Object of the month


2011

František Gellner (1881-1914): Ex libris (before 1914)

June 19 of this year marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of poet, prose writer, illustrator, caricaturist, and staunch anarchist František Gellner. The Object of the Month series commemorates this with a small, incidental print, a...

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2011

Emil Orlik (1870-1932), Portrait of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), Vienna, 1902

On May 18 this year we commemorate the 100th anniversary of composer and conductor Gustav Mahler’s death. Last year we commemorated the composer for a different occasion – the 150th anniversary of his birth – by presenting in our Object...

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2011

Leo Haas (1901-1983): Conversation, Vienna, 1925

The drawing with the parenthetical title “Conversation” is part of a larger set of prewar work by Leo Haas acquired by the Jewish Museum in Prague at the end of 2010 from a private collector in Vancouver, Canada. The collection contains a...

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2011

Anonymous: Micrography (Megillat Esther, chapters 1-6 and 6-9), 2nd half of the 19th century, Central Europe

Two pendants bearing the imaginary portraits of Mordecai and Esther, the main protagonists of the Biblical Book of Esther, an heroic account of a Jewish girl named Hadassah (Esther). Having become Queen of Persia by marrying King...

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2011

Author unknown: Rabbi and His Wife, ca. 1855

The photograph is one of only two portraits executed by a rare process known as pannotype in the Jewish Museum in Prague’s recently organized collection of historical photography. Though unsigned and undated, the image most likely comes...

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2011

Carved Pointer

The majority of wooden Torah pointers are fairly simple and have a decoration that does not hamper their practical use. This pointer differs from others due to its complex structure with moving segments and as an example of wood-carving...

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2010

Torah shield

The depicted shield is the oldest Torah shield in the museum’s collections whose date and authorship can be accurately determined. For this reason alone, it is one of the museum’s most important metal artefacts. It also stands out for its...

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2010

Family Megillah of Joseph Shohet, son of Hersh Mizlap of Prague

The Hebrew manuscript that has recently been added to the museum’s collections contains a first-person narrative of an experience of Joseph Kirschner, a ritual slaughterer (in Hebrew, shohet, from which his nickname is derived), written...

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2010

Max Švabinský (1873¬–1962): Portrait of Gustav Sicher (1880–1960)

This year we honor the memory of the distinguished Chief Rabbi of Prague and Czechoslovakia, Gustav Sicher, by noting two important dates: the last day of August marked 130 years since his birth and October 6 is the fiftieth anniversary...

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September 2010

Georg Feyer (1892–1950): Portraits of the writer Franz Werfel and his wife Alma Mahler-Werfel, Vienna, undated, before 1936

September 10, 2010 marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of Franz Victor Werfel (1890–1945), a Prague German writer who along with Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Oskar Baum and other writers from the city, mostly Jewish, formed the Prague Circle, a...

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