Die Rückführung österreichischer Waffentrophäen nach Paris 1946 – Eine Spurensuche

Abstract

It is common knowledge that the German army appropriated amour, weapons, standards and trophies of German or Austrian provenance from the Musée de l’Armée (in the Hôtel des Invalides) in Paris, which had been captured by the french army during the napoleonic wars or subsequent conflicts, and took them to Germany after the armistice of 1940 (around 2000 objects).
Objects of Austrian (Habsburgian) provenance were transferred by the Wehrmacht as a loan to the collection of arms held at the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Heeresmuseum in Vienna. In 1941 the Kunsthistorische Museum arranged a special exhibition of these items, which was accompanied by a small catalogue.
Already after the liberation of Paris in August 1944, the French started attempts to instigate the return of the weapons and trophies taken at the beginning of the war. In April 1946 a French military commission of four (‘Mission Blanc’, so-called after its chairman, later the director of the Musée de l‘Armée) travelled to Vienna, where - after consultations with the Allied military commission and with its sanction - the restitution of the objects from the Musée de l‘Armée took place.
So far very little detail about this transaction has been available; an in-depth report compiled by one of the commissioners, the collector and expert of the Napoleonic epoch, Jean Brunon, was only published in a little known Journal of the French Foreign Legion (Vert et Rouge, 1946). Eight important harnesses belonging to French personages of the 16th and 17th century, which were taken by the Napoleonic troupes from the collection of the Count Palatine Ferdinand of Tyrol (1532 - 1597) from Schloß Ambras near Innsbruck, were no longer in Vienna in 1946. They had been transported to Paris from an unnamed village in Tyrol, which was part of the French occupied zone in 1945. The author of this article has succeeded in confirming Burg Petersberg near Silz in the Upper Inntal as their repository, where other artworks from Tyrol had also been stored as protection against air raids. This is where the objects from the Ambras collection had been taken, at the instigation of the Gauleiter of Tyrol and as ordered by Hitler on 17th February 1945(!). This had been known to French POWs held in Tyrol who informed the French occupation forces, resulting in a return of these armaments to Paris as early as 1945.
Further objects could be found in the Collection-Point in Salzburg (Klesheim) in boxes from the mines in Bad Aussee and were taken over by the French commission. In Vienna objects entrusted to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (the had been kept safe in a cellar of the Postsparkasse (postal savings bank) were handed over in the presence of a representative of the Allied Commission on 16th May 1946.
After the return of objects held in safe storage locations in Germany to the Musée de l’Armée, it re-opened with a large exhibition entitled Le retour de nos souvenirs militaires (The Return of Our Military Souvenirs) on 10th May 1947. The exhibition catalogue provides only a cursory account of the return of the objects from Austria. This essay is based on Jean Brunon‘s report, Austrian sources and on archival records held in the Jagd- und Rüstkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and reveals many details which have so far been unknown.