On 11 June 2026, the Museum of Military History, under Director Georg Hoffmann, opens ‘Violence – Society. Austria in the Age of the World Wars, 1918–1955', the first major exhibition project of its programmatic realignment. The exhibition tells the history of Austria between 1918 and 1955 from a social, violence and military history perspective and asks how violence after 1918 was worked through, politically instrumentalised, socially legitimised and ultimately rendered entirely unbounded. Across six chapters and through 42 biographies, it brings together military, violence and social history. It was curated by Niko Wahl and HGM curator Thomas Edelmann.
At the heart of the design are around forty biographies that lead through the century and pose the question of when a person became a perpetrator, when a victim, and what decided the matter. They rest, with literal weight, in biography boxes made of metal. Twenty backlit drawers of a long bridge table show the crimes of this history of violence without embellishment, with audio and video content that starts as soon as a drawer is opened.
Large objects such as a cannon from 1934 or an aircraft wing stand in the space without protective glazing, so that an immediate connection arises. Paintings and reproductions are not hung in a heroising manner but layered like a collage. A continuous bench serves as a room divider between the two levels of interpretation and creates places to linger. Clear edges, reduced forms, Alucobond with a metallic surface, cool light of 4000 Kelvin, shadow as part of the staging.
‘This exhibition appealed to us both artistically and in its subject matter: a building steeped in history that is repositioning itself after a long time, difficult material that must not be softened, and a curatorial concept that tells history through biographies. The roughly forty life stories as the backbone of the narrative convinced us from the outset. This was something we wanted to help shape as designers.' (Marc Schuran and Virgil Widrich, checkpointmedia GmbH)
