Rennweg 10: The Villa Schindler

The Villa Schindler, completed in 1928, was commissioned as a family home by Hugo Schindler (1888-1952), the Innsbruck Jewish brandy manufacturer and owner of the popular Café Schindler in Maria-Theresien-Strasse. It was designed by the prominent Berlin architect Hermann Muthesius (1861-1927) in the English country house style and was one of Muthesius’s last projects.

In 1938, following the “Anschluss” – the incorporation of Austria into the German Reich – and as part of the Nazi policy of “Aryanisation”, Schindler was forced by the Nazi party to sell the villa to the Innsbruck Sparkasse bank for a sum far below the market price. That summer the Nazi district leader of Tyrol-Vorarlberg, Franz Hofer (1902-1975), took possession of the villa as his private residence, and later bought it from the Sparkasse bank.

In 1945, US occupation troops commandeered the house, later handing it over to the French military government. Hugo Schindler, having survived the Holocaust in England, initiated restitution proceedings and the villa was returned to him in 1949. Schindler died in 1952 and his widow Edith (1904-1981) and his son Kurt (1925-2017) sold the property in 1956. In 1990, the Austrian Academy of Sciences acquired the villa as the site for the new Research Institute for Biomedical Ageing Research.

In 2002, extensive internal and external refurbishment was carried out by Helmut Schuch, Vienna, and umfeld architectur, Innsbruck.

In 2013, the Austrian Academy transferred the Institute and ownership of the property to the University of Innsbruck.