turmoil of war were requisitioned by the Allies. Several items, however, also fell victim to theft and looting by the soldiers of the Red Army and the civilian population. In the end, the museum faced the prospect of a complete shutdown. Despite the aforementioned difficulties, reconstruction of the museum already began in 1946 under the direction of Alfred Mell, who proposed what was eventually to become its final name, the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum. The management of the museum at the time received particular support from the Austrian Belvedere Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts. The collection of ship models provided by the Vienna Technical Museum has remained the core attraction of the Marinesaal to this day. During the term of Rudolf Pühringer as director, the museum, now called Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, was solemnly reopened by the Federal Minister for Education, Heinrich Drimmel on 24 June 1955. In the post-war period, the halls of the reopened museum were designed primarily as exhibition areas for trophies (″A cult site and a shrine″). It was not until Johann Christoph Allmayer-Beck became the museum's director in 1965 (through to 1983) that the exhibition areas were comprehensively renovated. The halls for the 16th and 17th century periods, and for the time between 1866 and 1914 were rebuilt and presented in a different design. The purpose was to go beyond the mere display of objects and to scientifically address the topic while thoroughly composing the halls as an artistic synthesis, matching the status of the institution as one of the world's most significant museums. Allmayer-Beck believed that the museum was not a place for maintaining tradition: ″Tradition must be maintained outside - inside, the objective is to make the history of the Austrian and Imperial Army visible - including those often neglected cultural and social elements.″ In September 1998, during the term of Manfried Rauchensteiner as director, the museum opened the Republik und Diktatur hall, which exhibited objects from the period from 1918 until 1945. On 9 December 2008, the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum was awarded the Austrian Museum Quality Seal, a distinction it received again in 2013. Following two years of construction under director Christian Ortner, the hall group on World War I opened its doors to the public in a modernized and redesigned form on 28 June 2014, just in time for the 100th anniversary of the Assassination at Sarajevo. Exhibition The collections of the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum