The Federal Monuments Office (BDA; german: Bundesdenkmalamt) is a department of the Federal Chancellery responsible for cultural heritage in

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

History

The BDA was established in 1853 under Emperor Franz Joseph I, as a central commission for the preservation of

National Heritage Site A national heritage site is a heritage site having a value that has been registered by a governmental agency as being of national importance to the cultural heritage or history of that country. Usually such sites are listed in a heritage registe ...

s. Its duties include the preservation, restoration and cataloging of immoveable cultural heritage. The BDA also monitors the export provisions of the Austrian monument protection act for moveable cultural heritage. The BDA is divided into one central bureau and nine "land conservation districts" in the provincial capitals. At their disposal are the following central departments: *

Historic buildings This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...

* Garden architecture (

Historic garden conservation Historic garden conservation is a specialised type of historic preservation and conservation or restoration concerned with historical and landmark gardens and designed landscapes. Profession Practitioners predominantly come from backgrounds in ho ...

and historic parks) * Restored workshops Baudenkmalpflege *

Industrial heritage Industrial heritage refers to the physical remains of the history of technology and industry, such as manufacturing and mining sites, as well as power and transportation infrastructure. Another definition expands this scope so that the term a ...

(historic factories) * Export licenses for cultural heritage *

Archeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

s * Heritage lists * Inventory and Heritage Studies (publisher of the

Georg Dehio Georg Gottfried Julius Dehio (22 November 1850 in Reval (now Tallinn), Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire – 21 March 1932 in Tübingen), was a Baltic German art historian. In 1900, Dehio started the "''Handbuch der deutschen Kunstgesch ...

manual) * "Sound monuments" (church bells and organs) * Museums & libraries (excluding national museums) * Legal Matters (conservation law) * Art restoration workshops; namely the Central Chemical Laboratory of the Federal Monuments Office at the Vienna Arsenal, and the Architectural conservation restoration workshop in the Mauerbach Charterhouse. Restaurierwerkstätten Baudenkmalpflege Kartause Mauerbach
, BDA

Art and property restitution

The BDA is also responsible for restitution of some 8,000 objects and works of

looted art Looted art has been a consequence of looting during war, natural disaster and riot for centuries. Looting of art, archaeology and other cultural property may be an opportunistic criminal act or may be a more organized case of unlawful or unet ...

which

Austria in the time of National Socialism Austria under Nazism describes the period of Austrian history from 12 March 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany (the event is commonly known as ''Anschluss'') until 8 May 1945 with the fall of Nazi Germany. Austrians were generally e ...

had acquired by devious means. Since often the original owners and all of their relatives had been killed during the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

, restitution took place in the manner of auctions for the benefit of the Jewish community or to pay for material restitution of destroyed property, as in the case of the Jewish cemetery in Währing. Austria first did little to restore property to the damaged owner, but in the late 1940s and 1950s was put under pressure to make more of an effort according to the

Moscow Declaration The Moscow Declarations were four declarations signed during the Moscow Conference on October 30, 1943. The declarations are distinct from the Communique that was issued following the Moscow Conference of 1945. They were signed by the foreign sec ...

. As access to archives has slowly opened over time for provenance research, new clues and details such as stickers on the backs of auctioned objects that were photographed, have resulted in the discovery of previously "unfindable" owners. A set of such results was published in early December 2008 and exhibited at the Museum of Applied Arts.

Periodicals

* Austrian magazine for art and historic preservation . Verlag F. Berger, 1947ff, ISSN 0029-9626 (quarterly). * Restorers annual magazine. * Studies on conservation and historic preservation. Verlag F. Berger (irregular). * Austrian Art topography . Verlag F. Berger, 1907ff (irregular releases). * Department of Natural Monuments, Hofburg (eds): Fund reports from Austria . Verlag F. Berger, 1920ff, ISSN 0429-8926 (annually, as well as material specifications and special volumes). * Theodor Brückler, Ulrike Nimeth; Federal Monuments Office (ed.): Encyclopedia of the Austrian people Preservation from 1850 to 1990 - 2002. Verlag F. Berger, Vienna 2001, .

Literature

* Walter Frodl : idea and realization. If the state of conservation in Austria. Vienna, Cologne, Graz 1988, Bundesdenkmalamt Vienna (Ed.): Studies on conservation and historic preservation. XIII * Manfred Koller : The History of the Restoration in Austria. In: History of the Restoration in Europe / Histoire de la Restoration en Europe. I, Worms 1991, p. 65-85, Bundesdenkmalamt Vienna (Ed.): Acts of International Congress Restauriergeschichte / Histoire de la Restoration. XIII, Interlaken 1989

References

External links