Decision no. 1057/2014

Application

 

Applicant, Status

Catherine S., Rejection

Public owner

Stadt Wien

Type of property

immovable

Real estate in

KG Katzelsdorf (23415), Katzelsdorf, Niederösterreich | show on map
KG Inzersdorf (01803), Wien, Wien | show on map
KG Neuwaldegg (01404), Wien, Wien | show on map
KG Innere Stadt (01004), Wien, Wien | show on map
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Decision

 

Number

1057/2014

Date

14 May 2014

Reasons

In rem restitution already granted after 1945
Outside the jurisdiction of the Arbitration Panel or the scope of application of the GSF Law
No ownership 1938-1945

Type

substantive

Decision in anonymous form

Press release

Press Release Decision No. 1057/2014

Vienna and Lower Austria
On 14 May 2014, the Arbitration Panel for In Rem Restitution rejected an application for in rem restitution of several properties in Vienna and Lower Austria. One property, a partial area of which was owned by the City of Vienna, had been seized from the previous owners under National Socialism and restituted in 1948. With regard to the remaining properties, they were either not under public ownership or the applicant was not the legal successor of the previous owners.

The applicant is a granddaughter of the businessman Arthur K. and his wife Sofie. Until 1938, Arthur K. had run a well-known silk trading company in Vienna and had founded a silk factory which was run by his sons. He also owned a residential building in which his business premises were also located, in Vienna Innere Stadt, from where he operated his silk trading business. Sofie K. had also owned a small villa in Vienna, Neuwaldegg.

Arthur K. and his family were considered Jewish as defined by the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. The trading company and the silk factory were put under provisional administration and sold in November of the same year. The residential building with business premises in Vienna, Innere Stadt, was sold to the Deutsche Reichspost in 1940 by a trustee appointed by the National Socialist Property Transaction Office. In the same year Sofie K.’s property in Neuwaldegg was sold by a trustee to the Wa. spouses.

Arthur and Sofie K. fled to the USA in 1939, where Arthur K. died in 1941. Her four children also managed to flee to the USA and Australia where they survived the Holocaust.

After 1945, Sofie K. filed an application for restitution of the property in Neuwaldegg, which was granted in 1948. In 1954 she sold the property, and a residential estate was built on it in the 1970s. On 17 January 2001, the cut off day pursuant to the General Settlement Fund Law, the property was owned by over 50 private owners. . However, in 1969 a partial area had been transferred into public property in order to widen the road, which was owned by the City of Vienna.

The property formerly belonging to Arthur K. in Vienna, Innere Stadt, was restituted to his children in 1960. On 17 January 2001 it was owned by a private insurance company.

Therefore, although both properties had been seized during the Nazi era on grounds of persecution, they had been restituted in their entirety after 1945. In one case, the requirement of publicly-owned property was not met either. As such, the Arbitration Panel rejected the applications for these two properties.

A one-sixth share of a third requested property in Vienna, Innere Stadt – on which the residential building where Arthur and Sofie K. lived until 1939 was situated – had been owned by Heinrich K., a half-brother of Arthur K., who had had to sell his share in the property in 1940. He was murdered in Theresienstadt in 1942. In 1945, his heirs, among them the children of Arthur K., concluded a restitution settlement with the buyer. This property was also privately-owned on the cut off day and the application for this property also had to be rejected for this reason.

With regard to other requested properties in Inzersdorf and Katzelsdorf, in the District of Wiener Neustadt, the applicant had not been eligible to file an application: the former had been owned by a Kommanditgesellschaft (“limited commercial partnership”) in 1938; its partners had included the widow of one of Arthur K.’s brothers and their son and its legal successor was a private company which still exists today. The latter was owned by Stephan and Erwin K., who were probably distant relations of Arthur K. However, there was no indication that the applicant would have been their heir.

For use by media; not legally binding upon the Arbitration Panel for In Rem Restitution.
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