Fritz Dworschak

Friedrich Dworschak (born February 27, 1890 in Krems an der Donau ; † September 7, 1974 there ) was an Austrian numismatist and art historian , as well as museum director during the Nazi era .

biography

Fritz Dworschak, son of Ernest Dworschak and Franziska (née Knapp), attended elementary school in his hometown and from 1908 studied history and art history at the University of Vienna , where he received his doctorate in March 1913.

Dworschak had been a member of the Austrian Institute for Historical Research from 1911 and passed the state examination at the same institute in July 1913. Three months later he began his career as a scientific official at the Kunsthistorisches Museum . In 1921 he became curator of the museum. After the National Socialists came to power, he was appointed as acting director, in August 1938 as director and in 1941 as first director, following the resignation of August Loehr and Karl Pink for racist and political reasons . From 1938 he was also a member of the NSDAP .

In this office he was actively involved in the confiscation and recycling of Jewish collections. Fritz Dworschak also got it that he was appointed "sub-agent for guarding the collection of both Rothschilds" on May 9, 1938. The collections with up to 15,000 objects were kept in a Vienna central depot (new building on the Vienna Hofburg and Belvedere Palace ) under his care and Hans Posse examined which works should be transferred to the planned Führer Museum in Linz. The remainder should be distributed among the palate museums. Dworschak tried to preserve parts of the collections for his museum and took great care that the holdings of his own museum were not affected by the intended distribution to the Gau museums. In addition, he endeavored to get some of the stolen works of art for his museum, which he succeeded. 44 works, including the majority of the best French works of the 18th century, have been assigned to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. At the end of 1943 there were around 200,000 coins and medals in the depot for the Führermuseum in Kremsmünster Abbey .

Because of the imminent danger of war, from the summer of 1939 he was engaged in the recovery of the most valuable holdings from his museum and the stolen works of art. The former Steinbach (Göstling) castle of the Rothschild family and the Kartause Gaming were selected as the most important depots .

Fritz Dworschak had been a member of the committee for the recovery of works of art since the summer of 1940, stolen by the French from Germany since 1794. In this role, he traveled to France and prepared a comprehensive report for Hans Posse.

From August 1942 on, Dworschak headed the "Coins and Medals" department on the recommendation of Hans Posse as part of the "Special Order Linz" project. For this he was personally commissioned by Hitler on August 5, 1942. By decree of September 30, 1942, the establishment of a coin cabinet in the Führermuseum in Linz was established. After Posse's death in December 1942, Dworschak took on the task of setting up this coin cabinet. To do this, he used coins from the confiscated Jewish collections and from various monasteries and monasteries in Austria.

From 1919 to 1945 Dworschak was a member of the board of the Numismatic Society in Austria.

At the end of the war, Dworschak was removed from office and retired in 1947. From 1947 to 1958 he continued to work as head of the cultural office and the Krems city archive.

Honors

• Appointment as councilor
• 1960: Medal of Honor of the City of Vienna
• 1970: Eckhel Medal of the Austrian Numismatic Society.
• Portrait medal by Rudolf Schmidt

Publications

• Krems, Stein and Mautern. With the catalog of the Municipal Museum in Krems an der Donau. Filser, Vienna et al. 1928.
• with Karl Moeser: The great coin reform under Archduke Sigmund of Tyrol. The first large silver and German portrait coins from the Hall mint in the Inn Valley. With an iconography of Archduke Sigmund. = Archduke Sigmund the rich in coins of Tyrol. 1427–1496 (= Austrian coinage and money system in the Middle Ages. 7, ZDB -ID 2521622-3 ). E. Stepan, Vienna 1936.
• Over 70 articles in specialist journals: Bernhard Koch: Numismatisches Oevreverzeichnis. In: Numismatic Journal. Vol. 90, 1975, pp. 3-6, ( online ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Emanuele Sbardella: The third side of the coin. Dworschak as Hitler's special representative for the construction of a coin cabinet in the so-called Fuehrermuseum , master's thesis, Technical University Berlin, 2015.

literature

• Harry Kühnel : Fritz Dworschak. In: Messages from the Krems City Archives. 1985, pp. 23-25
• Herbert Haupt : The Art History Museum. The history of the Haus am Ring. A hundred years as reflected in historical events. Brandstätter, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-85447-409-1 .
• Birgit Schwarz: On orders from the Führer. Hitler and the Nazi art theft. Theiss, Darmstadt 2014, ISBN 978-3-8062-2958-5 .
• Emanuele Sbardella: The third side of the coin. Dworschak as Hitler's special representative for the construction of a coin cabinet in the so-called Fuehrermuseum , master's thesis, Technical University Berlin, 2015.