Swastika-shaped cookie cutter

Today’s Upper Austria was liberated in 1945 by American and Soviet troops. It was split into two occupation zones within which democratic structures were started to be established. However, this was not the “new beginning” it is often referred to. Those everyday political objects that survived the end of Nazi rule demonstrate this. They show how symbols of Nazism were incorporated into private life by most people. This omnipresence was hardly challenged after 1945. Especially in the private sphere, these relics of the past often remained undisputed, as this cookie cutter demonstrates.

The owner of this cookie cutter might have still used it for Christmas baking in 1944, before hiding it away. In a box with about 80 other, non-political, cookie cutters it survived until it was donated to the state museum of Upper Austria.