The Wienbibliothek Responds

The Wienbibliothek has responded to my query as to why the prayer books of Schubert's sister Maria Theresia Schneider and her daughter Therese Krasser, which had been acquired by the library almost forty years ago, were presented in September 2012 as "new acquisitions". Mag. Christian Mertens, head of the library's "Zentrale Dienste" (central services), answered my question as follows:

Dear Dr. Lorenz!

Thank you for your email. After checking with my (intermittently ill) colleague Mag. Buchberger, who in September 2012 ambiguously placed the two objects on the library's page of "New Acquisitions", the case of the prayer books is as follows:

The two prayer books and the supplements were purchased by the City of Vienna together with the rest of the "Bibliotheca Schubertiana" after the death of Ignaz Weinmann and since then were kept at City Hall. That you saw them in 1993 at the home of Ernst Hilmar, could be due to a temporary borrowing for working purposes by Dr. Hilmar; in any case they were not stolen and we "did not buy back" books as you suggest. There was no "new acquisition" in September 2012 as the web site suggests, but only a "new cataloging" of books. Due to their interesting content Mag. Buchberger filed the books under "New Acquisitions" of the collection to present them to a wider audience.

Anyway, I would like to thank you for your thoughtful note and apologise on behalf of Mag. Buchberger and the library for the resulting confusion and wish you a Merry Christmas!

At this point a number of modest questions come to mind:

• Why did it take the Wienbibliothek thirty-six years to catalog two prayer books?
• What happened to the many other leather-bound books from Ignaz Weinmann's Bibliotheca Schubertiana that were seen in Ernst Hilmar's home? Are they not catalogued yet?
• If no books were stolen and Weinmann's library is still preserved, why was an internal investigation conducted at all?
• If no books were stolen, why was Ernst Hilmar suspended in 1994?
• Which books were "erroneously sold" by Herwig Würtz?
• Where is the "Schubert-box" in the form of a book with gold pressed leather cover, and a Schubert portrait that is listed in the inventory of Weinmann's collection?

It seems that the Wienbibliothek is desperately trying to get rid of this affair that seems never to end. It will not end, because a) the people who are in charge keep covering up the events that led to the suspension of the head of the music collection and refuse to deal with the matter in an open and honest way; and b) as the attempted sale of stolen Strauss autographs in 2010, has shown, stolen material keeps turning up every now and then. And even when the location of a stolen item is known, it is not recovered by the Wienbibliothek, because the people in charge are obviously afraid that such a procedure could lead to their lethargic behavior becoming known to the public. The responsible city councilman Andreas Mailath-Pokorny came up with the following excuse: "We are unable to do more. The Wienbibliothek is not a detective agency."

The lock of hair which in 1863 was recovered from Franz Schubert's skull, was stolen from the Wienbibliothek by Ernst Hilmar, and, as of 2004, was still on display at the Schubert Museum in Atzenbrugg.

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2013. All rights reserved.

Updated: 29 November 2017

The Wienbibliothek Buys its Own Property

The eminent Viennese music collector and scholar Ignaz Weinmann (1897–1976) left his collection and musical estate to the (then) Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek (today Wienbibliothek). While Weinmann's huge collection of musical scores survived the transfer to the library without any loss, other items from Weinmann's collection of Schubertiana did not fare so well. In a blogpost, which I published here on 5 December 2012, I wrote the following.

While the current efforts of the Wienbibliothek to recover stolen Strauss sketches are praiseworthy, it has become evident that these sketches are only the tip of an iceberg, and that the public has not yet been informed of the full extent of the losses suffered by the music collection of the Wienbibliothek (at that time the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek) prior to the retirement of Ernst Hilmar as head of that collection in 1994. In particular, the estates of Otto Erich Deutsch and Ignaz Weinmann, both owned by the Wienbibliothek, suffered massive losses. Items that were demonstrably in the library as part of Weinmann's estate surfaced in a Viennese antiquarian shop as early as 1993, where they were purchased by the Canadian Schubert scholar Rita Steblin. Steblin (for obvious reasons) didn't notify the police, but informed the head of the library, who, however, took no legal action, preferring instead to resolve everything behind the scenes, putatively in the interest of a principle of "confidentiality" that is apparently still in force today. The head of the music collection was suspended and eventually quietly dismissed into retirement. The police and the state prosecutor were not involved. The losses from Weinmann's estate included not only irreplaceable treasures that once belonged to the Krasser family, such as the prayer books of Schubert's sister Therese Schneider and her daughter, but also many other valuable books and a lock of Franz Schubert's hair that had been given to his half-brother Andreas Schubert on the occasion of the composer's first exhumation in 1863

The two prayer books originating from Schubert's sister and her daughter Therese Krasser were part of Weinmann's valuable collection and came to the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek in 1976, together with all the other material that Weinmann had bequeathed to the library. In the inventory of Weinmann's library, titled Bibliotheca Schubertiana (Vienna 1968) these prayer books appear under "Andenken aus dem Nachlass K r a s s e r" (keepsakes from the Krasser estate), right after the lock of Schubert's hair that was stolen from the Wienbibliothek and never recovered from the exhibition premises in Schloss Atzenbrugg.

Just like several other books from Weinmann's estate, the two precious prayer books did not make it into the holdings of the library. They vanished, and all my efforts to find them in the library's catalog in 1999 and order them were unsuccessful. In the course of an internal investigation their loss (and the loss of many other books from Weinmann's estate) was later blamed on "an erroneous sale of supposed doublets" by the former head of the archive Herwig Würtz. Thus, all the embarrassing losses and thefts that the library suffered during the 1990s could be quietly resolved without the involvement of the police or the state prosecutor. 

In autumn of 2012, the lost prayer books from the Krasser family suddenly turned up again. To round up a sad story with a bizarre twist, the two books were presented on the website of the Wienbibliothek as "Neuerwerbungen September 2012" (new acquisitions).

There is no reason to assume that the library is now presenting books as "new acquisition" that had already been it its possession since 1976, when Ignaz Weinmann bequeathed his collection to the City of Vienna. I have made no enquiries yet, as to who sold (or donated) the two prayer books to the Wienbibliothek. I take it as a fact that the Wienbibliothek is now buying back valuable items that already belonged to this library almost forty years ago.

---

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2013. All rights reserved.

"The Johann Strauss Odyssey" – A Few Necessary Notes

And now for something completely different.

Because Silvia Mattl-Wurm's reply to Frieder Reininghaus' article, "Johann Strauss auf Irrfahrt" [The Johann Strauss Odyssey] (in: Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, 65, vol. 9, Vienna 2010, 45) leaves important things unsaid, I wish to add a few points from my perspective as a Schubert scholar and former president of the International Franz Schubert Institute. While the current efforts of the Wienbibliothek to recover stolen Strauss sketches are laudible, it has become evident that these sketches are only the tip of an iceberg, and that the public has not yet been informed of the full extent of the losses suffered by the music collection of the Wienbibliothek (at that time the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek) before the retirement of Ernst Hilmar as head of that collection in 1994. In particular, the estates of Otto Erich Deutsch and Ignaz Weinmann, both owned by the Wienbibliothek, suffered massive losses. Items that were demonstrably in the library as part of Weinmann's estate, surfaced in a Viennese antiquarian shop as early as 1993, where they were purchased by Canadian Schubert scholar Rita Steblin. Steblin (basically stepping into the role of concealer) did not notify the police, but informed the head of the library, who, however, took no legal action, preferring instead to resolve everything behind the scenes, putatively in the interest of a principle of "confidentiality" which is still in force today. The head of the music collection (Hilmar) was fired, and eventually, quietly dismissed into retirement. The police and the state prosecutor were never notified. The losses from Weinmann's estate included not only irreplaceable treasures that once belonged to the Krasser family, such as the prayer books of Schubert's sister Therese Schneider and her daughter, but also many other valuable books and a lock of Franz Schubert's hair that had been given to his half-brother Andreas Schubert on the occasion of the composer's first exhumation in 1863. Material from the estate of O. E. Deutsch in the Wienbibliothek also surfaced in the Viennese antiquarian trade. Gitta Deutsch, daughter of the great Schubert scholar, unsuccessfully tried to awaken the media's interest in these dubious transactions. In 1998, I informed City Councilor Peter Marboe of the alleged thefts – but got no response. In 2000, I informed the then head of the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek Dr. Walter Obermaier and his deputy Dr. Gerhard Renner that the missing lock of Schubert's hair from Ignaz Weinmann's estate was then on exhibition at the museum of the Schubert Memorial Site and Museum Atzenbrugg "on loan from Ernst Hilmar" (falsely dated to 1828, the year of Schubert's death).

Schubert's lock of hair (stolen by Ernst Hilmar from Ignaz Weinmann's estate) on exhibition at the Schubert Memorial Site and Museum in Atzenbrugg

I further informed Dr. Obermaier of several other facts, strongly suggesting that the lost inventory of lenders to the 1897 Schubert exhibition, likewise owned by the library, had also been stolen. This handwritten register had been described in 1995 in the journal Schubert durch die Brille (edited at the time by Ernst Hilmar) as "having turned up in private hands" (Schubert durch die Brille 14, 106). In fact, a copy of a page from this handwritten book had been inserted arbitrarily by Hilmar into one of my articles (Schubert durch die Brille 24, 2000, 46). Rita Steblin had seen this precious, leather-bound manuscript in 1993, in the office of the International Franz Schubert Institute (IFSI) in the Kettenbrückengasse, where Hilmar had told her that it could not be given an IFSI stamp, because it "belongs to the Stadtbibliothek".

Ernst Hilmar's office in the Kettenbrückengasse in December 1993. The caption was written by Rita Steblin. The arrow on the left points to the lost register of lenders to the 1897 Schubert exhibition (photograph by Rita Steblin).

The management of the Wienbibliothek began to search for this inventory (which never had been given a shelfmark), but the book could not be found. The police were not notified and no attempt was ever made to recover the stolen lock of hair from Atzenbrugg. Dr. Renner merely asked me every now and then in a humorous tone: "Have you been to Atzenbrugg lately?" On 6 May 2009, I informed Dr. Silvia Mattl-Wurm of the theft of the lock of Schubert's hair and gave her copies of all my documents related to this unfortunate case which had now grown far beyond the realm of "speculation and premature judgment". Following this conversation – long before the Strauss affair had become public – no attempt whatsoever was undertaken by the people in charge "to retrieve the stolen material without damage to its collections with the help of the authorities" (as Mattl-Wurm put it in her statement in the Österreichische Musikzeitschrift). Mattl-Wurm's reply epitomized the deplorably passive behavior of the Wienbibliothek and its motives: "If we report the theft, it would be more embarrassing for the library than for Hilmar!" If in this affair the police eventually retrieve the stolen goods, we can safely assume that they were not alerted to the theft by the Wienbibliothek. It was certainly no action taken by the representatives of the Wienbibliothek (now spun as cunning finesse) that led to the resurfacing of a few of the stolen Strauss manuscripts. It was the stupidity of the thief Ernst Hilmar and his accomplice Werner Bodendorff, and a lucky coincidence, involving the chairman of the German Johann Strauss Society, Ralph Braun. The whole affair is reminiscent of one involving the Vienna City Archive, where between 1969 and 1999, nine leaves were stolen from Beethoven's probate file. Owing to the lack of an inventory, it is not even known what exactly went missing and nobody ever reported the theft to the police.

See also: Response to Walburga Litschauer's essay "Perspektiven der Schubert-Forschung in Österreich", (Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, 65, vol. 9, Vienna 2010, pp. 46-49)

Updated: 10 May 2025