Culture Prize 2025 awarded to Ernst Mitmannsgruber and Robert Hofstadler

May 28th, 2026

On May 28, 2026, Ernst Mitmannsgruber and Robert Hofstadler were awarded the 2025 Culture Prize by the municipality of St. Georgen/Gusen, following a proposal by Prof. Rudolf Haunschmied, co-founder of the Gusen Memorial Committee.

The municipality of St. Georgen thus recognizes not only their years of dedication to the renovation and preservation of the ruins of Spielberg Castle in the neighboring municipality of Langenstein, but above all their fundamentally important research and scholarly contributions as local historians in the last years, particularly in connection with the archaeological excavations carried out around 1942 by concentration camp inmates in the vicinity of the Gusen concentration camps.

This extensive research effort was a significant contribution to the content of the exhibition "Resistance-Death-Survival," currently on display at the House of Remembrance in St. Georgen. It has also yielded very important new scholarly insights into more than 3,400 years of history in the St. Georgen-Gusen-Langenstein region, as well as into the history of the former Gusen concentration camp complex.

We are deeply grateful to the two award recipients for their years of research and offer them herewith our warmest congratulations once again.

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