In 1994 – even before the adoption of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art and the passing of the Austrian Act on Art Restitution (Kunstrückgabegesetz) – an expropriated collection of books and journals could be identified in the Departmental Library of European Ethnology. For example, there are monographs from the library of the Katholische Universitätsverein Salzburg – a library, that had been confiscated by the Gestapo and whose collection had been unlawfully incorporated into the Forschungs- und Lehrgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V. There is also a collection of journals from the Anthropos-Bibliothek that was found in 1994 as a result of searches in literature and archives.

After the autopsy of the approximately 3,600 volumes of the historic holdings of the University of Vienna’s Departmental Library of European Ethnology, which was carried out in 2005, the questionable holdings were cataloged. In the end, this resulted in four restitutions (99 volumes), six entries into the Kunstdatenbank (32 volumes) and the categorization of 26 cases (65 volumes) as legally acquired.

This article will focus on the exemplary case of librarian Rudolf Carl Panzl-Stein, one of five ongoing investigations. The basis of the study is a publication with an owner’s mark, which serves as a starting point to illustrate the methodology of Nazi provenance research. The emphasis is on both the origin of the object, as well as on the person who originally owned it. Panzl-Stein's story extends beyond his professional activities, encompassing personal aspects such as his final resting place at a Jewish cemetery. This discovery led to further inquiries, although ultimately, no restitution was made in this case.