Night Over Austria. The „Anschluss“ of 1938 – Flight and Expulsion

On 15 March 1938, Adolf Hitler gave his (in-)famous speech marking the “return” of his homeland to the German Reich – standing on the balcony above the present-day entrance to the Austrian National Library on Heldenplatz.

But this is not the only reason that the Austrian National Library is the ideal setting for an exhibition marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the “Anschluss”: the library’s holdings also include much important photographic material documenting the historical events. In “Night Over Austria”, these dramatic photographs are supplemented with leaflets, propaganda material, and homages of Austrian artists to the Third Reich, but also confronted with memoirs and later literary responses to the developments.

In addition to this, fifteen stations serve to reconstruct individual roads into exile of Jewish artists, writers and scientists – on the basis of letters, emigration documents, diaries, printed music, photos, and manuscripts from the collections of the Austrian National Library.