Bezirksmuseum Hernals

The Bezirksmuseum Hernals sits on Elterleinplatz in the 17th district of Vienna, housed on the third floor of a former savings bank built between 1911 and 1913 by Josef Grünbeck and Karl Bittmann. The building mixes historicist and secessionist styles, standing where a late-medieval castle once belonged to the Protestant noble family Jörger. After closing in autumn 2012, the museum reopened on 27 October 2014 in its new quarters, taking up 650 square metres of space. Of this, 390 square metres serve as exhibition rooms on the first floor, while 20 square metres hold the archive. The rest of the floors remain offices and storage. The museum’s holdings include Roman finds such as coins and bricks stamped with the marks of the tenth and thirteenth legions. A personality file lists 350 local figures from science, art, church, politics, sport and business. The Schrammel Archive preserves material on Johann and Josef Schrammel, while the Sauter Archive contains handwritten poems, books, photographs and a bust of Ferdinand Sauter. A theatre archive holds documents on performers, and a sports archive covers clubs like the Wiener Sport-Club and Engelmann rink. Visitors find changing exhibitions on local themes, such as the centenary of the Engelmann ice rink in 1999 or the history of cinema in Hernals in 2008. A library offers publications on Hernals, Vienna, Austria, art books and sheet music by composers like Edmund Eysler and the Schrammel brothers. The museum also displays old theatre posters, sports memorabilia and personal papers of figures such as Moritz Graf Lacy and Barbara Fischer.