The journey of the images

Hitler's cultural policy, art trade and storage during the Nazi era in the Salzkammergut.

During the Second World War, the Salzkammergut was like no other region in Austria a centre for the transfer and rescue of important works of art from European art history. Adolf Hitler had thousands of works of art stored in the Altaussee salt mine for his planned "Führer Museum" in Linz. Following the denigration of modern art as  "degenerate", art was looted and confiscated and instrumentalised for the goals of National Socialism. Austrian museums also used the Franz-Josef-Erbstollen in Bad Ischl/Lauffen in the Salzkammergut as a temporary storage centre in 1944/45.

The exhibition presents more than 70 works of art that were collected, stored, looted, forcibly sold, moved, recovered and rescued in the Salzkammergut during the Second World War. Masterpieces by Goya, Edvard Munch, Lovis Corinth, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Titian, Anthonis van Dyck, Moritz von Schwind, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and many more tell their story of journeys and odysseys with many stops and storage locations.