Gudrun Wlach

The present article examines the history of the Collection of Classical Antiquities at the KHM Vienna from the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918 to the Second Republic. The historical ruptures of the 20th century are also considered. The activities of the long-standing directors Fritz Eichler and Rudolf Noll are examined against the background of the political conditions.
At the transition from the Monarchy to the First Republic, Austria was confronted with the claims of the successor states and the victorious states of the First World War. Claims to cultural assets, which originated from the entire Monarchy and were kept in the imperial collections, especially in Vienna, also affected the Collection of Classical Antiquities. In connection with the defence of these cultural assets, a reorganisation of the museum system was planned which also involved a shift in the possible focus between individual collections. The Collection of Classical Antiquities aimed at bringing together the monuments of the Greco-Roman cultural area. In 1940 it was able to take over an important stock, especially of Greek vases, from the Museum of Art and Industry, today’s MAK.
Until the Ephesus Museum was opened in the Neue Hofburg in 1978, finds from the Austrian excavations in Ephesus were presented at changing exhibition locations due to lack of space in the main building. The most significant addition to the Roman finds from Austria is the Dolichenus find from Mauer an der Url, discovered in 1937.
During the Nazi era, the Collection of Classical Antiquities also took advantage of the opportunity to acquire objects from confiscated Jewish collections. In the Second Republic, the restitution proceedings in many cases resulted in restitution to the lawful owners or their heirs.

This paper traces the influence of National Socialist cultural policy on archaeology and ancient history in Austria through its institutions: museums, associations and societies, universities, research institutions and the monument office. Individuals working in these institutions constructed and dominated powerful, long-lived personal and institutional networks that both accelerated the ideological appropriation of research under the National Socialists from 1938 and after 1945 allowed former Nazis to continue their academic careers. Particular attention is also paid to historic developments that still characterise Austrian archaeology today and can be regarded as ‘legacies’ of National Socialist archaeological practice, notably, the professionalisation of archaeological monument care or restitution issues.

Gudrun Wlach, Alphons Barb and Archaeological Research in Burgenland
Abstract: The Austrian archaeologist and numismatist Alphons Barb (1901–1979) was the first director of the regional museum in Eisenstadt (Burgenland) which was founded in 1926. Barb organized many excavations which he carried out with a team of co-operators. He succeeded in the installation of a rich archaeological collection in spite of times of economic recession and he published many articles about archaeology and local history in journals and newspapers. In March 1938 he was dismissed from his directorship under the national-socialist racial laws and he had to leave Austria. He moved to England with his family in 1939, where – after internment as an enemy alien in 1940/41 – he worked in a factory. In 1949 Barb joined the Warburg Institute in the University of London as assistant librarian. In his free time he began to publish his excavations of the interwar period in Burgenland. But it was only in 1957 that he was granted the Austrian citizenship again and in 1958, after years of bureaucratic delays, his financial claims from the times before his displacement were admitted by the Austrian administration.
Keywords: Alphons Barb, Burgenland, Museum, Jewish archaeologist, Emigration.