Works of Art from the Collection of the Jüdisches Museum Augsburg Schwaben

In addition to ritual and everyday objects, as well as printed and handwritten documents, the JMAS (Jewish Museum Augsburg Swabia) collection also includes works of art, such as lithographs and paintings. For bavarikon, works of art were selected that were created before 1945 and have a local connection to Augsburg and the surrounding former Jewish rural communities.

An important lithograph by the artist Josef Hochrein was created in 1863 in Fünfkirchen (Pécs, Hungary). It depicts the Augsburg rabbi Dr Jakob Heinrich Hirschfeld (1819–1902) seated in an armchair in a kneeling pose. The collection of the Jüdisches Museum Augsburg Schwaben (Jewish Museum Augsburg and Swabia) also includes a charcoal drawing and four watercolours by Fritz Landauer (1883–1968), the architect of Augsburg's city-centre synagogue. The charcoal drawing shows an exterior view of the villa of textile entrepreneur Otto Landauer (1882–1974) at Frölichstraße 5 in Augsburg. This villa was built according to the designs of Fritz Landauer, Otto's brother. Three watercolours in the JMAS collection depict different rooms of the villa, which were also furnished based on Fritz Landauer's designs. Another watercolour shows the interior of the Augsburg city-centre synagogue, which was constructed between 1913 and 1917 according to the plans of Fritz Landauer and Heinrich Lömpel (1877–1951).

The collection of the Jüdisches Museum Augsburg Schwaben also includes a case containing a set of lithographs created by the artist Hermann Struck (Berlin 1876 – Haifa 1944) during the First World War. After serving as a translator and soldier on the Eastern Front from 1915, Struck headed the "Jewish Affairs" department under the Oberbefehlshaber Ost (Commander-in-Chief East). This role brought him into contact with Eastern European Jews who maintained traditional lifestyles. Impressed by their piety, he explored this experience in numerous etchings and lithographs. A selection of these lithographs was published in 1920 under the title "Das ostjüdische Antlitz" (The Face of Eastern Jewry). A total of 50 lithographs from this publication are preserved in the Jüdisches Museum Augsburg Schwaben. They were purchased in 1990 by museum co-founder Julius Spokojny (1923–1996), who was originally from Miechów, Poland.

>> This collection is part of the holdings of the "Jüdisches Museum Augsburg Schwaben" (Jewish Museum Augsburg Swabia).