Although many of the buildings erected from the 1950s onwards are not very attractive architecturally, they do house interesting works of art. From 1949 there was a project in Austria Art on the building. In the case of buildings realised by the state, 2% of the total expenditure was to flow into artistic design. The implementation of the building law and thus also the administration of the budgets was then, as now, the responsibility of the federal states. Artists were to be financially supported through these public commissions. The idea first emerged in 1919 during the Weimar Republic and was continued by the National Socialists from 1934.

Austria took up art in architecture after the war to design public spaces as part of the reconstruction programme. The public sector, which replaced the aristocracy and bourgeoisie as the property developers of past centuries, was under massive financial pressure. Despite this, the housing projects, which were primarily focussed on function, were not intended to be completely unadorned.

The Tyrolean artists entrusted with the design of the artworks were selected in competitions. The best known of these was Max Weiler, perhaps the most prominent artist in Tyrol in the post-war period, who was responsible for the frescoes in the Theresienkirche on the Hungerburg in Innsbruck, among other things. Other prominent names include Helmut Rehm (1911 - 1991), Walter Honeder (1906 - 2006), Fritz Berger (1916 - 2002) and Emmerich Kerle (1916 - 2010).

The biographies of the artists were not only compiled by the Gewerbeschule Innsbruck (Note: today's HTL Trenkwalderstraße) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna as a common denominator, but also characterised by the shared experience of National Socialism. Fritz Berger had lost his right arm and one eye during the war and had to learn to work with his left hand. Emmerich Kerle was taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna by Josef Müllner, among others, an artist who had made his mark on art history with busts of Adolf Hitler, Siegfried from the Nibelungen saga and the Karl Lueger monument in Vienna, which remains controversial to this day. Kerle served in Finland as a war painter.

Like a large part of the Tyrolean population, politicians, civil servants and artists also wanted peace and quiet after the hard and painful years of war, to let the events of the last few decades sink in.

The works created as part of Kunst am Bau reflect this attitude towards a new moral image. It was the first time that abstract, shapeless art found its way into Innsbruck's public space, albeit only in an uncritical context. Fairy tales, legends and religious symbols were popular motifs that were immortalised on the sgraffiti, mosaics, murals and statues. Art was also intended to create a new awareness and image of what was considered typically Austrian. In 1955, one in two Austrians still considered themselves to be German. The various motifs depict leisure activities, clothing styles and ideas of the social order and social norms of the post-war period. Women were often depicted in traditional costumes and dirndls, men in lederhosen. The conservative ideal of gender roles was incorporated into the art. Hard-working fathers, well-behaved wives who looked after the home and hearth and children who were eager to learn at school were the ideal image until well into the 1970s. A life straight out of a film with Peter Alexander.

The reality, however, was different:

"The emergency situation jeopardises the comfort of the home. It eats away at the roots of joie de vivre. No one suffers more than the woman whose happiness is to see a contented, cosy family circle around her. What a strain on mental strength is required by the daily gruelling struggle for a little shopping, the hardship of queuing, the disappointment of rejections and refusals and the look of discouragement on the faces of loved ones tormented by deprivation."

What is in the Tiroler Tageszeitung was only part of everyday reality. In addition to material hardship, society was characterised by the collective trauma of war. The adults of the 1950s were products of the education of the interwar period and National Socialism. Men who had fought at the front could only talk about their horrific experiences in certain circles as war losers, while women usually had no forum at all to process their fears and worries. Domestic violence and alcoholism were widespread. Teachers, police officers, politicians and civil servants often came from National Socialist supporters, who did not simply disappear with the end of the war, but were merely hushed up in public.

The problem with this strategy of suppression was that no one took responsibility for what had happened, even if there was great enthusiasm and support for National Socialism, especially at the beginning. There was hardly a family that did not have at least one member with a less than glorious history between 1933 and 1945. Shame about what had happened since 1938 and in Austria's politics over the years was mixed with the fear of being treated as a war culprit by the occupying powers - the USA, Great Britain, France and the USSR - in a similar way to 1918. A climate arose in which no one, neither those involved nor the following generation, spoke about what had happened. For a long time, this attitude prevented people from coming to terms with what had happened since 1933.

The myth of Austria as the first victim of National Socialism, which only began to slowly crumble with the Waldheim affair in the 1980s, was born. Police officers, teachers, judges - they were all kept in their jobs despite their political views. Society needed them to keep going.

An example of the generously spread cloak of oblivion with a strong connection to Innsbruck is the life of the doctor Burghard Breitner (1884-1956). Breitner grew up in a well-to-do middle-class household. The Villa Breitner at Mattsee was home to a museum about the German nationalist poet Josef Viktor Scheffel, who was honoured by his father.

After leaving secondary school, Breitner decided against a career in literature in favour of studying medicine. He then decided to do his military service and began his career as a doctor. In 1912/13 he served as a military doctor in the Balkan War. In 1914, he was sent to the Eastern Front, where he was taken prisoner of war by the Russians. As a doctor, he sacrificially cared for his comrades in the prison camp. It was not until 1920 that he was recognised as a hero and "Angel of Siberia" return to Austria from the prison camp.

He began his career at the University of Innsbruck in 1932. In 1938, Breitner was faced with the problem that, due to his paternal grandmother's Jewish background, he had to take the "Great Aryan proof" could not provide. However, thanks to his good relationship with the Rector of Innsbruck University and important National Socialists, he was ultimately able to continue working at the university hospital. During the Nazi regime, Breitner was responsible for forced sterilisations and "Voluntary emasculation", even though he probably did not carry out any of the operations personally.

After the war, the "Angel of Siberia" managed to wriggle through the denazification process with some difficulty. In 1951, he was nominated as a candidate for the federal presidential election as a member of the VDU, a political organisation for former National Socialists. Breitner became Rector of the University of Innsbruck in 1952. After his death, the city of Innsbruck dedicated a grave of honour to him at Innsbruck West Cemetery. In Reichenau, a street is dedicated to him in the immediate vicinity of the site of the former concentration camp.

If you walk through the city carefully, you will find many of the works of art still visible today on houses in Pradl and Wilten. The mixture of unattractive architecture and contemporary works of art from the often suppressed post-war period, long idealised and glorified in films and stories, is well worth seeing. Particularly beautiful examples can be found on the façades in Pacherstraße, Hunoldstraße, Ing.-Thommenstraße, Innrain, the Mandelsbergerstraße vocational school or in the inner courtyard between Landhausplatz and Maria-Theresienstraße.