Export Holdings

The Export Prohibition Act dates back to 1918. It applied to every work of art except for those by living artists and those who had been dead for fewer than twenty years.
During the Nazi era it became an instrument of art looting, the export prohibition being a preliminary to expropriation. After 1945 the law was also applied to restituted collections.

The Federal Monuments Authority Austria archive has an extensive collection of export documentation as a source for investigation into the confiscation and historical restitution.

Documentation period: 1918 to 1977.
The records consist of:

  1. Export forms
  2. Export files
    The forms and files are classified in chronological order.