“Gauforen”(regional party forums) were monumental administrative complexes of the Nazi state, planned and constructed from 1937 onward. Rather than reflecting historically evolved city centers, they were intended to symbolize the power and centralization of the “Führer state.”

In addition to the “Gauforum”—with its hall and assembly square, which was mandated throughout the German Reich—further buildings were also planned for Salzburg. The designs for the site on the Kapuzinerberg were entrusted to the Salzburg architects Otto Strohmayr and Otto Reitter, whose careers were closely linked to National Socialism. Strohmayr in particular belonged to the circle of architects around Albert Speer and was included on the regime’s so-called “God-Gifted List” (Gottbegnadeten-Liste) of artists considered indispensable to the Nazi state. Due to the outbreak and course of the war, the Salzburg Gauforum was never built.

Hans Sedlmayr joined the Nazi Party in 1930. After the party was banned in Austria in June 1933, he resigned his membership, though he requested that he “continue to be regarded as sympathetic to the party”. He came to an arrangement with the Austrofascist regime and received a professorship in art history at the University of Vienna in 1936. In 1938, he rejoined the Nazi Party and hailed the Anschluss of Austria as an “event of fundamental importance”. In 1939, he gave a lecture on urban planning in Vienna, in which he advocated the redevelopment of Leopoldstadt – a district inhabited primarily by Jewish people – into a “Hitlerstadt” (Hitler city). He must have been aware that this plan would involve the deportation of Jews. Furthermore, in at least one lecture, he called for the denunciation of opponents of the regime.