Mental health through the ages

The Lower Austrian Provincial Exhibition 2026 will take place in Amstetten-Mauer with 31 municipalities in the Leader Region Moststraße. The working title of the 2026 provincial exhibition is “Wunder Mensch. Mental health through the ages”.

Medical care and social treatment have changed considerably over the last 500 years. The exhibition will focus on people and their health and show how people with mental illnesses were treated in the past, which has changed considerably through new findings and forms of therapy right up to the present day. Over the last few centuries, science and education have become increasingly important - not least since the Enlightenment.

The exhibition will also take a critical look at the dark chapters in the history of the site during the Nazi regime: In the former “sanatorium and nursing home”, numerous patients fell victim to systematic murder in the course of “Nazi euthanasia”. The latest research findings from the Institute for the Jewish History of Austria can be found in the exhibition.  

Dealing with the location and the topic should make an important contribution to removing the taboos surrounding mental illness and destigmatizing those affected and their relatives, create a culture of remembrance and also establish the Mostviertel as a health region with a wide range of (cultural) tourism offers.

The Lower Austrian Provincial Exhibition 2026 in Amstetten-Mauer is dedicated to a holistic view of health, in which physical and mental well-being are closely related.