Hitlers Sonderauftrag Ostmark: Kunstraub und Museumspolitik im Nationalsozialismus

The book is dedicated to Hitler’s distribution program for confiscated art collections, which the dictator set up for the Ostmark after Austria’s annexation to the German Reich in 1938 and intended to be extended to the entire Greater German Reich. After an initial phase of diverging concepts, Hitler himself took over management of the project in June 1939. After that, his special representative Hans Posse and his assistant Gottfried Reimer, supported by the Vienna Monuments Authority, distributed 5,000 high-ranking works of art from Jewish ownership. Against the background of a situation marked by fierce competition between Vienna and the East Mark Reichsgauen, the construction of the Fuhrer Museum in Linz and the expectations of the museums in the Old Reich , Hitler’s profile as a museum politician becomes visible.