The University for World Trade emerged in October 1919 from the Imperial and Royal Export Academy founded in 1898, whose task was to train qualified export merchants. From October 1916, the academy had a building at Währinger Park, in Vienna’s 9th district (postal addresses: Exportakademiestraße, from 1926, Franz-Klein-Gasse), for the planning of which the architect Alfred Keller (1875-1945) was primarily responsible. Until then, the Academy had been housed at the Palais Festetics (Berggasse 16, 19th district Vienna) as an institution affiliated with the Imperial and Royal Museum of Trade. In 1975, the University of World Trade was transformed by federal law into the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). In 1982, the WU moved to the newly built University Center Althangrund 1 (Augasse 2-6, 9th district Vienna), which was designed by architect Kurt Hlaweniczka, and in 2013 to the campus at Welthandelsplatz, in Vienna’s 2nd district, which was designed by architectural firms from various countries.

Already in the First Republic, a considerable proportion of the teaching staff had already demonstrated Greater German, and in some cases National Socialist, sympathies, and a number of professors applied for membership in the NSDAP or other National Socialist organisations at the latest after the "Anschluss" of Austria. Like the other universities in the country, the University for World Trade was already subject to restrictions on university autonomy under the Austrofascist regime. The "Anschluss" led to the rapid Nazification and alignment of research, teaching and administration to the standards customary in the Third Reich. This manifested itself, for example, in the orientation of the teaching programme to Nazi ideology and in the adaptation of study and doctoral regulations to German models or guidelines. The Nazification of the university can also be seen in the "cleansing" of the teaching staff, student body and administrative staff and in the appointment or recruitment of staff who conformed to the regime.

The establishment of the Südost-Stiftung des Mitteleuropäischen Wirtschaftstages Berlin (Southeast Foundation of the Central European Economic Conference Berlin) for the training of young merchants for Southeast Europe points in the same direction. During the Second World War, this foundation served the scientific research of Southeast Europe, but also promoted its instrumentalization in the fields of (armament) economy and military-strategy. The "leader principle" replaced collegial decision-making processes. It was no longer the professors who elected the rector (Bruno Dietrich until 1939, Franz Dörfel 1939, Kurt Knoll 1939 to 1944, Leopold Mayer 1944/45). Instead, he was appointed by the Reich Minister for Science, Education and Culture. Following the German model, a curator was installed in the communication process between the university and the ministry.

Already during the Austrofascist, but above all during the National Socialist regime and sometimes in the post-war period, printed works that had been confiscated from their previous owners in the course of politically or racially motivated persecution found their way into the holdings of the University Library. The systematic screening of around 70,000 books and journals published in print up to 1945 with regard to unlawful acquisitions began in spring 2010. Since then, the holdings of the Library Center in the Library & Learning Center and the specialised libraries, which were housed in three departments after the move to the campus at Welthandelsplatz but have since been transferred to the Library Center have, for the most part, been autopsied. The last collection to be researched is currently that of periodicals. In a number of cases, the previous owners have been identified and their stories of persecution as well as the history of the confiscation of their printed works have been reconstructed. In eight cases since 2013, it has been possible to locate the persons concerned or their legal successors and to return the printed works that had been seized from them or their ancestors in an actual or presumed unlawful manner. The largest single restitution to date concerned the private library of Leopold Singer, which comprised more than 700 items. It was handed over to Singer's great-grandchildren in October 2015. At their request, the Vienna Technical Museum (Technisches Museum Wien) took over the majority of this library as a donation and integrated numerous books into the permanent exhibition on natural gas and oil in October 2017.

In this way, for the first time in a successor state to the "Greater German Reich", results of provenance research on book holdings found their way into a museum presentation. The WU also took part in the first cross-border restitution in the field of library provenance research: In December 2022, together with seven other libraries from Austria and Germany, it handed over a book from its holdings to the heirs of the renowned Austrian lawyer Heinrich Klang, who had been persecuted after the "Anschluss" due to his Jewish origins and had been forced to sell the majority of his private library of over 9,600 volumes via antiquarian bookshops in Vienna, Leipzig, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main in order to finance his living expenses and his intended emigration. After surviving the Theresienstadt / Terezín ghetto (from September 1942), he served as a judge at the Austrian Supreme Court (Oberster Gerichtshof) and as Chairman of the Supreme Restitution and Return Commission (Oberste Rückstellungs- und Rückgabekommission) in the post-war period. On 3 October 2023, the heirs handed over the 42 restituted volumes to the Supreme Court, which incorporated them into its library.

Provenance research is embedded in other projects and events with which the WU examines its history during the Nazi era. These include, in particular, the Commemorative Project initiated in November 2012, as part of which an hitherto unfinished virtual Commemorative Book with biographies of the persecuted members of the University of World Trade and a memorial on the campus of the WU have been created. Between 2021 and 2024, the WU also investigated which honorary doctors of the University of World Trade and the WU had close ties to the Nazi regime. In this context, Walther Kastner's honorary doctorate, which the WU had awarded in 1983 despite his significant involvement in the "Aryanisation" of large Austrian commercial enterprises during the Nazi era, was revoked in 2023; the honorary doctorates of three other National Socialists were contextualised on the Internet. In June 2015, as part of a "memorable event" (Karel Hruza 2019, 7), the WU distanced itself from Taras Borodajkewycz, former head of the Institute for Economic and Social History at the University of World Trade, who had not only been a National Socialist since the period of "illegality" (1933-38), but also, after his appointment to this university in 1955, made statements with anti-Semitic, anti-democratic and Great German, respectively National Socialist, connotations. Taken as a whole, the above-mentioned research projects and events make it possible to synthesise the stories of perpetrators and victims, individual and collective biographies, institutional, political and social history.