Weltmuseum Wien

Weltmuseum Wien

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other names: k. k. Ethnographischen Sammlung (1806–1876), Anthropologisch-Ethnographische Abteilung des Naturhistorischen Museums (1876–1928), Museum für Völkerkunde (1928–2013)

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With its collections of ethnographic objects, historical photographs and books on non-European cultures, the Weltmuseum Wien is one of the most important museums of its type in the world. Ethnographica from the Ambras Collection of Archduke Ferdinand II and the 250 or so objects from the journeys of James Cook acquired by Leopold Fichtel at an auction in London in 1806 formed the basis of the k. k. Ethnographische Sammlung (Imperial Royal Ethnographic Collection) established that same year in the kaiserliches Hofnaturalienkabinett (Imperial Court Natural History Collection) – the forerunner of today's Weltmuseum Wien. Other acquisitions during the nineteenth century came from the Austrian Brazil Expedition (1817–1836) and the circumnavigation of the globe by the Austrian frigate Novara (1857–1859). From 1876, the Anthropologisch-Ethnographische Abteilung (Anthropology and Ethnography Department) of the Naturhistorisches Museum (NHM) headed by Franz Heger since 1882 was responsible for the growing collection, which received additional acquisitions from explorers and travellers and the voyages of the Austrian-Hungarian navy. The collection of 14,000 ethnographica and over 1,100 photographs, compiled by heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este during his world travels in 1892/93, were exhibited after 1912 in the newly built Corps de Logis of the Neue Burg in Vienna. After the First World War, the collection was incorporated in the Ethnography Department of the NHM, but in 1928 this department was removed from the NHM with the founding of the Museum für Völkerkunde (MVK) (Museum of Ethnology). It continued to be part of the NHM but now had its own premises in the Neue Burg.

Hermann Michel became First Director of the NHM in 1933. After his removal a few days after the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany, the hydrobiologist Otto Pesta became temporary director until he was replaced in June 1939 by the ornithologist Hans Kummerlöwe from Dresden, a fervent Nazi. Kummerlöwe was initially provisional director and then from August 1940 First Director of the NHM, including the MVK. The Assyriologist and expert in pre-Columbian cultures Friedrich Röck, born in Tyrol, who had been appointed head of the Ethnography Department of the NHM in 1925, became director of the newly established MVK in 1928, a position he retained until 1945. He had applied to join the NSDAP in 1938 but was not officially recognized as a member until January 1945. In 1938, the Nazi cell in the NHM attempted in vain to have Röck replaced by the prominent ethnologist, explorer and university lecturer Hugo A. Bernatzik, an advocate of applied colonial ethnology with excellent connections to the Nazi bureaucracy. Röck successfully opposed the plan in 1942 to establish a field hospital for wounded front soldiers on the museum's premises. At the time of the annexation, three collection assistants and the sculptor Hans Fürst worked in the MVK, and among the researchers only the curators Robert Bleichsteiner and Dominik J. Wölfel had tenure as government employees. In November 1938 the museum hired the ethnologist and Africanist Etta Donner, who had sold her Liberia collection to the MVK, as a research assistant. She was responsible until 1945 for the Africa section and was involved until 1943 in colonial policy activities. In 1939 Maria (Ria) Horsky, who had studied ethnology and was to be awarded a doctoral title in 1941, was also hired as a research assistant with responsibility for Indonesia and the photo library. Also in 1939, Wölfel was suspended. As a specialist in cultural history and the language of the Canary Islands, he had coined the term "White Africa" and was a fervent supporter of the Franco regime in Spain and of Catholic fascism, but under the Nazi race laws his wife was considered to be a "Mischling". Wölfel's suspension made it possible for the Africa specialist Walter Hirschberg, who had been working at the MVK as a research assistant since 1938, to become a curator with the status of a tenured government employee. Hirschberg, who habilitated in 1939, joined the NSDAP in 1933, switched to the Vaterländische Front (VF) (Fatherland Front) in 1934, reapplied for membership to the NSDAP in 1938 and from 1940 was a member of the NS-Dozentenbund (National Socialist German Lecturers League). The Orientalist and ethnologist Robert Bleichsteiner, who had been a research assistant in the Ethnography Department of the NHM since 1926 and was closely involved in the founding of the MVK, was a recognized expert in the Caucasus. He had been a member of the VF before the annexation but had also been sympathetic to the Soviet Union. As the longest-serving curator, Bleichsteiner, who was not a member of the NSDAP, became deputy director. Under his directorship, the salvaging of objects from the museum commenced in late August 1939. Despite the war situation, from 1939 until well into 1944, the MVK staged several exhibitions, in which Röck emphasized the significance of ethnology as an "important ancillary discipline for understanding our own ethnicity". In 1939 the museum organized an exhibition Swastika in East Asia, and in 1941 it provided space for the exhibition Woman and Mother, Life Source of the Volk organized by the Reichsleitung der NSDAP, Dienststelle Rosenberg. Several exhibitions, mostly based on loans from Anton Exner and Walter Exner, dealt with East Asian artefacts. From 1941 to 1943, to replace employees conscripted into the Wehrmacht, Röck employed the Indonesia specialist Frederic Martin Schnitger, a Dutch citizen born in Indonesia, who was later to be murdered in Mauthausen. In 1941 he also hired the Korean Han Hung-Su.

After Röck was removed from office on 5 June 1945, Bleichsteiner became the unsalaried director of the MVK alongside his employment as an honorary professor at the University of Vienna. He was deemed to have been politically neutral during the Nazi period, but according to witnesses he had belonged to a resistance group in the MVK. In 1955 Etta Becker-Donner succeeded temporary director Leopold Schmidt as director of the museum. In 2001, when the federal museums were no longer administered by the State, it became part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, together with the Austrian Theatre Museum. After several years of modification to the building, the MVK reopened in 2007 and was renamed Weltmuseum Wien in 2013.

After the Second World War the MVK did not carry out any restitutions in the meaning of the restitution laws, and the unbureaucratic return of Friedrich Wolff-Knize's collection in 1947 was probably a result of his good relations with Becker-Donner. The objects that had been stored in the MVK during the Nazi period but never inventoried were returned to Missionshaus St. Gabriel. Much of the Judaica from the old Jewish Museum Vienna and from synagogues in Lower Austria and Burgenland that were stored in the museum were returned to the Vienna Jewish Community (IKG) as legal successor. It was not until the systematic Nazi provenance research in the MVK as a result of the 1998 Art Restitution Act that official restitution decisions were adopted by the Art Restitution Advisory Board. They concerned objects owned by Julius Kien (2001), Stephanie Demeter (2005), Hans Abels (2007), Michael Ottokar and Maria Franziska Popper (2007), Gertrude Marle (2007), Gertrude and Hanns Fischl (2007 and 2009), Otto Braun (2009) and Georg Popper (2009). In 2012 the Board recommended the restitution of some objects belonging to Wolff-Knize that had been untraceable in 1947. Under a bilateral agreement, a collection of embroidery by Crimean Tatars and Karaites was returned to the Republic of Ukraine.

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https://www.weltmuseumwien.at/en/about-us/Beiratsbeschluss Hans Abels, 1.6.2007, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Abels_Hans_2007-06-01.pdf (10.11.2021).

Beiratsbeschluss Otto Braun, 24.6.2009, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Braun_Otto_2009-06-24.pdf (10.11.2021).

Beiratsbeschluss Stefanie Demeter, 14.12.2005, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Demeter_Stefanie_2005-12-14.pdf (10.11.2021).

Beiratsbeschluss Gertrude und Han(n)s Fischl, 1.6.2007, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Fischl_Gertrude_Hans_2007-06-01.pdf (10.11.2021).

Beiratsbeschluss Gertrude und Hanns Fischl, 24.6.2009, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Fischl_Gertrude_Hanns_2009-06-24.pdf (10.11.2021).

Beiratsbeschluss Julius Kien, 14.3.2014, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Kien_Julius_2001-03-14.pdf (10.11.2021).

Beiratsbeschluss Gertrude Marle, 1.6.2007, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Marle_Gertrude_2007-06-01.pdf (10.11.2021).

Beiratsbeschluss Georg Popper, 24.6.2009, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Popper_Georg_2009-06-24.pdf (10.11.2021).

 

Gabriele Anderl, Provenienzforschung am Museum für Völkerkunde Wien, in: Archiv Weltmuseum Wien (2009) 59/60, 1–58.

Gabriele Anderl, Provenienzforschung und Kunstrestitution im Weltmuseum Wien, in: Neues Museum. Die österreichische Museumszeitschrift 13 (2013) 3/4, 34–41.

Gabriele Anderl, "Nicht einmal abschätzbarer Wert…" Anton und Walter Exner – Kunsthändler, Stifter, Nationalsozialisten und ihre Sammlung asiatischer Kunst in Wien, in: Eva Blimlinger/Heinz Schödl (Hg.), Die Praxis des Sammelns. Personen und Institutionen im Fokus der Provenienzforschung (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 5), Wien 2014, 339–405, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205793564.339.

Gabriele Anderl/Ildiko Cazan, Das Museum für Völkerkunde in Wien, in: Gabriele Anderl/Christoph Bazil/Eva Bliminger/Oliver Kühlschelm/Monika Mayer/Anita Stelzl-Gallian, …wesentlich mehr Fälle als angenommen. 10 Jahre Kommission für Provenienzforschung (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 1), Wien 2009, 160–175, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205118862.160.

Gabriele Anderl, "Sichergestellt" in Simferopol: Die Geschenke des Fritz Manns an das Museum für Völkerkunde in Wien, in: Gabriele Anderl/Christoph Bazil/Eva Bliminger/Oliver Kühlschelm/Monika Mayer/Anita Stelzl-Gallian (Hg.), … wesentlich mehr Fälle als angenommen. 10 Jahre Kommission für Provenienzforschung (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 1), Wien 2009, 460–477, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205118862.460.

Gabriele Anderl/Reinhold Mittersakschmöller, Gefährliches Spiel mit dem Feuer: Frederic Martin Schnitger, Archäologe und Indonesienforscher, in: Andre Gingrich/Peter Rohrbacher (Hg.), Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938–1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken (= Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 27/1), Wien 2021, Bd. II, 687–722.

Gabriele Anderl, "Russenbriefe" und Textilien von der Krim: Die Rückgabe entzogenen Kulturgutes aus österreichischen Bundesmuseen an die Republik Ukraine, in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, Neue Serie Band LXIV, Gesamtserie Band 113 (2010) 1, 89–94.

Gabriele Anderl, Rückgabebeschluss – und dann? Weltmuseum Wien, in: Eva Blimlinger/Heinz Schödl (Hg.), … (k)ein Ende in Sicht. 20 Jahre Kunstrückgabegesetz in Österreich (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 8), Wien 2018, 97–105, URL: doi.org/10.7767/9783205201274.97.

Gabriele Anderl, Artefacts from East Asia in public collections. Approaches from Austria, in: Pia Schölnberger (Hg.), Das Museum im kolonialen Kontext. Annäherungen aus Österreich, Wien 2021, 230–256.

ldikó Cazan-Simányi, "Zum Fall Dr. Horsky": Konflikte, Rivalität und Denunziation, in: Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938–1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken (= Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 27/1), Bd. II, Wien 2021, 723–774.

Andre Gingrich/Peter Rohrbacher (Hg.), Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938–1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken (= Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 27/1) Wien 2021.

Peter Linimayr, Das Institut für Völkerkunde der Universität Wien 1938–1945, unter Berücksichtigung des Museums für Völkerkunde Wien, 2 Bände, Diplomarbeit Universität Wien 1993.

Peter Linimayr, Wiener Völkerkunde im Nationalsozialismus. Ansätze zu einer NS-Wissenschaft, Frankfurt a. Main u. a. 1994.

Florian Mühlfried/Peter Schweitzer, Kaukasus, Katholizismus und Kommunismus: Die verschlungenen Wege des Robert Bleichsteiner, in: Andre Gingrich/Peter Rohrbacher (Hg.), Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938–1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken (= Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 27/1), Bd. II, Wien 2021, 667–686.

Barbara Plankensteiner, Das Museum für Völkerkunde in Wien 1938 bis 1945: Ein Bollwerk nationalsozialistischer Weltanschauung), in: Andre Gingrich/Peter Rohrbacher (Hg.), Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938–1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken (= Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 27/1), Wien 2021, Bd. II, 551–584.

Peter Rohrbacher, "Verschollene Kulturzusammenhänge": Der Altorientalist und Altamerikanist Friedrich Röck und seine Stellung in der NS-Zeit, in: Andre Gingrich/Peter Rohrbacher (Hg.), Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938–1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken (= Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 27/1), Bd. II, Wien 2021, 585–666.

Andreas Schirmer, Ein Pionier aus Korea.Der fast vergessene Han Hung-Su – Archäologe, Völkerkundler, Märchenerzähler, Kulturmittler, in: Archiv Weltmuseum Wien (2013) 61/62, 261–318.

Publications by the person / institution

Website des Weltmuseums, URL: www.weltmuseumwien.at/en/about-us/ (10.11.2021).