Decision no. 939/2013

In 1938, Otto and Katharina N., the grandparents of the applicant, owned a property with a residential building, in which they ran a general store, and another property with a brick kiln on which the lime required for producing bricks was degraded. Both properties were situated in the Municipality of Immendorf in the District of Hollabrunn. Following Otto N.’s deportation to Dachau during the course of the November pogrom of 1938 due to his Jewish origins, the N. spouses sold both properties and fled in April 1939 to South America.

In 1948 the N. spouses claimed restitution of the properties pursuant to the Drittes Rückstellungsgesetz (“Third Restitution Act”). A part of the residential building was restituted in the same year; another part was restituted in 1952. In contrast, the property with the brick kiln was not restituted as the Restitution Commission Vienna arrived at the conclusion that the requested property would also have been sold if the National Socialists had not assumed power as an arrangement in this regard had already existed prior to 12 March 1938.

In July 1957 the N. family returned to Austria and again took up residence in Immendorf. Following a land consolidation procedure in 1955, on 17 January 2001 a partial area (which cannot be exactly determined) of the former brick kiln was owned by the Agricultural and Forestry Administration – Hydraulic Engineering of the Republic of Austria.

In its juridical appraisal, the Arbitration Panel firstly examined whether the application pertained to publicly-owned property as defined by the GSF Law. As this was not the case for the majority of the requested properties, it rejected the application for restitution. As the application had been submitted four years after the expiry of the deadline for applications regarding property owned by the Republic of Austria and was therefore late, the Arbitration Panel dismissed the application for in rem restitution of the partial area owned by the Republic of Austria.