Vorarlberg: ein making-of in 50 Szenen—Objekte/Geschichte/Ausstellungspraxis ed. by Markus Barnay and Andreas Rudigier

Abstract

Reviewed by: Vorarlberg: ein making-of in 50 Szenen—Objekte/Geschichte/Ausstellungspraxis ed. by Markus Barnay and Andreas Rudigier Günter Bischof Markus Barnay and Andreas Rudigier, eds., Vorarlberg: ein making-of in 50 Szenen—Objekte/Geschichte/Ausstellungspraxis. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2022. 313 pp. Most Americans probably don't know that Vorarlberg is the smallest of the nine states that make up Austria. Nestled against Switzerland and Germany in the very west of Austria, Vorarlberg is highly industrialized and very entrepreneurial. Its people have a reputation of being hard-working and frugal. Vorarlbergers are separated from the Tyrol through the Arlberg pass and far removed from Vienna; they are suspicious of centralism. Markus Barnay and Andreas Rudigier's edited volume Vorarlberg is about the remaking of the Vorarlberg Museum in Bregenz. In 2011 a team of experts/curators were given the task by Rudigier, as the museum's new director, of coming up with a new exhibit on the entire 4th floor of the rebuilt facility, to be opened in 2013, with a relaunch in 2015 (294). The concept they came up with, and this is what this book is about, was the "making-of" Vorarlberg in 50 scenes. Accompanying the remaking of the museum exhibits was a public program on Friday evenings (Freitags um 5), discussing the history(-ies) of Vorarlberg with the public at large (292). What was exhibited in the new galleries were objects from the museum's collections as well as many loaned ones. The new museum won all kinds of Austrian and European prizes. The book features four main parts, called "episodes." It also features feedback from exhibit visitors from "wonderful" and "extraordinary" to "boring" and "a house full of banalities" (280–83). Episode A is dedicated to the theme "Wer bestimmt über mich." The twelve scenes go back in history to the original borders of Vorarlberg, the Counts of Montfort, and Habsburg control. But these scenes also cover foreign occupations like the Bavarian one during the time of Napoleon and the French one after World War II. There is also the intriguing scene of a potential "Anschluss" to Switzerland after World War I (68–73), where the distinguished [End Page 141] regional historian Meinrad Pichler portrays Ferdinand Riedmann, a teacher and propagandist for joining Switzerland. Episode B, "Was mache ich hier?," is dedicated to largely economic topics. Ingrid Böhler, a contemporary historian at the University of Innsbruck, sets the scenes with an essay about industrialization and migration (98–101). Scene 13 is dedicated to baroque-era construction workers, who seasonally migrated from the Bregenzerwald to build churches and monasteries from Switzerland to Southern Germany to Alsace. Scene 14 is set with the Schwabenkinder, children who migrated seasonally to Southern Germany to work as cheap farm labor. Additional scenes deal with industrial exploitation of working children, the Alpine cheese industry, the Alpine hydroelectric industry, and the advent of tourism as well as the rise of the Doppelmayr family business, as the world's premier builder of ski lifts. Episode C confronts the identity issue "Wer bin ich?" This part of the book deconstructs Vorarlberg myths. Marcus Barnay, a well-known regional historian, deconstructs the notion that Vorarlbergers originate from the South German tribe of Alemannen and that they have their own mentality ("hard working and frugal"; 162–65). Mathias Moosbrugger thoroughly deconstructs the myth of the ur-democratic "peasant republic" of the "Hintere Bregenzerwald" with their own parliament and a freely elected Landammann (186). Scene 32 deals with the unique local dialect, very popular among young people (my niece is an artist whose pictures are all about odd sayings in the local dialect). Vorarlberg developed its first institutions in the nineteenth century and became one of the nine Austrian states in 1918 (before some wanted to be part of Switzerland). After World War II Vorarlbergers increasingly called their region "Ländle": Scene 37 (Christian Schützinger) deconstructs Ländle-dwellers not taking Vorarlberg seriously with such a diminutive term, creating associations of "provincial, lazy, and well-meaning" (212). Episode D deals with belonging ("Gehöre ich dazu?"). Eva Grabher starts this section with the longest introductory essay in the book, analyzing the construction of...