Decision no. 842/2012

At the time of the National Socialist assumption of power in Austria, the Jewish businessman David G., who had resided with his family in a rented apartment in Alsergrund, had owned a 4,558 m² property and a villa situated thereupon in Bad Ischl and a beach hut at the River Baths in Kritzendorf near Vienna.

After David G. had managed to flee with his family on 11 March 1938 via Bratislava and Prague to New York, the villa in Bad Ischl was confiscated as enemy assets for the benefit of the German Reich. It subsequently served as an administrative building of the SS. In 1943, the German Reich sold it to the NSDAP (“National Socialist German Workers’ Party”). David G.’s beach hut at the River Baths in Kritzendorf – to which Jews had in the meantime been refused entry – had to be sold to Karl E. in 1938.

After 1945, both the property in Bad Ischl and the beach hut were restituted to David G. David G. sold the beach hut to Rudolf F. in 1950. In 1959 he sold 935 m² of the property in Bad Ischl to the E. spouses. He sold the remaining 3,623 m² to the Municipality of Bad Ischl.

On 12 March 1938, David G. received a large proportion of the shares in the Swiss corporation S. R. A. The corporation had been the owner of a property in Vienna Leopoldstadt between 1938 and 1945. In 1951, David G. purchased this property, which was inherited by his wife after his death in 1967.

David G.’s brother Filipp G. ran a coffee shop and a cabaret at a property in Vienna, Alsergrund. On 12 March 1938, this property was owned by Gustav von R. Filipp G. had to sell his coffee shop in July 1938 and fled to Italy and later to the USA. The cabaret was closed down.

In its juridical appraisal, the Arbitration Panel held that neither the property in Vienna, Alsergrund nor the property in Vienna, Leopoldstadt had been owned by the G. family in 1938. For this reason, the application was rejected in this regard.

With regard to the beach hut in Kritzendorf, although the Arbitration Panel acknowledged that a seizure of property had occurred, it rejected the application for restitution, as it had not constituted publicly-owned property on the cut off day pursuant to the Entschädigungsfondsgesetz (“General Settlement Fund Law”), 17 January 2001.

The part of the property in Bad Ischl which David G. had sold to the E. spouses, continued to be privately-owned on the cut off day. For this reason the application was also rejected in this regard. The part of the property sold to the Municipality of Bad Ischl was owned on the cut off day by the Municipality of Bad Ischl, which affiliated itself with the proceedings of the Arbitration Panel by municipal council resolution of 21 October 2004. As, however, the entire property had been restituted to David G. after the war, the Arbitration Panel rejected the application in this regard.