History

You can watch the long version of the film "Hans, Emmy and Wolfgang Klocker - Living with Art" by Teresa Andreae on Vimeo. The movie is only available in German.
Please click here to watch the movie.

born in Hall in Tirol, on March 16, 1945, was Dr. Hans and Emmy Klocker’s only child. After passing his A levels at the Reithmanngymnasium grammar school, he studied philosophy and law at the University of Innsbruck, taking his degrees in 1970. He undertook language studies and internships in Ramsgate, England, and in Brussels, and from 1968 went on trips to Africa, India and North America. From 1971, he was manager of the Audi and NSU department at the VOWA car dealership.

Inspired by his teacher Peter Prandstätter, Wolfgang Klocker began taking an interest in the visual arts from 1960 onwards, struck up friendships with Max Weiler, Paul Flora and Reiner Schiestl. After first purchases, in 1966, he began, supported by his mother Emmy Klocker, to invest in contemporary Austrian and Tyrolean art on a considerable scale. As part of a clique of young artists and architects, he was increasingly fascinated by visionary architecture. The plan developed by Charlie Pfeifle and Andreas Egger for an extension to the VOWA car dealership premises could not be realised, though. From 1972 onwards, he regularly exhibited contemporary Tyrolean artists at the premises.

The passionate pilot was killed, together with a female and a male passenger, when his Piaggio P. 149 crashed in the Sarntal valley in South Tyrol, on August 2nd, 1974.

born in Kreith im Stubaital, on June 20, 1909, died in Innsbruck, on March 4, 1981. His father, hailing from an East Tyrolean farming family, was a station master. Hans grew up in poor circumstances, together with six siblings. Two of them died young, two brothers were killed in World War II. In 1943, he married his long-standing girlfriend Emmy Pletka, and in 1945 their son Wolfgang was born.

In 1927, after passing his A levels, Klocker began his law studies at the University of Innsbruck, which he concluded successfully in 1934. After having been dismissed from the Austrian army due to Nazi sympathies, he was refused admission to the Bar. The latter followed only in 1938, after the so-called Anschluss (annexation of Austria through the German Reich). Klocker worked as criminal judge at the Innsbruck regional court, until joining the Wehrmacht in 1940. In 1942, he was badly wounded in an air-to-air encounter. Due to his membership in the SA (Sturmabteilung), the NSDAP (Nazi party) and the NSFK (National Socialist Fliers Corps), a denazification trial was opened against him in 1945, which was closed in 1949. As a career at the Bar was closed to him, Klocker had to reorient himself professionally. From 1946, he worked as a clerk for the Retterwerke car dealership. In 1951, together with Helmut Retter, he founded the VOWA car dealership and had new business premises erected on the Haller Straße for the purpose. After Retter left the company, the business was renamed the VOWA Dr. Klocker & Co OHG car dealership. In March 1974, Klocker handed over management to his son, who died in a plane crash, on August 2nd, 1974.

Interim report Ass.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Wolfgang Meixner (as of 10.11.2022) - only in German.

Rumours about Hans Klocker's Nazi past and about the origin of the foundation's assets, which initially circulated only in small Innsbruck circles, have also been spread by the media since the opening of the Klocker Museum. In the process, three narratives are repeated, in each case without citation of sources or supporting documents. For this reason, the Klocker Foundation has collected all available data and facts in a paper that you can access here. Only in German.

born in Radstadt, on December 24, 1915, died in Innsbruck, on April 19, 2006. She was the illegitimate child of Maria Schultes, married Pletka, grew up in Radstadt and visited commercial school (Handelsschule). Having moved to Innsbruck, in 1938, she met Hans Klocker and was married to him on August 11, 1943. On March 16, 1945, she gave birth to her son Wolfgang.

Emmy Klocker was a member of the Innsbruck Athletiksport-Club and throughout her life was an avid free dancer, swimmer and gymnast. From 1951, as a bookkeeper, she supported Hans Klocker in building the VOWA car dealership. In 1959/60, after the plans of architect Wilhelm Adamer, they built a house in Innsbruck-Arzl and designed an impressive garden there that Emmy added a Japanese garden to in 1994.

After her husband’s death, Emmy Klocker went to court over his legacy and finally had the means to systematically build on the art collection of her son Wolfgang, who had died in 1974. She undertook travels to the great museums and art exhibitions in Europe and the United States, in the nineteen-nineties was a shareholder for a while in Galerie Krinzinger, and in those years also began to set up a sculpture park in Arzl. In 1998, she founded the Komm.Rat Dr. Hans Klocker und Dr. Wolfgang Klocker Foundation, with the primary objective of honouring the memory of her husband and son through acts of charity and the promotion of art, as well as a Dr. Wolfgang Klocker Museum.