A member of the Nazi Party, he ensured significant funding for the museum after the Anschluss and spent much of it adding eight new areas dealing with such topics as eugenics and racial hygiene.
[1] He played a leading role in helping to popularise "Rassenkunde" in Austria and was also a departmental head in the Ahnenerbe (and thus entitled to officer rank in the Schutzstaffel).
[2] In late 1939, Tratz was one of a number of leading scholars chosen by Wolfram Sievers to be sent to Poland in order to help plunder the country's museums.
[4] After the Second World War Tratz was interned for two years before being adjudged a "lesser activist" and then was allowed to return to his role as director of the Haus der Natur in 1949.
[2] Whilst many of the exhibits he had plundered were returned to Warsaw plaster casts of supposed ideal types of Nordic and Jewish "races" remained on display into the 1990s.