Special Mission Linz

Birgit Kirchmayr

The “Mauerbach Auction” in Vienna in 1996 featured the auction of so-called “ownerless artwork” – supposedly the close in Austria to the long chapter of Nazi art theft and its return. But instead of being the end of the affair, this auction represents the beginning of a new debate concerning the return of collections of stolen art. Many of the artworks auctioned were once destined for a museum project in Linz which has been shrouded in myth: the “Art Museum Linz” or “Führermuseum”, which Adolf Hitler, together with his specially assembled “Linz Special Staff” wanted to have constructed in his “home town”.

Led by the art historian Dr. Hans Posse, a museum catalogue of immense proportions was assembled by means of confiscation and “securing” of largely Jewish collections as well as through comprehensive acquisitions. These paintings remained however in cellars, depots and mines, and the “Art Museum Linz” remained a fictitious museum.

Since 1945 many of these pictures have passed through the various stations of restitution history in Austria. The “histories” of individual pictures demonstrate the fate of the “Linz pictures” and their owners from 1938 to the present.