A Longing for Peace
80 Years since the End of the War in Linz – 1945/2025
Sehnsucht Frieden 031 Sehnsucht Frieden 004 Sehnsucht Frieden 014 M1 Sehnsucht Frieden 009 
City sign of Linz with the addition ‘City of Peace’, since 1986 Playground at Volksgarten, 1951 Franz Glaubacker, Lakeshore and barracks, 1948 Students doing cleanup work in front of the Bruckner School, 1946 Pin badge of the Austrian Peace Congress, 1950 Bomb damage on Handel-Mazzetti Street, 1944 Hans Wöhrl, Barrack camp on Salzburger Reichsstraße, Linz/Wegscheid, 1955
Eighty years ago, the Second World War came to an end, and with it the National Socialist regime, which was responsible for the deaths of many millions of people. Linz was largely destroyed; thousands of its citizens were dead, injured, traumatised, homeless, displaced or murdered. The city’s supply systems had collapsed, and many people were forced to wait – sometimes for years – in the numerous barrack camps across the city for a new home, their return journey, or onward travel to a new place to live. Linz, under American and Soviet occupation, saw reconstruction – as did the rest of Austria – as a new beginning. At the same time, this period was used as an opportunity to portray the country’s entanglement in the National Socialist dictatorship as something externally imposed. The occupation also brought with it a collective sense of lost freedom, which did not end until the signing of the State Treaty in 1955.
During these years, with the help of the Allied powers, the foundations were laid for an Austria that sought to offer its citizens a life of the greatest possible freedom, justice, and security, guided by the principles of reason.
The exhibition explores how life in post-war Linz was shaped by these factors and what traces the past has left behind in the city and its people. At the same time, it provides space for the present and for personal impressions.
Curators: Martina Zerovnik, Sebastian Piringer
Exhibition Design: koerdtutech and Larissa Cerny
| Date | Title | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Thu 06.11 | We open the box: Thinking the end from the beginning III: Richard Wagner’s redemptive anti-Semitism and its consequences With Sven Friedrich, Director of the Richard Wagner Museum Bayreuth | 7:00 pm–9:00 pm |
| Thu 04.12 | We open the box: The end is not the end I. Fraternities, their tower and their ideology in Linz With Andreas Peham, Documentation Archive of Austrian Resistance, and the artists Anna Pech and Moritz Matschke, University of Art and Design Linz | 7:00 pm–9:00 pm |
| Thu 08.01 | We open the box: History of remembrance I. How does Linz talk about itself and National Socialism? With Niko Wahl (freelance curator), Johannes Kaska (Director of the Archive of the City of Linz), Andrea Bina (art and cultural historian, Director of the Nordico City Museum) and Sebastian Piringer (historian and project manager of “A Longing for Peace”) | 7:00 pm–9:00 pm |
| Fri 30.01 | Erinnerungstage Die Ausstellung Sehnsucht Frieden. 80 Jahre Kriegsende in Linz 1945/2025 (bis 8.3.2026 im Nordico) thematisiert den Übergang von Kriegs- zu Nachkriegsgesellschaft, das Ende der NS-Diktatur und den Neubeginn der Demokratie | 6:00 pm–10:00 pm |
| Sat 31.01 | Erinnerungstage Die Ausstellung Sehnsucht Frieden. 80 Jahre Kriegsende in Linz 1945/2025 (bis 8.3.2026 im Nordico) thematisiert den Übergang von Kriegs- zu Nachkriegsgesellschaft, das Ende der NS-Diktatur und den Neubeginn der Demokratie. | 11:00 am–4:30 pm |
| Sun 22.02 | Museum Total: Ausstellungs- und Stadtrundgang für Familien mit Kindern Ausstellungs- und Stadtrundgang für Familien mit Kindern anlässlich Museum Total | 2:00 pm–4:00 pm |
| Thu 16.04 | We open the box: The end is not the end II. Peace City Linz and what next? With Gerda Forstner, Head of the Linz Culture Department | 7:00 pm–9:00 pm |
Publication
A book of the same name will be published to accompany the exhibition by Verlag Anton Pustet, Salzburg. Edited by Andrea Bina, Sebastian Piringer and Martina Zerovnik, with contributions by Gerda Forstner, Éva Kovács and Kinga Frojimovics, Johannes Kaska, Paul Mahringer, Bertrand Perz, Sebastian Piringer, Karin Schneider and Wolfgang Schmutz, Claudia Theune, and Martina Zerovnik.
Design: Larissa Cerny. Approx. 210 pages, €28
Available soon at shop.museenderstadtlinz.at or at the museum shop at Nordico.
Collaborations
The exhibition was developed in cooperation with the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI). As part of the commemoration year, the project also contributed to the online exhibition Liberation, Objects by the Mauthausen Memorial | Concentration Camp Memorial.
Participation Space
What are your thoughts on war and peace? Where do you see connections between history and the present, where does contemporary history continue to have an effect, and where has National Socialism left its traces? The participation space invites visitors of all ages to engage directly with the exhibition materials, ask their own questions, and leave them within the exhibition.