4 April 2023

Volkskundemuseum Vienna exhibits traditional clothing and folk art with focus on the Salzkammergut at 'Collected At Any Cost!' with accompanying virtual gallery

While searching for upcoming exhibitions about costumes and fashion, Fashion.at came across the preview of 'Collected At Any Cost!', which is on view from 22 April until 26 November 2023 at the Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art (Volkskundemuseum) in Vienna. When visiting volkskundemuseum.at/collected_at_any_cost, photos of trachten (traditional clothing) outfits from the early 20th century from the Grundlsee in the Salzkammergut region of Austria suggest at first glance that the museum is preparing a costume exhibition. It appears as if the trachten from Gössl, a district of the municipality Grundlsee, are in the focus of the exhibition of the 'Mautner Collection'. But why did the organizers choose the title 'Collected At Any Cost!' for a trachten exhibition?

The folk art pieces and documents of folk life were once collected by Konrad and Anna Mautner, members of the Austrian textile industrialist family Mautner, for the preservation of cultural practices. Due to the Nuremberg Race Laws from the 1930s, the family members were persecuted as Jews and had to flee. The Volkskundemuseum initiated the confiscation of the collection and bought it far below its value. This was a common and legal practice at the time. Hence the name of the exhibition. The Volkskundemuseum began researching objects and collections for restitution in the 2010s. The Mautner Collection, consisting of about 500 objects such as clothing, costume illustrations, song lyrics or research papers, was restituted and later donated to the museum by the family. The exhibition 'Collected At Any Cost!' is the result of the expressed wish of Anna Mautner's heirs to continue to make the collection accessible to the public and to the scientific community.

The exhibition of the Mautner Collection is placed in a larger context to highlight the work of provenance researchers who have uncovered court records and personal memories to show how the law in Austria was enforced during the Nazi era and how it is applied to restitutions today. The first insights are published in the virtual gallery at vgprovenanceresearch.at, which will be filled until 21 April, the day of the opening of the exhibition 'Collected At Any Cost!' at the Volkskundemuseum at Gartenpalais Schönborn. In the virtual gallery, several Austrian institutions present exemplary objects of the detective work of their researchers in order to meet the requirements of the Austrian 'Art Restitution Act' for the return of objects illegally acquired during the Nazi period.

Some of the researchers' texts read partly like the plot of a crime movie based on true events, as in the case of the 'Fortepiano' originally owned by Frida Gerngross. The author of the entry is provenance researcher Monika Löscher of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, who begins her summary of the findings of the scientific research with the lyrics of a song performed by Frida Gerngross in a 1930 film in which Hedy Lamarr first appeared as an actress. The information comes from various sources including an original sound file with the singer's voice. Monika Löscher creates a vivid picture of the time before Frida Gerngross was deported to the Izbica ghetto in Poland from where she didn't return.
The piano is the red thread of how the law during the Nazi period empowered people to commit legalized crimes, and how a changed law can bring justice, even if some tracks were covered. Not all files of official legal records from the Nazi era are still in the archives. The virtual gallery was initiated on occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Art Restitution Act.

Image: Montage of some framed copperplate engravings (around 1740) from the collection of Anna and Konrad Mautner | ÖMV/44087 to ÖMV/44115, inventoried in 1939 | Photos: Christa Knott © Volkskundemuseum Wien.