Vienna: At the Vienna Museum, the art of Nazi-era Crams two small rooms, some are still in a storage box.
Opera Vienna painting features a Nazi flag, a swastika woven into a rug.
The pieces are part of the exhibition in the Austrian capital which aims to explain the politics of art under the third Reich one of the newest ways where Vienna tries to overcome the complicated past of the war era.
Austria, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, long threw himself as a victim after being annexed by the Nazi Germany.
Only in the last three decades that the country has began to seriously examine its role in the Holocaust.
The curator of this exhibition hopes that their research will help in the process but they have been careful not to give art to too much from “aura”.
Austria has a 200,000 Jewish population before Nazi Germany annexed the country in 1938.
More than 65,000 of them were killed in the Holocaust, which destroyed six million Jews.
Instead of being displayed on the large wall of the museum, the works were packed into only two rooms, as if in the warehouse.
“It can’t be like another exhibition in a classic sense …
it must be broken down,” Curator said Ingrid Holzschuh to AFP.
– Racist Vision – Performances occur after four years of research by Holzschuh and fellow Sabine Plaque-Forsstthuber curators, which combed 3,000 artists membership files that officially came from Reich’s artistic association after Nazi anexation.
All artists are carefully examined and watch carefully.
“Aspiring members need to meet the artistic, political and racial criteria for the Nazi regime,” said the material for the show.
“Political dissidents and Jewish artists are prohibited.” Under the regime, Vienna artists who did not comply with new rules were forced to escape or be killed in a concentration camp, according to the show catalog.
“The Nazi regime secures the control of the art world and directs it according to its vision of ideologically and racist,” he said.
Together with biographical details of several artists, exhibitions display paintings, sculptures, textiles, and pottery they are mostly stored in storage by the city of Vienna for decades.
The show, called “Wina falls in line.
The political art under national socialism”, is part of a broader reconciliation trend with the bad chapter of Austrian history.
“Since the late 80s are a great change of mood has been detained …
a large process of reflection has occurred,” said Historian Gerhard Baumgartner, head of the Austrian resistance documentation center.
Digging art from the period is part of the movement, and the way to learn more about artists behind pro-Nazi works that are often known.
“There is a great need to make peace with history.
There are still many gaps, and this gap must be closed,” said the Holzschuh curator.
– Memory culture – it’s not the only way this city faces a complicated past.
Vienna recently said it would launch an art competition to explore the statue of the former Anti-Semitic Mayor Karl Lueger who inspired Hitler, who had been damaged several times.
The city also reassures the name of the road that respects the historical numbers of anti-Semitic or the most recent galvanized by the motion of the black life material and protests around the historic monuments.
Already in 2012, after a lot of controversy, a portion of Canclasse Boulevard circular in the city which was previously named after Lueger was renamed.
Holzschuh and Plaque-Forsthuber also wanted to reveal how some artists remained long after World War II, such as Wilhelm Frass sculptor.
Frass, who said his loyalty to the Nazis continued to work after the war and even had his job assigned by the city of Vienna.
Research Holzschuh and Plaque-Forthuber peaked in a 300-page catalog along with the exhibition itself.
This event, which opened in October and walked to April, attracted around 4,000 visitors in its first month “very big interest”, according to Museum spokesman Konstanze Schaefer.
So far has become clearly controversy except for one comment to bite in Austria Daily Kurier, who criticized the money spent to preserve the Nazi art.
But Veronica City Council member Kaup-Hasler said the shedding light in the past was “a good base for the decision about the future”.
“Warning culture and dealing with history itself plays an important role in city cultural policy,” he told AFP.