Jewish Orientalists

Preview: written before the show opened

The German title, Die Morgenländer, comes from Simon von Geldern, Heinrich Heine's great-uncle, who left Frankfurt's Jewish ghetto in the 18th century and came back to Europe in Turkish dress, letting himself be called a "Morgenländer", a man of the East. Most people's holiday outfit ends up in a drawer; his got an exhibition named after it.

The show follows the Jewish scholars and adventurers after him, many of them Viennese, and argues that 19th-century Islamic, Arabic and Oriental studies grew out of Jewish scholarship looking for its own origins. It was first shown at the Jewish Museum Hohenems, with a replica of the Nefertiti bust, a photograph of Eduard Glaser at a dig in Yemen, and a room on the Sarajevo Haggadah, whose miniatures were copied in colour for Vienna's first Jewish Museum. Vienna's version is expanded with highlights the museum hasn't named yet.

You'll need the €15 museum ticket, which also covers Judenplatz within 7 days. Under-19s are free, and Dorotheergasse is closed on Saturdays.