The Special Exhibit

During the Thirty Years' War, new artillery techniques were tested when towns were besieged, such as projectiles with explosive heads or wreaths of straw soaked in pitch and set alight. These experiments had devastating consequences and became a massive threat to town fortifications with their high, narrow walls and towers as had been the usual design until then. In response, these walls had to be rebuilt, armouries reinforced and fundamental reconsiderations given to the art of fortification. The growing interest in specialised literature on artillery and pyrotechnics in the 17th century is also reflected in this work from the private library of Francis I/II, which examines such techniques in detail. The authors of these treatises were mostly gunsmiths or armourers.

The Jewish cemetery in Seegasse in Rossau is the oldest surviving Jewish burial site in Vienna. It was laid out in 1517 and first mentioned in a document in 1582. During the expulsion of the Vienna's Jews in 1670, it was threatened with demolition but was saved from destruction by the sons of the banker Jakob Koppel Fränkel through a payment of 4,000 guilders “for eternity”. In 1698, the court banker Samuel Oppenheimer built the first Jewish hospital and almshouse in Vienna next to the cemetery. This watercolour from the 19th century, whose artist is unknown, shows the cemetery and the almshouse, and is an impressive document of Austrian Jewish history.