when Posse himself tried to join in 1933, his application was rejected a year later. He was later accused of having promoted so-called "Degenerate art", and of having Jewish ancestry. In 1938 he was asked to resign as director – a position he had held since 1910 from the age of 31 – but refused, taking a leave of absence instead. He was nevertheless fired, only to be restored to the position on Hitler's orders, possibly through the influence of Haberstock. Although Hitler had favored German and Austrian paintings from the 19th century, Posse's focus was on early German, Dutch, French, and Italian paintings. Posse wrote in his diary that Hitler intended the museum to hold "only the best of all periods from the prehistoric beginnings of art...to the nineteenth century and recent times." Hitler told Posse that he was only to answer to him. The Sonderauftrag not only collected art for the Führermuseum, but also for other museums in the German Reich, especially in the eastern territories. The artworks would have been distributed to these museums after the war. The Sonderauftrag was located in Dresden had approximately 20 specialists attached to it: "curators of paintings, prints, coins, and armor, a librarian, an architect, an administrator, photographers, and restorers." The staff included Robert Oertel and Gottfried Reimer of the Dresden Gallery, Friedrich Wolffhardt, an SS officer, as curator of books and autographs; Leopold Rupprecht of the Kunsthistorisches Museum as curator for armour, and Fritz Dworschak, also of that museum, as curator for coins. Under Hans Posse On 24 July 1939, Martin Bormann, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess's assistant, informed Josef Bürckel, who Hitler had appointed to head the administration of Austria after the Anschluss, that all artwork which was confiscated was to be made available for examination by Posse or by Hitler personally. Although the order did not originally include the artworks taken earlier from the Vienna Rothschilds, by October Posse had managed to get those included in his remit as well. In the late summer and autumn of that year, Posse traveled a number of times to Vienna to the Central Depot for confiscated art in the Neue Burg to pick out art pieces for the Linz museum, and in October he gave to Bormann, for Hitler's approval, the list of artworks confiscated from the Rothschilds which Posse had selected for the museum. These included works by Hans Holbein the