Führermuseum

The Führermuseum or Fuhrer-Museum (English: Leader's Museum), also referred to as the Linz art gallery, was an unrealized art museum within a cultural complex planned by Adolf Hitler for his hometown, the Austrian city of Linz, near his birthplace of Braunau. Its purpose was to display a selection of the art bought, confiscated or stolen by the Nazis from throughout Europe during World War II. The cultural district was to be part of an overall plan to recreate Linz, turning it into a cultural capital of Nazi Germany and one of the greatest art centers of Europe, overshadowing Vienna, for which Hitler had a personal distaste. He wanted to make the city more beautiful than Budapest, so it would be the most beautiful on the Danube River, as well as an industrial powerhouse and a hub of trade; the museum was planned to be one of the greatest in Europe. The expected completion date for the project was 1950, but neither the Führermuseum nor the cultural centre it was to anchor were ever built. The only part of the elaborate plan which was constructed was the Nibelungen Bridge, which is still extant. As early as 1925, Hitler had conceived of a "German National Gallery" to be built in Berlin with himself as director. His plan, drawn out in a sketchbook, may have been influenced by the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, and consisted of a building with two sections, one with 28 rooms and the other with 32. Hitler denoted which of his favorite 19th-century German artists were to be collected, and in what rooms their work would hang. Among his favorite painters were Hans Makart, Franz Defregger, Eduard Grützner, Franz von Stuck, Franz von Lenbach, Anselm Feuerbach, Heinrich Zügel and Carl Spitzweg, and he had extolled "Aryan art" by Moritz von Schwind and Arnold Böcklin in Mein Kampf. At one time in his planning he dedicated five of the rooms in the museum to the work of Adolph von Menzel and three rooms to both Schwind and Böcklin.