1955: The State Treaty Painting

For the Viennese Ball of 1937, the painter Robert Fuchs produced portraits of the high-ranking ball guests, which included one of the former Justice Minister, Robert Winterstein. As a representative of the Schuschnigg Government, Winterstein was immediately imprisoned following the “Anschluss” (“annexation”) on March 15, 1938 and murdered at the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1940. While Winterstein was in custody, Robert Fuchs, a long-time illegal Nazi, completed a mural for the main hall of the Wiener Stadtkrug, a meeting spot for illegal Nazis, which depicted the march of the Sturmabteilung (SA, also known as the Brown Shirts or Storm Troopers) during the night of March 11-12, 1938. His most famous work is Die Unterzeichnung des österreichischen Staatsvertrags im Oberen Belvedere 1955 (The Signing of the Austrian State Treaty at Upper Belvedere in 1955), which was commissioned by the federal government. Federal Chancellor Julius Raab, the former Trade Minister of the last Schuschnigg Government, decided on the Robert Fuchs version and against the original design by Sergius Pauser.