On the run

The Haus der Geschichte at the Museum Niederösterreich represents 40,000 years of human history, with a focus on the period from the second half of the 19th century onwards. The main emphasis of the special exhibitions is on current social developments, which already preoccupied people centuries ago. 

Based on the research project „Mobile Dinge, Menschen und Ideen – eine bewegte Geschichte Niederösterreichs“ (mobile things, people and ideas – a moving history of Lower Austria), the Haus der Geschichte will present a special exhibition in 2024 with objects that people took with them in critical situations or that underwent a special transformation in such situations the objects have often not only changed their location, but also their meaning: a small key with a pink pendant, for example, which a young woman took with her when she fled Yugoslavia; a carriage in which a family fled from Transylvania to Austria in the autumn of 1944 and which took on a commemorative function here; items of clothing belonging to a young Syrian woman who acquired them in 2015 during her flight and which therefore have special meaning for her. 

It is specifically about things that became identity- or community-forming for individuals or groups. The focus will be on the 20th and 21st centuries, but the exhibition will also include earlier epochs.