Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance


The Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance was established in 1963. Its main topics deal with research concerning resistance and persecution from 1938 until 1945, exile, Nazi crimes, right-wing extremism after 1945, and victims' reparations.
Its main seat is located in the former town hall of Vienna on Wipplingerstraße.
WWW Official Site𝕏 doew_at

History

The Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance was founded on February 11, 1963, by,, Paul Schärf, and, former members of the Austrian resistance, victims of NS-persecution, and committed scholars from the sciences and humanities. The late foundation 18 years after the end of World War II is explained by the hostile political and social environment that existed in Austria in the postwar years, which was still dominated by participants of the World War and former Nazis. Resistance was long seen as an act of cowardice, treason and murder.
A landmark in the development of the center was the establishment of the DÖW Foundation in 1983, which is supported by the Austrian Federal Government, the City of Vienna, and the DÖW Society, thus putting the center on a sound financial footing. From its modest beginnings, when work was carried out mainly by idealistic victims of Fascism and later by a qualified younger staff, the center has developed into an authoritative institution, respected in Austria and abroad. The focal points of the center's broad range of tasks can be summarized as follows:

Activities

The activity of the center encompasses the following areas:
  • Collecting and archiving relevant source material and its scientific evaluation; publications
  • Managing archive and library; advising or supervising students, pupils, journalists, and other visitors
  • Managing the highly valuable Oral History-collection and the extensive databases created in recent years
  • Informing the younger generation and adults about the crimes of National Socialism by compiling teaching material for schools, organizing groups to visit the DÖW and its permanent exhibition, providing victims of Nazism with opportunities to talk in schools, offering courses at university, etc.
  • Updating the center's homepage www.doew.at with details of events, the presentation of projects and their findings, book reviews, current news on the extreme right-wing scene; servicing the databases mentioned above.

Criticism

DÖW is criticized for overstepping the mission for which it was originally founded and instead engaging in political campaigning of a distinctly 'anti-fascist' character. Instead of doing historic research on Nazism, it is assuming a mission of fighting contemporary 'right-wing extremism', by which term it understands anything that runs counter to a hermetic left-liberal world view. For some time now, the fight against ‘right-wing extremism’ as understood in this way has been directed not only against the right-wing populist FPÖ, which has been the leading party in opinion polls since the early 2020s and has also been the strongest faction in the National Council since 2024, but also against the Catholic Church.
In its The “Right-wing Extremism Report 2024” published by the DÖW was met with criticism and incomprehension because it named individuals who, for example, advocated for the protection of life or took a critical stance on same-sex marriage, positions that stem directly from Christian moral teaching and are shared by many Austrians, and do not indicate any particular affinity with National Socialism, as hallmarks of “right-wing extremist” beliefs. The ‘Right-wing Extremism Report 2025’ wisely refrained from naming names, but it once again shows a tendency to denounce Christian-conservative socio-political positions and associate them with National Socialism.