Decision no. 1006/2013

The applicant, as the legal successor of her father Friedrich B., requested the in rem restitution of two properties, of each of which he had owned one quarter share on 12 March 1938, and of a property owned by a corporation (Aktiengesellschaft, AG), of which Friedrich B. had been a shareholder.

When the National Socialists assumed power in Austria, Friedrich B. had owned one quarter of each of the two properties in Vienna, Hernals and was a minority shareholder in the Hotel-AG Metropole. He, his wife and his daughter were considered Jewish in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and he had been interned in Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps before being able to flee to Palestine with his family.

Both properties in Hernals were privately-owned on the cut off day pursuant to the Entschädigungsfondsgesetz (“General Settlement Fund Law” – GSF Law) and therefore did not constitute publicly-owned property pursuant to the GSF Law. As such, the application was to be rejected with regard to these two properties.

The property upon which the Hotel Metropole was situated was owned on 12 March 1939 by the Hotel-AG Metropole. Friedrich B. held 4.25 % of the share capital of this corporation. The property and Friedrich B.’s shares were confiscated by the Secret State Police. The Hotel-AG Metropole was deleted from the trade register on 15 June 1939. From 1938, the former hotel was used as the headquarters of the Secret State Police Head Office Vienna. It was completely destroyed in early 1945. In fall 1950, the Restitution Commission Vienna ruled that the heirs of Friedrich B., who had since passed away, were to be restituted his shares. On 7 July 1953 the ownership title to the property was recorded in the land register for the re-established Hotel-AG Metropole. In the following years, partial areas of the property were partitioned off and assigned to the register of communal property and, in the 1960s, a residential building with privately-owned apartments was built on the remainder of the property.

As the assets of a corporation belong to the corporation itself and must therefore be treated separately from the assets of the shareholders, Friedrich B. had not owned the property (or a share thereof) in 1938 as defined by the GSF Law. The application for in rem restitution of the property therefore had to be rejected.