Jewish Cemetery Währing
Location: Vienna, Austria
Data availability: Probably good
Stage of the case: On-going
Type of cultural heritage: Monument / Place of Remembrance, Intangible, Project, Programme
Funding / Type of recognition: National level, Regional / Local level
Type of initiation: Policy-driven, Civil society-driven
Financial dimension value: Small (<1 mio €)
Physical dimension: Medium (group of buildings)

Strengths

New initiative started to revitalize the site, new political interest

Weaknesses

New project has not yet started, but the idea is to test the model for ex-ante assessments