Confronting the past

In Austria, scientific study of the country’s Nazi past on a wider scale began in the 1980s. For a long time, the Tyrolean Government did not play an active role. “A clear political commitment to researching this – in both senses of the word – ‘dark’ chapter in the country’s history is still missing today,” said historian Thomas Albrich at the turn of the millennium. In 2004 the Tyrolean regional government again rejected an application for financial support for research into National Socialism.

Since the 2010s, following repeated public debate and the establishment of a priority funding focus on remembrance culture, research into National Socialism has been promoted on the initiative of the regional parliament and government. Beginning in 2011, a significant step in terms of remembrance policy was taken with the redesign of Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz as a central place of remembrance for National Socialism in Tyrol. In 2018, the regional government appointed a commission of experts to research the Nazi background of the New Landhaus. The results were presented in “Ein Tiroler NS-Bau und seine Geschichte” (A Tyrolean Nazi Building and its History) in 2021.