The parsonage on the outskirts of Pulkau was originally built in the sixteenth/seventeenth century and was converted after a fire in 1709 into an imposing two-storey building with Baroque façade. Because of its remote location, it was selected by the Wiener Städtische Sammlungen in 1943 as one of sixteen sites in Lower Austria for the storage of collection items. Pictures, carpets and some of the Strauss-Meyszner collection, including the estate of Johann Strauss the Younger, were stored in the granary on the first floor. In April 1945 the parsonage housed refugees from Silesia and wounded patients from abandoned German Wehrmacht field hospitals. After the withdrawal of the Wehrmacht without a fight on 7 May 1945, Soviet troops took over the site and billeted soldiers in the parsonage. Looting by the Soviet soldiers and the local population occurred, but of the stored museum objects, only Johann Strauss's violin is still missing today.
Pfarrhof Pulkau
Gerhard Milchram/Michael Wladika, "Es konnte festgestellt werden, dass tatsächlich Verwüstungen und Plünderungen sowohl durch SS-Truppen als auch durch Russen und Landbewohner stattfanden". Bergungen und Rückbergungen der Städtischen Sammlungen (Museen der Stadt 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, 219–248, URL: doi.org/10.7767/9783205201564-012.
Heinz Schöny, Erinnerungen an die Rückbergungen nach dem Krieg, in: Hundert Jahre Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, Katalog der 106. Sonderausstellung des Historischen Museums der Stadt Wien, 21. Mai bis 30. August 1987, Wien 1987, 87.