Folk life

Haberlandt, Arthur

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:41:03 +0000

Haberlandt, Arthur

Leonhard Weidinger Tue, 03/16/2021 - 17:19

Arthur Haberlandt

9 March 1889 Vienna – 28 May 1964 Vienna

Arthur Haberlandt studied anthropology, ethnology and prehistory at the University of Vienna, obtained his doctorate in 1911 and habilitated in 1914 with a paper on the drinking water supply of primitive peoples. That same year he was appointed as a lecturer in ethnography in the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Vienna. During the First World War he was a member of the Balkan expedition in 1916, which he used for the benefit of the Museum für österreichische Volkskunde (Museum of Austrian Folk Art) and his own academic career. In 1918 he was made a research assistant and assistant curator and in 1920 curator of the Museum für Volkskunde (Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art). In 1924 he succeeded his father Michael Haberlandt as director of the museum and secretary general of the Verein für Volkskunde (Folklife Society). In the 1930s, particularly from 1933/34, Arthur Haberlandt was involved as director of the nationales volkskundliches Museum in cultural policy. Folk life and the Museum für Volkskunde attracted increasing political attention at the time, as they were helpful to the Austrofascist rulers in developing a specifically "Austrian ideology".

After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, Haberlandt, as editor-in-chief of the Wiener Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, enthusiastically welcomed the "return to the Reich" and placed his museum and the folklife publication in the service of the Nazi regime. The museum benefited from the financial support of the Nazi state, in particular for new acquisitions. Items from the collections expropriated from Jewish owners were taken over by the museum, mostly in 1938 and 1939. It helped that the Volkskundemuseum and Arthur Haberlandt knew some of the victims, such as Anna Mautner, widow of Konrad Mautner. Working closely with the Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz (Central Monument Protection Authority), between July 1938 and February 1939 the director gradually managed to transfer objects and archives from the Mautner collection to the museum. When the Second World War started, Haberlandt was able to expand his activities as a museum expert and academic to eastern Europe. In November 1939 he was in Kraków and Warsaw on behalf of Kajetan Mühlmann together with other museum experts to inspect objects and collections seized from Polish museums and to recommend measures for their storage or transport to the "Altreich". In November 1941 he was in Kraków for the first time on behalf of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (Reichsleiter Rosenberg Task Force) (ERR), where he catalogued looted folklife collections. In 1943 he was promoted to Obereinsatzführer in the ERR. Apart from his functions there, Haberlandt was able to continue his academic research, published articles and gave lectures. For the Deutsches wissenschaftliche Institut (German Scientific Institute) in Belgrade he published his lecture on German and south-eastern European folklife, which he had given in Belgrade in September 1943. Thanks to his good contacts with Nazi offices, he was able to arrange the unbureaucratic transfer of folk art objects from occupied Greece to Vienna in 1944, including objects from Mount Athos, which were inventoried the same year.

After the war, although a former member of the NSDAP, he was able to continue his involvement in museum policy, corresponded with authorities and dismissed his colleague Robert Mucnjak for membership of the NSDAP, pursuant to a decree by the Staatsamt für Volksaufklärung (State Office for Public Enlightenment). He emphasized to the authorities his efforts to safeguard the collections in the last days of the war and suggested that the museum be renamed Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde (Austrian Museum for Folk Life and Folk Art) and declared his "unrestricted support for the Republic of Austria". At the same time he took an interest in the now "ownerless library" of the Nazi Forschungsstelle für Mythenkunde (Mythology Research Department). But it was his successor Heinrich Jungwirth who managed to have the mythology library transferred to the museum in 1946. Haberlandt was relieved of his position as director on 26 October 1945 by the Ministry of Education. Now without any research positions, he turned to writing until his death in 1964. The systematic provenance research in the museum shows that the contents of the mythology library are owned by the state. On the basis of a 2019 loan agreement with the Verein für Volkskunde, the books remain available for research. There are provenance problems, since some of the books have the stamp ERR. The acquisitions from Mount Athos were first addressed and presented in an exhibition heimat:machen – Das Volkskundemuseum in Wien zwischen Alltag und Politik (2017). The Volkskundemuseum returned the objects from the Mautner collection to the legal successors of Anna Mautner in response to the recommendation by the Art Restitution Advisory Board in 2016.

Keywords

15 June 2020

Publications about the person / institution

Olaf Bockhorn, Von Ritualen, Mythen und Lebenskreisen. Volkskunde im Umfeld der Universität Wien, in: Wolfgang Jacobeit/Hannjost Lixfeld/Olaf Bockhorn (Hg.), Völkische Wissenschaft. Gestalten und Tendenzen der deutschen und österreichischen Volkskunde in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, Wien 1994, 477–526.

Olaf Bockhorn, "Mit all seinen völkischen Kräften Deutsch". Germanisch-Deutsche Volkskunde in Wien, in: Wolfgang Jacobeit/Hannjost Lixfeld/Olaf Bockhorn (Hg.), Völkische Wissenschaft. Gestalten und Tendenzen der deutschen und österreichischen Volkskunde in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, Wien 1994, 559–575.

Hermann Hummer/Birgit Johler/Herbert Nikitsch, Die Bibliothek des Österreichischen Museums für Volkskunde. Ein Vorbericht, in: Bruno Bauer/Christina Köstner/Markus Stumpf (Hg.), NS-Provenienzforschung an österreichischen Bibliotheken. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit (= Schriften der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare 10), Graz-Feldkirch 2011, 459–478, URL: fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/objects/o:290050/methods/bdef:Content/download (3.12.2020).

Birgit Johler, Das Volkskundemuseum in Wien in Zeiten politischer Umbrüche. Zu den Handlungsweisen einer Institution und zur Funktion ihrer Dinge, Dissertation Universität Wien 2017.

Birgit Johler, Behagen in der Kultur. Museologische Praktiken des Museums für Volkskunde im Wien der 1930er Jahre, in: Reinhard Johler/Christian Marchetti/Bernhard Tschofen/Carmen Weith (Hg.), Kultur_Kultur. Denken, Forschen, Darstellen. 38. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde in Tübingen 21.–24. September 2011, Münster-New York-München-Berlin 2013, 131–141.

Leopold Schmidt, Arthur Haberlandt zum Gedächtnis. Nachruf und Bibliographie, in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde XVIII/67 (1964), 217–271.

Publications by the person / institution

Arthur Haberlandt, Bericht über die ethnographischen Arbeiten im Rahmen der historisch-ethnographischen Balkanexpedition, in: Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft in Wien 59 (1916), 736–742.
Arthur Haberlandt, Heimkehr ins Reich!, in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 53 (1938), Tafel I.
Arthur Haberlandt, Jahresbericht des Vereines und Museums für Volkskunde für das Jahr 1938, in: Wiener Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 54 (1939), 36–40.
Arthur Haberlandt, Das Museum für Volkskunde in Wien als Haus des Deutschen Volkstums im Donauosten, in: Kurt Oberdorfer/Bruno Schier/Wilhelm Wostry (Hg.), Wissenschaft im Volkstumskampf. Festschrift für Erich Gierach zu seinem 60. Geburtstage überreicht von Freunden, Schülern und Fachgenossen, Reichenberg 1941, 203–209.

Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:41:03 +0000

Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde Leonhard Weidinger Tue, 05/04/2021 - 09:15

Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde

Austrian Museum for Folk Life and Folk Art

other names: k. k. Kaiser-Karl-Museum für österreichische Volkskunde (1917–1918), Museum für Volkskunde (1918–1945), Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde (since 1945), Volkskundemuseum (since 2013)

The Österreichische Museum für Volkskunde (Austrian Museum for Folk Life and Folk Art), since 2013 also known for short as Volkskundemuseum, was created as a result of the popular interest in ethnological and folk life themes and the study of folk life and folk art established from the mid‑nineteenth century. In 1894, the ethnologists Michael Haberlandt (1860–1940) and Wilhelm Hein (1861–1903), both of whom worked in the Prehistory/Ethnography Department of the k. k. Naturhistorisches Hofmuseum in Vienna, set up the Verein für österreichische Volkskunde (Society for Austrian Folk Life), leading to the establishment of a museum with the same name in 1897. Michael Haberlandt was the first director, succeeded in 1924 by his son Arthur Haberlandt. The first years of the museum saw intensive collecting activity in the areas of Cisleithania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, occupied in 1878. In 1917 – during the First World War – the k. k. Kaiser-Karl-Museum für österreichische Volkskunde, as it was now called, moved to the Baroque Palais Schönborn in Laudongasse in the 8th district, which had been leased and adapted specially for the museum, where it still is today. With the political upheavals following the First World War, the museum, now called Museum für Volkskunde, focused on German-Austria and the German-speaking areas of the region known at the time as the "Sudeten and Carpathian lands". From 1920, the new museum also showed objects from the former crown lands of the Habsburg monarchy and from eastern and south-eastern Europe, now referred to as comparative European collections. After the economically turbulent 1920s, the museum and its "German folk culture" focus attracted increasing attention from the early 1930s. Folk life as an academic subject was now part of an political ideology aimed at re-educating people (particularly city dwellers) towards a corporate and "organic", hence premodern, society. The increased public interest in the Volkskundemuseum confirmed its position in the cultural landscape of Vienna and Austria, not least thanks to cooperation with German National and in many cases "völkisch" associations and organizations, such as the Deutscher Schulverein Südmark. During the period of Austrofascism, the Volkskundemuseum benefitted significantly from the politico‑cultural interest in German-Austrian folk culture and the promotion and idealization of products "made in Austria".

After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, the Museum für Volkskunde in Vienna once again drew attention to itself as a useful instrument of the Nazi ideology. The supporting association was not dissolved (and continued to exist throughout the Nazi period) and the museum's own publication, the Wiener Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, also continued. The museum obtained exceptional financial subsidies from the Reichsstatthalter (governor), particularly for new acquisitions. In this way it acquired folk life collections and objects formerly owned by Jews. Just a few weeks after the annexation, Arthur Haberlandt attempted to profile the museum as the "house of German folklore in the eastern Danube" and the "south-east". With this unofficial addition to its name, it reawakened politico-cultural awareness of collections and research on eastern and south-eastern Europe (from the period before 1918), which were of interest, under the ideological mantle of "German folklore studies", for the purpose of "establishing a 'völkisch' attitude in the Reich". There were also plans for the museum to move to the Messepalast exhibition centre, but they were never implemented. There was practically no exhibition activity, but the museum loaned objects for external exhibition projects in Berlin and elsewhere. With the outbreak of the Second World War, all exhibition plans for subsequent years were shelved, not least because the museum director was to be recruited for "wartime imperialist projects in the East". Part of the museum collection remained on display during the Nazi period, and part was stored in the basement to protect it from air raids.

After the war, those responsible for the museum were once again able to adapt immediately to the new political situation. The Museumverein functionaries, as they had been in 1944, now declared the Museum für Volkskunde to be a "Haberlandt family museum", attempting in this way to safeguard Arthur Haberlandt's position as director and president of the association. But Robert Bleichsteiner (1891–1954), appointed in August 1945 by the Ministry of Education as interim director, had other plans. He put the Viennese folk life expert Leopold Schmidt (1912–1981) in charge of the collections temporarily, effectively giving him responsibility for the research agenda of the Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde, as it had been renamed. Schmidt, who was also deemed by the Allied administrative authorities to be unencumbered, was instrumental in shaping Viennese and Austrian folk life studies in the decades after the war. Under the restitution laws, eighteen objects were returned between 1947 and 1951 to their original owners – including the Bondy, Pollak and Ruhmann families. On the basis of an ÖMV Verein decision, further restitutions of expropriated objects were made in 1998 to the Jewish Museum Vienna and in 1999 to the legal successors of Alphonse Rothschild.

Since 2015, provenance researcher Claudia Spring has been investigating the previous owners of objects in the Volkskundemuseum inventoried after 1938. Although the Volkskundemuseum is a "Verein" (association) and not formally bound by the provisions of the Art Restitution Act, it cooperates closely with the Commission for Provenance Research – with the aim of ensuring a transparent and proactive identification and restitution of objects acquired illegally by the museum during and after the Nazi period. Since the start of provenance research, 377 objects have been restituted to the legal successors of Siegfried Fuchs, Konrad and Anna Mautner, and Robert Jonas. Restitution decisions in favour of the legal successors of Georg Popper and Wilhelm Hernfeld have also been pronounced. In 2017, the exhibition heimat:machen – Das Volkskundemuseum in Wien zwischen Alltag und Politik curated by Birgit Johler and Magdalena Puchberger dealt with the history of the museum and its protagonists in the first half of the twentieth century. The exhibition was the result of an extended FWF project and also covered past and present acquisition and restitution activities by the museum.

Keywords

15 May 2020

Publications about the person / institution

Birgit Johler, Das Volkskundemuseum in Wien in Zeiten politischer Umbrüche. Zu den Handlungsweisen einer Institution und zur Funktion ihrer Dinge, Dissertation Universität Wien 2017.

Birgit Johler/Magdalena Puchberger, Wer nutzt Volkskunde? Perspektiven auf Volkskunde, Museum und Stadt am Beispiel des Österreichischen Museums für Volkskunde in Wien, in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 70/119 (2016), 183–219

Publications by the person / institution

Leopold Schmidt, Das Österreichische Museum für Volkskunde. Werden und Wesen eines Wiener Museums (= Österreich-Reihe 98/100), Wien 1960.

Jahresberichte des Museums und des Vereins für Volkskunde der Österreichischen Zeitschrift für Volkskunde sowie der Wiener Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, online abrufbar unter: www.volkskundemuseum.at/onlinepublikationen.