“Value of Life” Exhibition

In May 2021, the new permanent exhibition “Value of Life. Dealing with the 'Useless'” opened on the 1st floor of the castle. At the center of the narrative is the societal point of view on people and the question of how people who are/were defined as “unusable” for physical or psychological reasons are/were dealt with. Closely linked to this are the questions of how and by whom this definition is made, which ideas and discourses of standardization and optimization prevail, how attempts are made to implement them in society and the state and how, in contrast, approaches based on human rights, democracy and inclusion could be designed. The time span of the exhibition narrative stretches from the time of the Enlightenment to the present.

The exhibition that opened in 2003, which also already bore the title "Value of Life", was closed in November 2019 and the conversion and construction of the new permanent exhibition started as a result. A process of redesigning and redesigning had already begun in 2017. The narrative of the previous exhibition was to be taken up, but also updated, sharpened and supplemented. This project was implemented in the years that followed thanks to funding from the state of Upper Austria. Brigitte Kepplinger and Florian Schwanninger acted as curators, the design was made by Hans Kropshofer and Gerald Lohninger.