Leonhard Weidinger

Bauer, Samuel

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:38:33 +0000

Bauer, Samuel Leonhard Weidinger Wed, 10/07/2020 - 14:19

Samuel Bauer

7 December 1874 Iglau (Jihlava), Moravia – 22 December 1942 Theresienstadt / Terezín ghetto

The engineer Samuel Bauer, the proprietor of an engineering office, was married to Gittel Breine, née Goldstein (née 1880 in Brody, Galicia). The couple lived from 1927 at Julienstraße 58 in Vienna's 18th district. After the annexation of Austria to the Nazi German Reich in March 1938, as Jews they were subject to increasing restrictions. They were forced in 1939 to give up jewellery, cutlery, tableware and furnishings to the Dorotheum. In April 1942 they were obliged to move to a "Sammelwohnung" (collective apartment) in Marc-Aurel-Straße in the 1st district. On 13 August 1942 they were deported as numbers 594 and 595 on transport XXXV to Theresienstadt ghetto, where Samuel Bauer was murdered on 22 December 1942. Gittel Bauer was transferred to Auschwitz on 23 October 1944 and murdered there at an unknown date.

Between December 1941 and January 1943 the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna), now the MAK, acquired a number of silver objects from the Dorotheum, from the jewellery and precious metals that Jews had been required to turn in since 1939. Provenance research has identified two candlesticks as having belonged to Samuel and Gittel Bauer. They were restituted in 2013.

Keywords

30 June 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Gittel und Ing. Samuel Bauer, 20.11.2009, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bauer_Gittel_Samuel_2009-11-20.pdf (7.1.2019).

Entry "Samuel Bauer 7.12.1874", in: Památník Terezín (Terezín Memorial), URL: www.pamatnik-terezin.cz/prisoner/te-bauer-samuel-2 (1.7.2022).

Archives

OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, VA 26264, Samuel Bauer; VA 26265, Gittel Bauer.
OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, sogenannte Dorotheumskartei.

WStLA, M.Abt. 119, A41, VEAV 230, 18. Bez., Ing. Samuel Bauer; VEAV 283, 18. Bez., Samuel Bauer; VEAV 484, 18. Bez., Ing. Samuel Bauer.
WStLA, LG für Zivilrechtssachen, Zl. 48 T 4056/47, Todeserklärung Samuel Bauer.
WStLA, Historische Meldeunterlagen, Meldeauskunft Samuel Bauer.

Wikidata: Q104219682

Bloch-Bauer, Ferdinand

Susanne Hehenberger — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 12:14:45 +0000

Bloch-Bauer, Ferdinand Susanne Hehenberger Fri, 06/03/2022 - 12:32

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer

16 July 1864 Jungbunzlau / Mladá Boleslav, Bohemia – 13 November 1945 Zurich
until 1917 Ferdinand Bloch

Ferdinand Bloch was the youngest of six children of the sugar factory owner and banker David Bloch and his wife Marie, née Straschnow. He attended the Handelsakademie in Prague and joined the family business in 1881. He became director of the company in 1892 and developed it into one of the largest European company in its segment. He held consultant, managerial and supervisory functions in other companies. After the end of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 he was successfully involved in Austrian and Czechoslovakian companies, banks and lobby groups. In 1899 he married Adele Bauer, born 9 August 1881 as the seventh child of Moritz Bauer, director of the Wiener Bankverein, and his wife Jeanette, née Honig. The marriage was childless. After living in Prague and Elbekosteletz / Kostelec nad Labem, the couple moved to Schwindgasse 10 in Vienna's 4th district. As prominent members of Viennese society they met with politicians and artists and collected paintings, sculptures and Classicist Viennese porcelain. Gustav Klimt painted several portraits of Adele Bloch. The couple also shared an enthusiasm for hunting. In 1909 Ferdinand Bloch acquired a castle in Jungfernbreschan / Panenské Břežany north of Prague, where the couple spent time and stored some of their art collection. On 9 February 1917 Ferdinand and Adele Bloch, and Ferdinand's elder brother and his wife Therese, Adele's older sister, changed their surname to Bloch-Bauer. After the First World War Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer decided to take Czechoslovakian citizenship. They lived alternately in Jungfernbreschan castle and at Gusshausstraße 9 in Vienna's 4th district, until Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer acquired the house at Elisabethstraße 18 in the 1st district, where they occupied an apartment. Adele Bloch-Bauer died on 24 January 1925 at the age of just 43. For the Klimt memorial exhibition in the Secession in 1928, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer loaned seven paintings, including two portraits of his wife from 1907 and 1912. In May and June 1937 the exhibition marking Oskar Kokoschka's fiftieth birthday was shown with a year's delay at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry with the financial support of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and the loan of a portrait of him painted in 1936. Three paintings by Klimt, three by Waldmüller and one by Pettenkofen from the Bloch-Bauer collection were shown along with porcelain items at the Exposition d’Art Autrichien that took place at the same time at the Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris parallel to the 1937 World's Fair.

After the annexation of Austria to the Nazi German Reich in March 1938, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was persecuted on account of his Jewish origins but also as a supporter of the Dollfuß-Schuschnigg regime, his assets in Austria were secured and he was charged with tax evasion. Bloch-Bauer fled first to Czechoslovakia and then to Switzerland. After the establishment of the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 16 March 1939, the Nazi regime expropriated Jungfernbreschan castle, which was used by Reich Protector Konstantin von Neurath and in 1941 and 1942 by the deputy Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich. Bloch-Bauer's assets in Austria were "disposed of". The Österreichische Galerie (ÖG) acquired four Klimt paintings between 1941 and 1943. Six pictures, a sculpture and a tapestry were handed over to the Sonderauftrag Linz for the planned "Führermuseum". The porcelain collection, valued at 500,000 Reichsmarks, was auctioned in June 1941 at the Kunst- und Auktionshaus "Kärntnerstraße" in Vienna. The extensive catalogue was based on Richard Ernst's publication Wiener Porzellan des Klassizismus: Die Sammlung Bloch-Bauer from 1925. Prior to the auction, Ernst, now director of the State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna, acquired thirty-four porcelain items for his museum. The assets were liquidated by the lawyer Erich Führer, a member of the NSDAP and the SS.

After the Second World War, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, now living in Switzerland, commissioned his Vienna lawyer Gustav Rinesch to seek restitution of the expropriated assets. Bloch-Bauer did not live to see any of his possessions restituted, however, as he died on 13 November 1945 in Zurich. In 1949 at least one private collector returned porcelain items acquired at the 1941 auction to the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer against reimbursement of the purchase price. Taking advantage of the Export Prohibition Act, Richard Ernst also ensured that year that all thirty-four porcelain items acquired in 1941 remained in the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts as "donations" or in exchange for other items. At the 1941 auction, the Städtische Sammlungen Wien had acquired thirty-one porcelain objects, of which sixteen were lost at the end of the war and fourteen were returned to the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer in 1949 and 1954 against reimbursement of the purchase price. A cup and saucer found in 1979 were not restituted until 1999. The Klimt painting Birch Forest/Beech Forest, purchased by the Städtische Sammlungen in 1942 from the lawyer Erich Führer was acquired in 1948 by the ÖG. The eight works taken over by the Sonderauftrag Linz were restituted in 1949/50. The Albertina accepted sixteen Klimt drawings as "donations" in the course of an export application.

In 1999 the Art Restitution Advisory Board considered the Bloch-Bauer collection for the first time and recommended the restitution of sixteen drawings by Gustav Klimt from the Albertina and twenty-four porcelain items from the MAK. The objects were returned that same year. It did not recommend restitution of the porcelain in the MAK exchanged in 1949 as part of a restitution settlement, the watercolour Portal of the Church of Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg by Rudolf von Alt, which had remained in the Albertina in 1949/50 after the refusal to grant export authorization, and the Klimt paintings in the ÖG. The Advisory Board established that in her last will and testament in 1923 Adele Bloch-Bauer had bequeathed them to the State. Maria Altmann, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's niece and one of his heirs refused to accept the Board's recommendation regarding the Klimt paintings. With the assistance of the lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg she instigated court proceedings in the USA. In May 2005 Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's heirs reached an agreement with the Republic of Austria to send the matter to arbitration. The three-person arbitration court concluded on 15 January 2006 that the paintings should be returned to the heirs. As attempts by the Republic of Austria to repurchase the paintings came to nothing, they were restituted. The most famous painting, The Woman in Gold (Adele Bloch-Bauer I), was acquired by Ronald Lauder for the Neue Galerie in New York. In 2004 the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended that Kneeling Boys, two marble sculptures by George Minne, should not be restituted from the ÖG as it was not clear whether they came from the Bloch-Bauer collection. After further research established that they had indeed been owned by Bloch-Bauer, the Board recommended their restitution in 2007. In 2013 the Board recommended the return of the watercolour Portal of the Church of Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg on condition that the legal successors of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer returned the watercolour Courtyard of the Doge's Palace in Venice by Rudolf von Alt or its equivalent value. In 2015 the Board recommended the return of the remaining fifteen porcelain items from the MAK, again on the condition that the heirs return the porcelain received in return or its equivalent value.

Keywords

Company director

Art collector

Nazi persecutee

Nazi asset expropriation

Entrepreneur

Leonhard Weidinger

20 December 2021

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, 28.6.1999, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bloch-Bauer_Ferdinand_1999-06-28.pdf (6.11.2021).

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, 25.11.2004, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bloch-Bauer_Ferdinand_2004-11-25.pdf (6.11.2021).

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, 1.6.2007, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bloch-Bauer_Ferdinand_2007-06-01.pdf (6.11.2021).

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, 6.12.2013, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bloch-Bauer_Ferdinand_2013-12-06.pdf (6.11.2021).

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, 17.4.2015, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Bloch-Bauer_Ferdinand_2015-04-17.pdf (6.11.2021).

Schiedsspruch des Schiedsgerichts, 15.1.2006, URL: bslaw.com/altmann/Klimt/award.pdf (6.11.2021).

Hubertus Czernin, Die Fälschung. Der Fall Bloch Bauer (= Bibliothek des Raubes 3a), Wien 1999.

Hubertus Czernin, Die Fälschung. Der Fall Bloch Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts (= Bibliothek des Raubes 3b), Wien 1999.

Richard Ernst, Wiener Porzellan des Klassizismus. Die Sammlung Bloch-Bauer, Wien 1925.

Werner Kohl/Susanna Steiger-Moser (Hg.), Die österreichische Zuckerindustrie und ihre Geschichte(n) 1750–2013, Wien-Köln-Weimar 2014.

Stephan Koja/Andreas Kugler, "Ich glaube aber, es dem Andenken meines treuen Freundes Klimt schuldig zu sein ...". Die beiden Portraits der Adele Bloch von Gustav Klimt, in: Belvedere. Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, Sonderband Gustav Klimt, Wien 2007, 168–191.

Sophie Lillie, Was einmal war. Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens (= Bibliothek des Raubes 8), Wien 2003.

Sophie Lillie/Georg Gaugusch, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, New York 2007.

Monika Mayer, Museen und Mäzene. "Jüdisches" Mäzenatentum und die Österreichische Galerie 1903 bis 1938, in: Eva Blimlinger/Monika Mayer (Hg.), Kunst sammeln, Kunst handeln. Beiträge des internationalen Symposiums in Wien (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 3), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2012, 19–35, URL: www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/epdf/10.7767/boehlau.9783205791997.19.

Melissa Müller, Adele (1881–1925) und Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer (1864–1945), Wien, in: Melissa Müller/Monika Tatzkow, Verlorene Bilder – verlorene Leben. Jüdische Sammler und was aus ihren Kunstwerken wurde. Unter Mitarbeit von Thomas Blubacher und Gunnar Schnabel, München 2009, 154–169.

Jiří Novotný/Jiří Šouša, Bloch-Bauer Ferdinand 16.7.1864–19.11.1945, in: Biografický slovník, URL: biography.hiu.cas.cz/Personal/index.php/BLOCH-BAUER_Ferdinand_16.7.1864-19.11.1945 (6.11.2021).

Gloria Sultano/Patrick Werkner, Oskar Kokoschka. Kunst und Politik 1937–1950, Wien-Köln-Weimar 2003.

Presseberichte:

N. N., Sportnachrichten. Prager Geweihausstellung, in: Prager Abendblatt, 18.2.1913, 4, URL: anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=pab&datum=19130228&seite=4 (3.12.2020).

N. N., Prager Geweihausstellung, in: Oesterreichische Forst- und Jagd-Zeitung 31 (4.4.1913) 14, 128, URL: anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=ftz&datum=19130404&seite=6 (3.12.2020).

Ausstellungskataloge:

K. k. Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Hg.), Ausstellung von Alt-Wiener Porzellan. März bis Mai 1904. Katalog und Einleitung. Wien 1904.

Vereinigung bildender Künstler Wiener Secession (Hg.), XCIX. Ausstellung der Vereinigung bildender Künstler Wiener Secession. Klimt-Gedächtnis-Ausstellung. Secession, 27. Juni – 31. Juli 1928, Wien 1928.

Alfred Stix (Hg.), Exposition d’Art Autrichien. Musée du Jeu de Paume. Mai – Juin 1937, Paris 1937.

Der Neue Werkbund Österreichs (Hg.), Oskar Kokoschka Ausstellung im Österreichischen Museum für Kunst und Industrie. Mai und Juni 1937, Wien 1937.

Auktionskataloge:

Kunst- und Auktionshaus "Kärntnerstraße" (Hg.), Kunstauktion Porzellan des Klassizismus Sammlung B.-B. Wien. Versteigerung am 23., 24. und 25. Juni 1941, Wien 1941, URL: doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7289.

Kunst- und Auktionshaus "Kärntnerstraße" (Hg.), Kunstauktion. Alt-Wiener Porzellan des Klassizismus Sammlung B.-B., Wien. Steirische Privatsammlung Silber, Gläser, Porzellan u. a. Alte und neue Bilder, Graphik, Möbel, Kunstgewerbe. Versteigerung vom 8. bis 10. Dezember 1941, Wien 1941, URL: doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15107.

Archives

Albertina-Archiv, Zl. 543/1948, 1061/1948, 298/1949, 510/1949, 1045/1949, 190/1950, 300/1950.

Archiv der Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere Wien, Zl. 483/1936, 410/1940, 399/1941, 135/1945, 251/1947, 189/1948, 568/1948, 67/1949, 69/1949, 5/1950.

BDA-Archiv, Restitutionsmaterialien, K. 8, K. 8/1, K. 10, K. 12/1, K. 13/ 1, K. 32, K. 60, Sicherstellungskartei, Bloch-Bauer.

BDA-Ausfuhr, Zl. 60/1942, Ausfuhrbewilligungen 1948–1950.

MAK-Archiv, Hauptaktenzahlen 874-1940, 26-1941, 588-1941, 619-1945, 105-1948, 675-1949.

Museen der Stadt Wien (Städtische Sammlungen, MA 10), GZ 5670/1947 und GZ 1017/1948.

GND: 122136853

VIAF: 55374110

Wikidata: Q1280247

Duschnitz, Willibald

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:38:28 +0000

Duschnitz, Willibald Leonhard Weidinger Thu, 10/08/2020 - 14:11

Willibald Duschnitz

2 April 1884 Vienna – 3 July 1976 Teresopolis, Brazil

also Guy Duschnitz

After the death of his father Adolf Duschnitz in 1909, Willibald Duschnitz, who married Jenka, née Löff, in 1907, inherited his painting collection, a villa in the Cottageviertel in Vienna's 19th district, and the Erste Österreichisch-Ungarische Filzfabrik in Achau south of Vienna, which specialized in the manufacture of technical felt supplied mainly to the military. Duschnitz added paintings, sculptures and Renaissance furniture to the art collection and had the villa remodelled in 1915/16 by Adolf Loos. A music room with organ was added at that time. In 1926 the couple divorced. While Jenka Duschnitz and their daughter Eva acquired the right to live in the villa, Willibald Duschnitz moved to an apartment on Getreidemarkt in the 1st district and left the Jewish community. In the 1930s he started collecting objects from antiquity and the Far East. After the annexation, fearing persecution by the Nazi regime on account of his Jewish origins, he sold his company on 6 April 1938 to a male and a female employee. He loaned some his artworks to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Austrian Museum of Art and Industry), renamed Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna) in 1938, and to Kunsthandlung Auguste Kallai. He was given export authorization for the remainder of the collection. Thirteen crates with artworks remained initially in Vienna, while Duschnitz emigrated in September 1938 to Britain and from there to France. He had one of the crates shipped there but its contents were looted. After France was defeated by Germany in 1940, Duschnitz fled via Madrid and Lisbon to Brazil. He was quickly able to re-establish himself there as an entrepreneur. He did not return to Vienna again until 1948 and the following year achieved the restitution of most of his assets. According to Metropol-Spedition (transporter) Alexander Pötsch, which was looking after them, the twelve crates that had remained in Vienna were lost in a warehouse fire in April 1945. The loaned objects were returned but Duschnitz was not allowed to export some of them. He rejected the offer to take over the company in Achau and decided to continue living in Brazil. He pursued his collecting activities there and in 1963 donated a Balinese calendar to the Museum für Völkerkunde (Museum of Ethnology) in Vienna. He ultimately sold his artworks to Eva Klabin, the daughter of an industrialist's family from Lithuania, whom he had already advised on her collection.

In 1995 the Museum Fundação Eva Klabin opened in Rio de Janeiro and displayed many items from the former Duschnitz collection. In 2013, the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended the restitution of three glasses from the MAK, for which the Bundesdenkmalamt (Federal Monuments Authority) had refused export authorization after 1945, to Willibald Duschnitz's legal successors. In 2015, it was discovered that the organ in the banquet room of the Technisches Museum Wien was from Villa Duschnitz and had been sold to Leopoldsdorf parish in 1955 after restitution of the villa.

Keywords

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Willibald Duschnitz, 8.10.2013, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Duschnitz_Willibald_2013-10-08.pdf (3.12.2020).
Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Willibald Duschnitz, 9.5.2008, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Duschnitz_Willibald_2008-05-09.pdf (3.12.2020).

Harold H. Chipman/Leonhard Weidinger, Ein Enthusiast für Industrie und Kunst – Willibald Duschnitz, in: Eva Blimlinger/Heinz Schödl (Hg.), Die Praxis des Sammelns. Personen und Institutionen im Fokus der Provenienzforschung (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 5), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2014, 71–98, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205793564.71.

Harold H. Chipmann, Viena-Brasil: As duas vidas do conselheiro comercial Willibald Duschnitz (1884–1976), in: Marianne Feldmann/Cristina Ferrao/José Paulo Monteiro Soares/Viktor Hugo Klagsbrunn (Organizadores), Olhares Cruzados, Austria - Brasil, Edição Comemorativa, Kapa Editorial e Embaixada da Áustria, Brasil 2016, 239–245.

Archives

Archiv der IKG Wien, Matriken.

OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, St. 1515, Arisierungs-Akt der Ersten Österreichischen Filzfabrik.
OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, VA 32.222, Willibald Duschnitz.

GND: 1044887958

VIAF: 305431662

Wikidata: Q94810646

Ernst, Richard

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:40:18 +0000

Ernst, Richard

Leonhard Weidinger Thu, 10/08/2020 - 14:16

Richard Ernst

1 February 1885 Eger / Cheb, Bohemia – 7 July 1955 Vienna

Johann Nikolaus Richard Ernst, son of a businessman, went to school and university in Prague and obtained a doctorate in art history and classical archaeology in 1909. After working for a short time as a research assistant at the University of Prague Institute of Art History, he joined the k. k. Österreichische Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry) as an assistant curator and department head on 29 November 1911 and was responsible initially for metalwork. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army from 1915 to 1918. In the following years he took over the Court Silver and Table Room, the Glass and Ceramics Collection and the Carpet and Textiles Collection and in 1923 wrote the first guide to the Court Silver and Table Room and in 1925 a monograph on the Bloch-Bauer collection of Viennese neoclassicist porcelain. In 1928 he was appointed deputy director. From 1931 he was temporary director of the museum while director August Schestag was on sick leave and was officially appointed director on 5 August 1932. From February 1936 he was also an expert for old applied art in the Dorotheum but withdrew in January 1938 on account of differences of opinion with the auction house management. Parallel to the World's Fair in 1937, Austria was represented at an exhibition in the Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris, at which Ernst curated the Austrian applied arts section, with loans from the porcelain collections of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, Anton Redlich and Franz Ruhmann. While the works of Oskar Kokoschka were being disavowed at the 1937 Nazi propaganda exhibition of "degenerate" art in Munich, Ernst made the Austrian Museum available in the same year for an exhibition commemorating the artist's fiftieth birthday. After the annexation, Ernst was accused of being politically unreliable for that reason, but his position as director of the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna) as it was called from May 1938 was not really in jeopardy. He was well established in Vienna and internationally and had been praised by Robert Schmidt, director of the Schlossmuseum in Berlin, and Adolf Feulner, director general of the Arts and Crafts Museums in Cologne. Until 1945, Ernst worked on behalf of the Nazi regime to enlarge the collection of the Kunstgewerbemuseum through the addition of many objects from expropriated or forcibly sold collections, making use of his knowledge of private collections in Vienna. At the same time, for example, he supported Hans Ankwicz-Kleehoven, head of museum library, who had been forced to retire for "racial" reasons, by giving him access to an office. From February 1940, Ernst was also temporary director for two years of the Sculpture and Applied Arts Collection, now the Kunstkammer, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, during which time he organized an exchange of applied art and antique objects planned since the 1920s between the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum. He even managed to obtain special funding of 250,000 Reichsmarks in foreign exchange for purchases from the museums in Italy. On two trips to Florence, Pisa, Rome and Bologna in spring and autumn 1942 he acquired sixteen pieces of Renaissance furniture. Reports issued immediately after the war that Ernst had also been in France on behalf of Reichsleiter Rosenberg and in the Netherlands for Mühlmann's department have not been verified to date. He claimed that, together with museum staff and a resistance group, he prevented the storage of arms and explosives in the museum at the end of March/start of April 1945 and the blowing up of the Stubenbrücke on 7 April 1945.

Ernst remained director in the re-established Republic of Austria. In the course of investigations by the Austrian state police in 1946, Ernst denied being a member of the NSDAP. On the contrary, he had been enrolled "unasked" in 1943 into the Reichsbund der Deutschen Beamten (Reich Federation of German Civil Servants) and his opposition to the NSDAP before and after 1938 was well known. Immediately after the end of the fighting in Vienna on 16 April 1945, Ernst inaugurated the repair of bomb-damaged museum, which was not completed until the early 1950s. Between 1945 and 1948, he also had the important tasks of recovering and restituting objects that had been stored to protect them from air raids. The lists drawn up from 1946 to 1948 in accordance with the Vermögensentziehungs-Anmeldungsverordnung (Property Expropriation Registration Regulation) and on behalf of the Allied Council included practically all objects that the museum had acquired during the Nazi era from expropriated collections. Ernst not only supported collectors known personally to him in the restitution of expropriated objects acquired by the Kunstgewerbemuseum but also helped to locate further items. In other cases, however, he followed the practice of the time of returning objects but disallowing their export and safeguarding them in this way for Austrian museums. On 31 March 1949, Ernst officially opened the Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts) as it was called after 1947. In 1950 an exhibition of major art from Austrian monasteries was the last one under his direction. He retired on 31 December 1950.

Keywords

29 May 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Rainald Franz/Leonhard Weidinger, Die Direktion Richard Ernst. Vom Österreichischen Museum für Kunst und Industrie zum Österreichischen Museum für angewandte Kunst, in: Gabriele Anderl/Christoph Bazil/Eva Blimlinger/Oliver Kühschelm/Monika Mayer/Anita Stelzl-Gallian/Leonhard Weidinger (Hg.), … wesentlich mehr Fälle als angenommen. 10 Jahre Kommission für Provenienzforschung (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 1), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2009, 412–430, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205118862.412.

Publications by the person / institution

Richard Ernst, Führer durch die ehemalige Hoftafel- und Silberkammer, Zürich-Leipzig-Wien 1923.
Richard Ernst, Wiener Porzellan des Klassizismus. Die Sammlung Bloch-Bauer, Wien 1925.

Richard Ernst/Ernst Garger, Die früh- und hochgotische Plastik des Stefansdoms. Tafelband, München 1927.

Archives

MAK-Archiv, Akten 1932–1950.
MAK-Archiv, NL Richard Ernst.

MAK-Personalakten, PA Ernst, Richard.

OeStA/AdR, UWK, BMU, Personalakten Sign 3, Ernst, Richard.
OeStA/AdR, ZNsZ, GA 935, Ernst, Richard.

GND: 116557761

VIAF: 25356895

Wikidata: Q94848390

Immendorf, Schloss

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:39:14 +0000

Immendorf, Schloss Leonhard Weidinger Thu, 10/08/2020 - 18:27

Schloss Immendorf

Immendorf Castle

Wullersdorf

Immendorf Castle in the northern Weinviertel, mentioned for the first time in records in the thirteenth century, was originally a two-storey complex around a rectangular courtyard with square towers. It was restored and modified in the late nineteenth century. In 1942 Rudolf Freudenthal, the owner of the castle at the time, made rooms available to the Reichsstatthalter in Vienna for salvage. That same year, some of the Lanckoronski collection was stored there before being moved to Thürnthal Castle in 1943. From March 1943, paintings, statues and applied art objects from the Lederer collection and the Österreichische Galerie, including the Faculty pictures and other paintings by Gustav Klimt, were transported to Immendorf. In November and December 1943 the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna, now the MAK) stored the Laxenburg Room, various East Asian and Islamic objects, early modern handicrafts, over fifty pieces of furniture, leather wallpaper, twelve carpets and the Möchlinger Grab, a fifteenth-century wooden shrine carved in the form of a Gothic church. Privately owned objects were also stored here. In late March 1945, as the Red Army was approaching Vienna, Richard Ernst, director of the Arts and Crafts Museum, tried unsuccessfully to transport forty crates and three leather wallpaper items back to Vienna. In the second half of April 1945, the front approached Immendorf. In early May German units were stationed in the castle, moving off around lunchtime on 8 May 1945. A few hours later the Red Army arrived in Immendorf with a large number of trucks and began to occupy the castle and annexes. A fire broke out around 6 p.m. in the southwest tower and quickly spread. The Soviet troops escaped from the burning building. In the morning of 9 May 1945, the first day after the end of the Second World War in Europe, the fire appeared to have been extinguished. The second floor of the castle caught fire in the early morning of 10 May, however, and the fire spread to the rooms on the first floor and parterre. By the following day, the entire building had been burned to the ground. Only the walls remained with just a high pile of rubble in the interior. Attempts to put out the fire and rescue the art objects had been in vain. Only two carpets from the Arts and Crafts Museum were salvaged. All of the other stored objects burned. In the 1950s, most of the castle ruins were demolished.

Many reports of the fire suggest that the depot was deliberately destroyed by German troops, probably SS units, to prevent the objects stored there falling into the hands of the Red Army. This supposition cannot be definitively confirmed, however. There are no indications that Soviet troops started the fire. There is also the suspicion that not all of the artworks were destroyed but that some objects were rescued before or during the fire. No single object from the list of items stored in Immendorf has turned up until now.

Keywords

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler in der Ostmark, Band 1, Wien und Niederdonau, Wien-Berlin 1941.

Christina Gschiel, "Transport der Teile ohne zu schneiden". Die Bergung des Beethoven-Frieses aus der Sammlung Lederer in Schloss Thürnthal, in: Pia Schölnberger/Sabine Loitfellner (Hg.), Bergung von Kulturgut im Nationalsozialismus. Mythen – Hintergründe – Auswirkungen (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 6), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2016, 359–382, URL: doi.org/10.7767/9783205201564-018.

Leonhard Weidinger, "hiebei muß die Möglichkeit eines Luftangriffes und die Konservierungsfrage in gleicher Weise die Wahl bestimmen". Die Bergungsmaßnahmen des Staatlichen Kunstgewerbemuseums in Wien, in: Pia Schölnberger/Sabine Loitfellner (Hg.), Bergung von Kulturgut im Nationalsozialismus. Mythen – Hintergründe – Auswirkungen (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 6), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2016, 197–218, URL: doi.org/10.7767/9783205201564-011.

Archives

BDA-Archiv, Restitutionsmaterialien, K. 1, Immendorf.

GND: 1073623262

VIAF: 316533433

Wikidata: Q28533228

Iwnicki, Emil

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:38:30 +0000

Iwnicki, Emil Leonhard Weidinger Thu, 10/08/2020 - 17:22

Emil Iwnicki

12 March 1885 Jazlowczyk, Galicia – deported on 9 April 1942 to Izbica, date and place of death unknown

The bank clerk Emil Iwnicki and his wife Amalie, née Wunderlich (born 15 February 1893 in Przemysl), lived at Schulz-Straßnitzky-Gasse 3 in Vienna's 9th district. After the annexation of Austria to the Nazi German Reich, the couple were persecuted as Jews and had to give up jewellery and silver objects to the Dorotheum. On 28 November 1939 they were both registered in a "Sammelwohnung" (collective apartment) at Berggasse 27 in the 9th district. On 9 April 1942 Emil and Amalie Iwnicki were deported to Izbica in the Generalgouvernement. It is not known exactly when they perished. None of the 4,000 Austrian Jews deported to Izbica survived.

Between December 1941 and January 1943, the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna, now the MAK) acquired a number of silver objects from the Dorotheum from the jewellery and precious metals that Jews had been required to hand over since 1939. Provenance research has identified two candlesticks belonging to Emil and Amalie Iwnicki, which were restituted in 2014.

Keywords

Nazi persecutee

Silver submission

Leonhard Weidinger

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Emil Iwnicki, 19.3.2010, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Iwnicki_Emil_2010-03-19.pdf (3.12.2020).

Archives

OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, VA 24274, Emil Iwnicki.
OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, sogenannte Dorotheumskartei.

WStLA, Historische Wiener Meldeunterlagen, Meldeauskunft Emil Iwnicki.

Kutscher, Anna Chane

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:38:30 +0000

Kutscher, Anna Chane Leonhard Weidinger Thu, 10/08/2020 - 17:26

Anna Chane Kutscher

25 November 1884 in Ulanow, Galicia (now Ulanów, Poland) – 2 June 1942 deported to Minsk/Maly Trostinec, date and place of death unknown

née Chane Chaye Spira

Anna Kutscher from Galicia was the widow of the businessman Josef Kutscher (1880–1933). After the annexation of Austria she was considered under Nazi law to be a Jew and subject to the regime's restrictions. While her three sons, Paul, Heinrich and Robert, were able to escape, probably in the first half of 1939, she remained in Vienna. Because of the requirement to hand in jewellery and precious metals, she was forced in 1939 to give to the Dorotheum the silverware that she had not managed to sell previously. In April 1940 she moved from her apartment at Siedlgasse 23 in the 3rd district to the nearby Geusaugasse 7. On 16 January 1942 she was forced to move to a "Sammelwohnung" (collective apartment) at Rotenkreuzgasse 5 in the 2nd district, before being deported on 2 June 1942 to Minsk and presumably murdered shortly afterwards at Maly Trostinec. She was declared dead on 6 April 1949.

Between December 1941 and January 1943 the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna, now the MAK), acquired a number of silverware objects from the Dorotheum from the jewellery and precious metal items that Jews had been required to hand over from 1939. Provenance researchers have established that two candlesticks belonged to Anna Kutscher. They were restituted in 2010.

Keywords

Nazi persecutee

Silver submission

Leonhard Weidinger

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Anna Kutscher, 19.3.2010, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Kutscher_Anna_2010-03-19.pdf (3.12.2020).

Archives

OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, VA 37814, Anna Kutscher.
OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, sogenannte Dorotheumskartei.

WStLA, Historische Wiener Meldeunterlagen, Meldeauskunft Anna Kutscher.

Mayer, Karl

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:39:38 +0000

Mayer, Karl Leonhard Weidinger Wed, 04/14/2021 - 19:29

Karl Mayer

28 January 1855 Guntramsdorf – 19 April 1942 Vienna

Karl Mayer was initially a partner in the company V. Mayer & Söhne founded by his grandfather and later an industrialist in Vienna. On 3 July 1890 he married Monika von Goldschmidt (1862–1908) and on 8 May 1891 their only son was born. Monika Mayer began to collect porcelain figures and her husband took up her enthusiasm. Seventy porcelain objects from the Wiener Manufaktur were shown publicly for the first time at the exhibition on the Congress of Vienna in 1896 at the k. k. Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Imperial Royal Museum of Art and Industry). After lending sixty items in 1903 for the exhibition of Alt-Wiener porcelain in the Kaiser Franz Josef-Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Troppau, he provided 303 items the following year for the exhibition of Alt-Wiener Porcelain at the Österreichisches Museum in Vienna and as such was by far the most important lender. Although he owned other artworks, he specialized in porcelain, and in 1914, Josef Folnesics, curator at the Österreichisches Museum, published Die Wiener-Porzellan-Sammlung Karl Mayer and listed 528 items from the collection. Fourteen years later, Mayer decided to sell the collection, possibly because he had lost his eyesight. Auktionshaus für Altertümer Glückselig in Vienna held the auction Wiener-Porzellan Sammlung Karl Mayer from 19 to 21 November 1928 in Vienna. The richly illustrated auction catalogue had 529 lots. Otto von Falke, who retired in 1927 as the director general of the Berlin museums, provided descriptions of those items absent from Folnesics's publication and also wrote the foreword. The collection was given a low valuation of 300,000 schillings but the interest by Austrian and international buyers was such that the proceeds ran to 824,000 schillings.

After the annexation of Austria to the Nazi German Reich in March 1938, Mayer, by now eighty-three years old and completely blind, was persecuted as a Jew and required to declare his assets to the Nazi authorities. His declaration of assets of 29 June 1938 listed only a few artworks. In February 1941 he was evicted from his apartment at Operngasse 6 and forced to move to a collective apartment at Ebendorferstraße 10/7 in the 1st district. He was admitted on 9 March 1942 to the Jewish Community hospital at Seegasse 9 in the 9th district, where he died ten days later. He was buried on 27 April 1942 in the Central Cemetery.

Keywords

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Auktionshaus für Altertümer Glückselig (Hg.), Wiener-Porzellan Sammlung Karl Mayer (Vorwort von Geheimrat Dr. Otto von Falke), Wien 1928 [Auktion: 19.–21.11.1928], URL: doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16146.

Josef Folnesics, Die Wiener-Porzellan-Sammlung Karl Mayer. Katalog und historische Einleitung, Wien 1914.
Josef Folnesics/Edmund Wilhelm Braun, Geschichte der k. k. Wiener Porzellan-Manufaktur, Wien 1907.

Georg Gaugusch, Wer einmal war. Das jüdische Großbürgertum Wiens 1800–1938. L–R (= Jahrbuch der Heraldisch-Genealogischen Gesellschaft Adler, 3. Folge 17), Wien 2016.

Kaiser Franz Josef-Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Troppau (Schlesisches Landesmuseum) (Hg.), Katalog der Ausstellung von Alt-Wiener Porzellan (1718–1864), 16. September bis 2. November 1903, Troppau 1903.

K. k. Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Hg.), Katalog der Wiener-Congress-Ausstellung 1896, Wien 1896.
K. k. Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Hg.), Ausstellung von Alt-Wiener Porzellan. März bis Mai 1904. Katalog und Einleitung, Wien 1904.

N. N., Auflösung der Porzellansammlung Karl Mayer, in: Internationale Sammler-Zeitung 20 (1928) 23, 224-226 und 20 (1928) 24, 239-240.

Waltraud Neuwirth, Mayer, Karl (1855-1942), Sammler, in: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950 5, Lfg. 25, 1972, 435, URL: doi.org/10.1553/0x0028325e.

Archives

MAK-Archiv, Hauptakt Zl. 521-1928.

OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, VA 35.299, Karl Mayer.

WStLA, Historische Wiener Meldeunterlagen, Meldeauskunft Karl Mayer.

GND: 122433696

Müller-Hofmann, Wilhelm

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:40:18 +0000

Müller-Hofmann, Wilhelm Leonhard Weidinger Thu, 10/08/2020 - 17:30

Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann

5 April 1885 Brünn / Brno – 2 September 1948 Vienna

Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann was born in Brünn / Brno and grew up in Bavaria. After graduating from the Gewerbliche Fortbildungsschule he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In 1905/06 he completed military service for eighteen months in Bavaria, after which he was a freelance portrait painter, theatre painter and illustrator. He served throughout the First World War in the German army and was awarded the Eisernes Kreuz II. Klasse (Iron Cross Second Class) in 1916. In 1919 he was made a professor and was in charge of a painting course at the Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule (Vienna Arts and Crafts School). In November 1921 he divorced his first wife Eva Huch and received a dispensation to marry Hermine Zuckerkandl on 12 April 1922, while being ordered to continue to support his divorced first wife. Hermine Zuckerkandl was one of the three children of Otto Zuckerkandl, a consultant at the Rothschild Hospital in Vienna. Her father was Jewish and her mother had converted to Judaism when she married in 1895. The couple divorced in 1919. Hermine Zuckerkandl owned one-third of Purkersdorf sanatorium, which was no longer very profitable after the end of the Habsburg monarchy, but was worth a considerable amount as an investment. Viktor Carl, the first son of Hermine and Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann, was born on 24 May 1923, followed by Rudolf Immanuel on 12 February 1926. On 1 April 1928 Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann, who was in charge of the painting class, was appointed 'wirklicher Lehrer' (teacher on full pay) at the Arts and Crafts School in Vienna. When Austria was annexed to the German Reich, Hermine and Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann were persecuted as Jews by the Nazi regime. In spite of being Roman Catholic, Hermine Müller-Hofmann was regarded as a Jew under the Nuremberg Laws. Müller-Hofmann was suspended in March 1938 for belonging to a masonic lodge and for writing a satirical poem about Adolf Hitler and was forced into early retirement on 30 November 1938 by order of the Ministry of Internal and Cultural Affairs. After the family's emigration plans fell through, the parents sent their sons Viktor and Rudolf to Sweden in early 1939. As he could no longer practise his profession and only had a small pension as a source of income, Müller-Hofmann was forced to sell some of his property. He was not regarded as a Jew so was not subject to the restrictions of the Nazi regime. He also sold art objects for the Zuckerkandl family, including seven Japanese prints in January 1940 for 150 Reichsmarks to the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna), now the MAK, belonging to Amalie Zuckerkandl. The couple moved back to friends in Upper Bavaria, where they lived with the latent threat of the Nazi regime hanging over them until 1945. On 18 October 1945 Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann took up his duties again at the College of Applied Arts, as it now was, in Vienna. The family's former apartment in Palais Augarten had been looted and requisitioned by the Soviet occupation force. In 1948 the family moved into an apartment in the Belvedere. Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann died on 2 September 1948, probably of angina pectoris, which he had contracted during the Nazi period.

On 28 September 2007 on the basis of a provenance research dossier in the MAK, the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended the restitution of the seven Japanese prints to the heirs of Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann. The prints were handed over on 22 January 2009.

Keywords

29 May 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Prof. Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann, 28.9.2007, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Mueller-Hofmann_Wilhelm_2007-09-28.pdf (3.12.2020).

Ruth Pleyer, Was blieb, war kaum "das nackte Leben" – Gustav Klimts "Bildnis der Amalie Zuckerkandl", in: Verena Pawlowsky/Harald Wendelin (Hg.), Enteignete Kunst. Raub und Rückgabe – Österreich von 1938 bis heute, Wien 2006, 122–141.

Archives

MAK-Bibliotheksarchiv, Zl. 98-1939, Zl. 9-1940.

Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Kunstsammlung und Archiv, PA Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann.

GND: 117171735

VIAF: 20450423

Wikidata: Q84229500

Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:40:07 +0000

Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst Leonhard Weidinger Thu, 10/08/2020 - 14:05

Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst

Austrian Museum of Applied Arts

other names: k. k. Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (1863–1918), Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (1918–1938), Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (1938–1947), Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst (1947–1986), MAK – Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst (1986–2007), MAK – Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst / Gegenwartskunst (2007–2019), MAK – Museum für angewandte Kunst (seit 2019)

Modelled on the South Kensington Museum in London, now the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry was founded in 1863. The director of the first state museum in Austria was Rudolf von Eitelberger, the first professor of art history at the University of Vienna. The museum had collections of wood, glass, metal, porcelain and textile items, an art print collection and a library, which were intended as sample collections for artists, industrialists and the public and as an initial and advanced training establishment. The museum opened temporarily in the Ballhaus next to the Hofburg in 1864, before it moved in 1871, together with the Arts and Crafts School founded in 1867, to the neo-Renaissance building on Stubenring designed by Heinrich von Ferstel. After Eitelberger's death, his deputy Jacob von Falke was appointed director in 1885. He was followed in 1895 by Bruno Bucher, long-standing curator of the Museum of Metal, Ceramic and Glass, and in 1897 by Arthur von Scala, hitherto director of the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Commerce, most of whose contents were taken over by the Museum of Art and Industry in 1907. In 1909 a new building with further exhibition space was opened on the Wien River, the Arts and Crafts School separated from the museum, and the art historian Eduard Leisching appointed director.

During the First Republic, the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, which was answerable to the Ministry of Trade, had to get by with the limited budgetary funds, particularly for new acquisitions. Apart from allocations from the former imperial assets, including Oriental carpets, the museum obtained duplicates in exchange from 1922 as well as new objects from art dealers and private collectors. In 1925 the former deputy director Hermann Trenkwald was appointed director, although he was replaced just two years by August Schestag, who had been at the Österreichisches Museum since 1899, following a damning report from the court of auditors. Richard Ernst, who had worked for the museum since 1911 as a specialist in silver and porcelain, became director in 1932. The museum was able to stage important exhibitions in the 1920s and 1930s, such as The Gothic Period in Austria exhibition in 1926 and the Werkbund Exhibition in 1930. The transfer of a major part of the Figdor Foundation from the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) considerably enlarged the museum's holdings. In May and June 1937, the museum showed an exhibition marking Oskar Kokoschka's fiftieth birthday, while works by Kokoschka were being pilloried at the same time in Munich in the Nazi exhibition of "degenerate" art.

After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, Ernst was criticized above all for the Kokoschka exhibition. He nevertheless managed to stay in office and there were no other changes in the staffing either. In December 1938 one member of the library staff was dismissed because she was related to a Jewish "first-degree Mischling". Hans Ankwicz, head of the library and works on paper collection, was considered a "Mischling" and should have been dismissed. With Ernst's support, he was able to retain his post at first, but was dismissed in April 1939 by order of the Reichsstatthalter and replaced by Viktor Griessmaier. Ernst ensured that Ankwicz was able to continue working in the library but there too he was obliged to give it up after an anonymous denunciation in April 1941. The museum had been renamed Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna) on 20 May 1938 and put in charge of the Ministry of Internal and Cultural Affairs. The deputy director Ignaz Schlosser worked from 1938 to register items in the Zentraldepot für beschlagnahmte Sammlungen (Central Depot for Seized Collections) in the Neue Burg. When they were finally distributed, the Kunstgewerbemuseum received some major items. It also acquired objects, above all through art dealers. During the Nazi era, the museum obtained around 1,000 items from expropriated collections. From 1940 it continued the plans developed in the 1920s to further refine the collection profile. It exchanged almost 600 items with the Kunsthistorisches Museum's Sammlung für Plastik und Kunstgewerbe (sculpture and applied arts collection), now the Kunstkammer, and gave antique vases and terracotta items to the KHM's Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities. In 1942, the museum acquired around 900 objects from the Furniture Collection. It had hoped to obtain its entire contents, but was unsuccessful, although the Reichsstatthalter announced its dissolution in November 1942. After the war, the Furniture Collection started up again. The museum's most valuable items had already been removed at the start of the war in 1939, but with the growing danger of air raids, the entire inventory was gradually removed in 1943 to the basement of buildings in Vienna and to palaces and monasteries close to the city. In autumn 1944 and winter 1944/1945 the museum was hit by bombs and the reading room and display rooms on Stubenring badly damaged.

Ernst remained director of the museum after the war and the reinstatement of the republic. Hans Ankwicz's forced retirement was retracted, but he left the museum in 1945 to become director of the library of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. The main task of the Kunstgewerbemuseum was now to repair the damage and organize the return of the items that had been stored elsewhere. Most of them had survived the war unharmed. Occasional losses occurred at storage sites through war damage and looting. Schloss Immendorf in the north of the Weinviertel, where hundreds of objects from the Kunstgewerbemuseum were stored, was burned to the ground. One major task was to restitute works that had been expropriated during the Nazi regime. Almost 500 works were restored to their former owners after 1945. Around ninety items were barred from export and remained in the museum. In addition, the museum accepted around sixty items from Clarice Rothschild in return for export authorizations. In 1947 the museum was renamed Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts) and reopened on 31 March 1949 after the repairs had been completed. In 1951 Ignaz Schlosser became director, followed by Viktor Griessmaier in 1959, Wilhelm Mrazek in 1968, Gerhart Egger in 1979 and Herbert Fux in 1981. In 1984 Ludwig Neustifter became provisional director until the appointment of Peter Noever in 1986. Noever began to expand the collection of contemporary art and started the refurbishing of the entire building along with the erection of a two-storey underground depot. In 1996 the MAK, as it was now called, organized the "Mauerbach auction", in which artworks, coins, weapons, books, etc., deemed to be "abandoned" were auctioned for the benefit of victims of the National Socialists. Since 1998, the MAK collections have been investigated on behalf of the Commission for Provenance Research to identify items that might have been seized during the Nazi era. Since 1999, the Art Restitution Advisory Board has recommended the restitution of works to the legal successors of Gittel and Samuel Bauer, Michael Berolzheimer, Rudolf Bittmann, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, Emma Budge, Ernst Bunzl, Paul Cahn-Speyer, Willibald Duschnitz, Nathan Eidinger, Siegfried Fuchs, David Goldmann, Erny and Richard Gombrich, Stift Heiligenkreuz-Neukloster, Friederike and Siegfried Herzel, Emil Iwnicki, Anna Kutscher, Elise and Erich Müller, Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann, Stefan Poglayen-Neuwall, Ernst Pollack, Albert Pollak, Siegfried Radin, Anton Redlich, Heinrich Rothberger, Alphonse and Clarice Rothschild, Louis Rothschild, Emma Schiff-Suvero, Hermine Schütz, Alice Stein, Isak Wunderlich and Jacques Ziegler. Over 500 objects have already been restituted in this way.

Keywords

Library

Museum

Leonhard Weidinger

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Rainald Franz/Leonhard Weidinger, "… dass sich in der Sammlung auch kunstgewerbliche Objekte befunden haben." Provenienzforschung im MAK, in: Gabriele Anderl/Christoph Bazil/Eva Blimlinger/Oliver Kühschelm/Monika Mayer/Anita Stelzl-Gallian/Leonhard Weidinger (Hg.), … wesentlich mehr Fälle als angenommen. 10 Jahre Kommission für Provenienzforschung (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 1), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2009, 150–159, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205118862.150.

Leonhard Weidinger, "hiebei muß die Möglichkeit eines Luftangriffes und die Konservierungsfrage in gleicher Weise die Wahl bestimmen" – Die Bergungsmaßnahmen des Staatlichen Kunstgewerbemuseums in Wien, in: Pia Schölnberger/Sabine Loitfellner (Hg.), Bergung von Kulturgut im Nationalsozialismus. Mythen – Hintergründe – Auswirkungen (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 6), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2016, 197–217, URL: doi.org/10.7767/9783205201564-011.

Leonhard Weidinger, Kunst und Industrie I Kunstgewerbe I angewandte Kunst. Das MAK und seine Bibliothek und Kunstblättersammlung von 1937 bis 1949, in: Gertrude Enderle-Burcel/Alexandra Neubauer-Czettl/Edith Stumpf-Fischer (Hg.), Brüche und Kontinuitäten 1933–1938–1945. Fallstudien zu Verwaltung und Bibliotheken (= Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, Sonderband 12), Wien 2013, 403–407.

Leonhard Weidinger, MAK-Bibliothek und Kunstblättersammlung, in: Bruno Bauer/Christina Köstner-Pemsel/Markus Stumpf (Hg.), NS-Provenienzforschung an Österreichischen Bibliotheken. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit (= Schriften der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare 10), Graz-Feldkirch 2011, 413–424, URL: fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/objects/o:290050/methods/bdef:Content/download (3.12.2020).

Publications by the person / institution

MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Provenance Research and Restitution at the MAK, URL: mak.at/provenanceresearch (3.12.2020).

K. K. Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Hg.), Das Kaiserlich Königliche Österreichische Museum für Kunst und Industrie 1864–1914, Wien 1914.

Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Hg.), 100 Jahre Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst. Kunstgewerbe des Historismus. Ausstellung veranstaltet vom Verein der Museumsfreunde, durchgeführt vom Österreichischen Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Wien 1964.

Archives

MAK-Archiv.
MAK-Bibliotheksarchiv.
MAK-Personalakten.

OeStA/AdR, Bundesministerium für Handel und Verkehr.
OeStA/AdR, UWK, Bundesministerium für Unterricht 2. Republik, 1940–2005.
OeStA/AdR, ZNsZ, Ministerium für innere und kulturelle Angelegenheiten, 1938–1940.
OeStA/AdR, ZNsZ, Reichsstatthalter in Wien – Staatliche Verwaltung des Reichsgaues Wien, 1940–1945.

GND: 10174144-3

VIAF: 131256403

Wikidata: Q478455