Decision no. 1/2003

The claim for restitution submitted to the Arbitration Panel referred to three properties which according to the opinion of the applicants, had been confiscated by the German Reich as well as by the Republic of Austria. The properties located in the area of the Lower Austrian community Allensteig used to be owned by the non-Jewish couple G. and had been acquired by the German Wehrmacht in 1938 for the purpose of constructing the military training area “Döllersheim”. With the proceeds of the sale the sellers acquired assets in Vienna, a real estate in the Alsergrund as well as a canned-vegetable-plant. On account of a restitution procedure in 1956, the real estate had to be restituted to the original owners since it represented confiscated property, which had been transferred to the Volkswohlfahrt (National Socialist Welfare Service).

In return, the married couple G. brought forward an application for restitution of the properties, which had been acquired by the Wehrmacht for the military training area. The applicants for restitution brought forward that the sale at that time was carried out as a coercive measure under the threat of being dispossessed and “in connection with the preparation and realization of the National Socialist war of aggression”. Finally, the procedure was carried out by the Financial Directorate for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland according to the Third State Treaty Implementation Act and was concluded with a rejection of the application for restitution. In its decision of 1959, the Financial Directorate for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland pointed out that a political persecution of the applicants for restitution had not been asserted and that such a persecution was not apparent in the facts.

In its juridical appraisal, the Arbitration Panel had to examine whether political reasons for persecution had been decisive for the sale of the real estate to the German Wehrmacht in 1938. The applicant P., among other things, refers to an expert’s opinion of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, according to which the establishment of the military training area and the connected resettlement measures were to be qualified as “an act of National Socialist politics and persecution”. Concerning this, the Arbitration Panel states that the construction of the military training area as such does not represent a persecution as defined by the General Settlement Fund Law. The connected measures – acquirement of real estate and resettlement – can be generally categorized as a military objective. However, they do not represent an intention of person-related persecution.

Equally, the documented handling of the real-estate acquirements, which in the married couple G.’s case were performed by the Deutsche Ansiedlungsgesellschaft (German Settlement Agency) hired by the Wehrmacht, does not allow to assume acts of persecution. Contrary to discriminative sale modalities during the National Socialist rule, especially concerning Jewish persons, the sale of the real estate was performed free of costs and the purchase price was transferred to the sellers so that it was freely disposable for the purchase of further assets.