„Theft“

Theft is the title of a double exhibition that can be seen in Vienna until 27 October 2024: it is on show at two parallel venues, namely the Jewish Museum on Judenplatz and the Vienna Museum on Karlsplatz. The subject of the exhibition is the systematic and brutal plundering of the Jewish population of Vienna on a massive scale after the so-called Anschluss – the annexation of Austria by the German Reich in March 1938. The focus is on cultural assets that were looted, confiscated or extorted from their Jewish owners before being appropriated by Vienna’s municipal museums.

The exhibition not only looks at the events of the late 1930s, however, but also the subsequent paths of those who were dispossessed and in particular the looted items themselves. In this respect, the title does not cover the full thematic scope of the double exhibition: “Theft and Restitution” would have perhaps been more appropriate, since the majority of the confiscated items were in fact returned decades later – even though this was far, far too late, of course. But this latter title was already taken, having been used for an exhibition held in 2008/09 at the Jewish Museum Berlin (and subsequently at the Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main): curated by Inka Bertz and Michael Dorrmann, it helped establish the genre of provenance exhibitions and can be regarded as exemplary to this day. 

As such, there is some surprise at the rather succinct title of the current exhibition, especially since at the Vienna Museum there is a thoroughly respectable (interim) record of provenance research conducted at the Vienna’s municipal museums in recent years. The two Viennese curators Hannes Sulzenbacher and Gerhard Milchrahm were certainly not seeking to project the idea of a self-satisfied track record, however – quite the opposite: whether in Vienna or elsewhere in Austria or Germany, there is no excuse or justification for the unscrupulous greed for possessions (the current exhibition was originally to be entitled “Greed“), the moral failure of the museums and their management over decades, and the sheer ignorance in dealing with the dispossessed individuals and their descendants. “After all, ‘reparations’ for these crimes does not undo them,” write the curators in the introduction to the highly recommended accompanying booklet (Hannes Sulzenbacher, Gerhard Milchrahm: Raub ausstellen, in: Diess. (ed.): Raub. Vienna 2024, p.7). In view of this, the unmistakably concise title of the exhibition was probably not intended to suggest a conciliatory ending, but rather to deliberately capture in a nutshell the point of departure – namely the brutal wave of confiscations in 1938 and the “downright indecent appropriation of ownership” (ibid.).

For anyone wishing to view the double exhibition, the recommendation is to start at the Jewish Museum on Judenplatz: the curators see this place as a symbol for the thousands of Viennese apartments and houses that were looted. In the two reasonably-sized ground floor rooms, twelve exemplary cases are presented on twelve steles with very clearly written texts which focus not on valuable, famous works of art, but on everyday objects such as buttons from the collection of Dr. Siegfried Fuchs, cut-out sheets (so-called Mandlbögen), which were the passion of the librarian Moritz Grünebaum, and clocks from the collection of the clockmaker Alexander Grosz.

The ways in which the objects found their way into the holdings of Vienna’s museums are as varied as the items themselves. The Czech citizen Oscar Bondy wisely decided not to return to Vienna in the spring of 1938 and survived as a result; his collection was confiscated and placed under “monument protection”. After his law firm was closed, Siegfried Fuchs had to sell his collection piece by piece in order to secure his livelihood. Alexander Grosz was forced to close his watchmaking business: the appointed administrator sold the stock and embezzled the money.

These are sad stories about collectors who were often key figures in Viennese society and about their collections, and they become even more depressing as you glean from the informative text panels just how brazen and devious the museums were in securing the items they wanted – it seems that at times they were simply waiting for the right moment to enrich their collections at limited expense. 

The Vienna Museum then takes up the twelve stories after the Nazi dictatorship. You first have to resist the temptation of the new permanent exhibition installed on the lower floors of the building on Karlsplatz – which recently underwent complete remodelling and extension – and work your way up to the temporary exhibition space on the third floor: here you can find out how the museums of Vienna confronted their unfortunate “heritage”, or rather how they failed to do so for decades. As recently as 1998, the director of the Historical Museum claimed there were “hardly any unlawfully acquired items” in its holdings. In view of initial revelations unearthed by provenance research, he was then forced to come out with a rather tortuously worded acknowledgement just a short time later: “The innocence of this institution is not quite what I assumed it to be.” (accompanying booklet, p.8). He was certainly right on that point. But Vienna’s municipal museums are not alone here: before the beginning of the 2000s, hardly a single museum in Germany or Austria was likely to have seriously addressed the murkier aspects of its past. Or worse still: they believed everything was fine as long as the works were safely stored where they supposedly belonged, namely in the museum’s depot.

The vast majority of museums have since seen a shift in attitude, so this part of the exhibition Theft includes stories of restitutions and the various difficulties they entail (such as tracing descendants, for example). Nonetheless, the curators make it unmistakably clear that an injustice committed in the past cannot simply be undone by means of restitution.

As mentioned above, both exhibition venues feature texts, and these are unlikely to invite criticism. But there is another level of mediation and visualisation that does raise some questions: a soundless film track integrated in each stele. At Judenplatz this shows the careful packaging of the objects according to the very highest museum standards. By the end of the sequences, each of which lasts a few minutes, the objects have neatly disappeared into perfect, clinically white transport crates. At Karlsplatz we then see the continuation: specialists are seen at work once again, this time carefully unpacking the artefacts in the museum depot and sorting them into shelves or hanging them on walls – the objects appear to have arrived where they belong.

Anyone expecting a concrete depiction of historical situations in these films will be highly perplexed: the careful packaging in no way reflects the theft of 1938, of course, which would have been considerably less meticulous. And the method of unpacking and sorting according to today’s standards can hardly simulate the way these objects would have been handled when the museums originally acquired them. Anyone looking for some concrete point of reference here will be disappointed, so we must assume the films are to be seen as artistic interventions in their own right. The aim may possibly be to restore dignity to the items, and therefore to the original owners as well. In any case, the visitor gains an impression – conveyed through film – of those looted items which the curators have deliberately chosen not to include physically in the exhibition. In many cases, it would have been possible to exhibit the objects themselves, as many of them were reacquired by the Viennese museums after restitution or donated by the descendants and are now back in the museum collection – this time entirely legitimately. So not exhibiting the originals was clearly a conscious curatorial decision – one that may come as a surprise, but which nevertheless clearly distinguishes the Vienna double exhibition from many other presentations on this subject. And perhaps by not exhibiting them, this will have an even greater impact in terms of highlighting the stories of the collectors themselves.  

Exhibition Theft, Jewish Museum Vienna at Judenplatz and Vienna Museum, until 27 October 2024
Accompanying publication Raub, edited by Hannes Sulzenbacher and Gerhard Milchrahm on behalf of the Jewish Museum Vienna and the Vienna Museum, Vienna 2024