Decision no. 818/2011

A villa, built in 1894 with a post office and several tenanted apartments, was situated on the property. In 1938, 92/120 of the property was owned by Karoline K., who was deemed Jewish in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws and persecuted after the Anschluss. She had already acquired the remaining shares of the property prior to 1938 but was not recorded in the land register as their owner. On 2 June 1939, Karoline K. drew up a last will and testament in which she appointed her sister (the grandmother/mother-in-law of the applicants) as her sole heir. In addition she set out a series of property bequests: she bequeathed the requested property to her lawyer Dr. Adelbert St. Karoline K., who was childless and whose husband Theodor had committed suicide after the “November Pogrom” on 12 November 1938, died in Vienna on 12 July 1939.

In 1942, Josefine S., her husband Oscar and her daughter Johanna were deported to Maly Trostinec in present-day Belarus, where they were murdered upon arrival. Fritz S., the son and sole heir of Josefine S., had fled to Sweden in June 1939. Dr. St. sold the shares of the property he had been bequeathed by Karoline K. to Rudolf T. in 1943.

In 1948, Fritz S. filed an application for restitution of the property. In December 1950, the parties to the proceedings, Fritz S. and Rudolf T. concluded a settlement in which one half of the seized shares of the property were restituted to Fritz S. In 1958, Fritz S. and Rudolf T. sold their shares to the Republic of Austria. Having successfully sued the people who were still recorded in the land register as owners of the remaining shares, they also sold these shares to the Republic.

On the cut off day, 17 January 2001, the property was owned by the Austrian Postal Service Corporation, the sole shareholder of which was the Austrian Industrial Holdings Corporation, a company which was wholly-owned by the Republic of Austria. The Republic was also the sole owner of a partial area partitioned off the requested property in 1956.

The Arbitration Panel had to examine whether the settlement concluded in 1950 constituted an “extreme injustice” pursuant to the GSF Law. No indications that the settlement was extremely unjust could be found either in the statements of the applicants or the findings of the Arbitration Panel. Fritz S. had also held restitution proceedings against other legatees of Karoline K., who were, like Dr. St., also not persecuted by the National Socialist regime. As the Restitution Commission decided that these legatees had not been victims of a seizure, the chance of Fritz S.’s restitution application being rejected in the proceedings against Rudolf T. constitutes a plausible explanation for the fact that Fritz S. was content to receive one half of the maximum possible outcome of the proceedings. As no “extreme injustice” existed in line with the GSF Law, the application for in rem restitution was rejected.