A Longing for Peace
80 Years since the End of the War in Linz – 1945/2025
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 18.09 | Opening: A Longing for Peace The exhibition explores the disruptions and continuities taking place in Linz amid the transition from a wartime to a post-war society, the end of the National Socialist dictatorship and the beginning of renewed democratisation. | 7:00 pm–10:00 pm |
| Fri 03.10 | We open the box: Thinking the end from the beginning II. Franz Stelzhamer’s nationalism, his anti-Semitic fantasies of extermination and his memorial in the Volksgarten in Linz With Ludwig Laher, Germanist, author and board member of the IG österreichischer Autorinnen & Autoren, and Andrea Hubin, art historian and art mediator Research excursion to the Volksgarten in Linz (weather permitting), meeting point and input at Nordico | 3:00 pm–5:00 pm |
| Thu 09.10 | Kinderkulturwoche: Was das Nashorn sah, … Generalprobe des Stücks Was das Nashorn sah, als es auf die andere Seite des Zauns schaute im Landestheater Linz (kostenlos), danach Reflexionsworkshop im Nordico (Kinderkulturpreis € 1) Anlässlich der Kinderkulturwoche, Anmeldung bis 14.9.25 unter: schulbuchungen@landestheater-linz.at | 11:00 am–2:00 pm |
| Sun 19.10 | Familientag: Erinnerung, Sehnsucht, Frieden Ein Tag für Familien und Jugendliche, um sich kreativ mit dem Ausstellungsthema auseinander zu setzen: Mit „Herrn Hofrat“ und „Stadtmuse“ auf den Spuren des Nachkriegslinz (12.30 – 14.30), Workshop mit den Künstler*innen Osama Zatar & Inbal Volpo (One State Embassy, 15.00 – 17.00), um aus Waffen nützliche Dinge zu machen und über den Krieg zu sprechen. Ausstellungsgespräche und Aktivitäten im Werkstatt-Raum (10.00 – 12.30, 14.30 – 15.00). Kosten: Für Familien, Kinder und Jugendliche im Rahmen der Kinderkulturwoche kostenlos; erwachsene Einzelbesucher*innen € 7 zzgl. Eintritt Anmeldung: karin.schneider@lentos.at | 10:00 am–5:00 pm |
| 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 |
| 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 26.02 | We open the box: History and remembrance II: Of final strokes and victim myths With Monika Sommer, historian and founding director of the House of Austrian History | 7:00 pm–9:00 pm |
| Fri 20.03 | We open the box: History and memory III: A grotto railroad, a bridge, two main squares With Birgit Kirchmayr, contemporary historian, Johannes Kepler University Linz; research excursion from Linz’s main square via the Nibelungen Bridge to the Grottenbahn; meeting point: Trinity Column, main square | 3:00 pm–5:00 pm |
Publication
A book of the same name will be published to accompany the exhibition by Verlag Anton Pustet, Salzburg. Edited by Andrea Bina and Martina Zerovnik, with contributions by Andrea Bina, 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.
Workshop Room
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 Workshop Room invites visitors of all ages to engage directly with the exhibition materials, ask their own questions, and leave them within the exhibition.