The engineer Ernst Zix from Magdeburg joined the NSDAP in 1933. He was stationed in Vienna as a staff officer from 1938 to 1941 and as a lieutenant-colonel for a short time in 1943. During his stays, he discovered Austrian Biedermeier painting and became an enthusiastic collector of nineteenth-century artworks. He had almost one hundred works, including paintings by Rudolf von Alt, Friedrich Amerling, Tina Blau, Friedrich Gauermann, Eugen Jettel, August Pettenkofen, Ignaz Raffalt, Johann Baptist Reiter, Anton Romako, Robert Russ, Carl und Jakob Emil Schindler, Friedrich Treml and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. Some of the works were purchased from the Viennese Kunsthandlung Karl Löscher, and he remained in contact with him after returning to Germany. He made his extensive collection available for exhibitions and publications. One of the first exhibitions in which Zix was involved was the eightieth anniversary exhibition of the Künstlerhaus from November 1941 to February 1942 in Vienna. Zix was absent from Vienna during this time, and Grete Sochor, who worked at Galerie Sanct Lucas, was entrusted with the administration of his pictures. The name Zix also appears in connection with expropriated collections as a result of numerous acquisitions in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He is listed in 1941 as having acquired a painting from Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's collection, which he made available for the Künstlerhaus anniversary exhibition. Its whereabouts are unknown. In 1944 Zix returned to Germany but continued to make purchases on the Vienna art market. Apart from Kunsthandlung Karl Löscher he purchased pictures from the Dorotheum and Galerie Asenbaum. In 1970 he loaned some of his collection for the last time for the exhibition Kunst aus Pfälzer Privatbesitz at Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern. When Ernst Zix died in 1971, he bequeathed some artworks to the Österreichische Galerie and the Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum (Lower Austria Provincial Museum). They were presented in 1973 at a special exhibition at the Lower Austrian museum, for which a catalogue was also published. Among the paintings were works from the former collection of Adelheid and Alexander Beer from Baden near Vienna. Alexander Beer had been persecuted by the Nazi regime as a Jew. In July 2015, the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended the restitution of a miniature by Moritz Michael Daffinger, which had been acquired through Zix by the Albertina.