ÖSTERREICH	AUSTRIA
Bundesland: Niederösterreich	Lower Austria
Bezirk: Sankt Pölten

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Mauerbach is situated at an elevation of 282 m in the district Wien-Umgebung just west of Austria's capital, Vienna. The municipality has a population of 3,650 (2011) and consists of the cadastral districts of Hainbuch and Mauerbach.

Mauerbach is well-known for its former Carthusian monastery, which was founded in 1314 by Duke Friedrich I of Austria and Styria (Friedrich der Schöne, ‘the Fair’). The Baroque charterhouse, one of the most important of its kind in Austria, was created in the 17th century. In 1782 the monastery was dissoloved by Emperor Joseph II. From 1784 onwards the complex was used as a home for old and sick people, run by the city of Vienna. In 1944–1945 it served as an ancillary hospital. After the war it was only used as a shelter for homeless people (until 1960) and began to fall into dereliction. Since 1984 renovation works are carried out by the Bundesdenkmalamt (Federal Agency for Monuments) which also uses the site for its workshops for preservation of historic buildings.

For many years after World War II, the former monastery also served as a depot for pieces of art that had been looted by the Nazis and were considered ‘ownerless’ by the Austrian government. In 1969, after pressure by Simon Wiesenthal, a list of about 8,000 pieces was made public by the Bundesdenkmalamt; 1,231 pieces were claimed back, but only 72 were actually restituted, in 1984 further 22 were restituted. In 1995 it was decided to hand over the remaining works to the Jewish religious community so that it could be auctioned; the money was to be used for survivors of the Holocaust in need. In 1996 the remaining pieces were auctioned. However, one of the members of the Jewish religious community, who had been part of the committee to organize the auction, revealed in 2008 that many of the works actually carried their former owners’ marks or labels so that possibly many more of the works could have been attributed to rightful owners or descendants of the former owners.

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauerbach, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartause_Mauerbach, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restitution_(Österreich)]