Josef Schirmer

This is the story of Josef Schirmer, who was a neighbour of the Landhaus project. He benefitted accidentally from the extension to the Landhaus. By the end of the war, his short-term profit had become a huge loss.

Josef Schirmer was born in Innsbruck in 1888. He lived with his sister at Meraner Strasse 4. On the ground floor he ran a tailor’s and clothes shop for men. Schirmer sympathised with the NSDAP and joined the party before 1938. The construction of the Gauhaus nevertheless annoyed him. In mid-April 1939, shortly before the shell of the building was completed, he protested unsuccessfully against the height of the building.

According to the building line plan in force at the time, his complaint was justified, but the authorities paid no attention to it. The planning permission procedure held six months earlier was also a sham.

The aim of the Nazi leadership was to create a self-contained ensemble around the Landhaus, a centre of power. Josef Schirmer’s home was in the way, and the Gauleiter’s office tried to persuade him to sell. In the light of his experiences with inflation in previous years, however, Schirmer was not interested at first. But then, in the course of the persecution of Innsbruck’s Jewish population, the Nazis were able to make Schirmer an attractive offer, which the businessman accepted: In exchange for his property, Schirmer was offered a larger residential building at Museumstrasse 8 – the looted property of the Jewish Graubart family. Schirmer seized the opportunity, sold the house in Meraner Strasse and acquired the property of the expropriated family.

After 1945, Schirmer found his life in ruins: His two sons had died fighting on the front; his business premises and his flat had both been destroyed in the bombing, and he had to give back the Graubarts’ house. He also failed in his attempt to get his former property in Meraner Strasse back in return. The Tyrolean government refused to acknowledge the exchange, and Schirmer only received financial compensation.