VIENNA - Kurt Schubert, the founder of Austria's first Jewish museum after 1945, has died. He was 83.

Schubert died Sunday after a long illness, according to a statement posted on the Web site of the Austrian Jewish Museum in Eisenstadt that he founded in 1972.

The Web site did not give details about his illness.

	Advertisement

Schubert, who was born in the Austrian capital on March 4, 1923, also founded the Jewish Studies Institute at the University of Vienna in 1966.

"The museum is losing... not only a world ranking scholar, but in particular also a person who passionately referred to the museum - after the Institute for Jewish Studies - as his 'second scholarly child'," Johannes Reiss, the museum's director, said in the statement.

The Austria Press Agency described Schubert as one of the great pioneers of Christian-Jewish dialogue.