Decision no. 1161/2016

Application

 

Applicant, Status

Jacqueline S., Rejection
Jacques S., Rejection

Public owner

Stadt Wien

Type of property

immovable

Real estate in

KG Fischamend Dorf (05203), Fischamend, Niederösterreich | show on map

Decision

 

Number

1161/2016

Date

15 Mar 2016

Reason

In rem restitution already granted after 1945

Type

substantive

Decision in anonymous form

Press release

Press Release Decision No. 1161/2016

Lower Austria, Fischamend Dorf

On 15 March 2016, the Arbitration Panel for In Rem Restitution rejected two applications for in rem restitution of a property that had been owned by the City of Vienna on 17 January 2001.

The holdings of the requested property formed part of a 400 hectare estate in eastern Lower Austria that in 1938 was owned by the Jewish industrial magnate Dr. Arnold S. The estate was used for agricultural and silvicultural purposes and in addition to fields and pastures also comprised extensive woodland and floodplain forests.

Following the Anschluss of Austria to the German Reich Dr. Arnold S. was arrested; in May 1938 he and his wife succeeded in fleeing the country. The couple first fled to Czechoslovakia and then later to France.

Dr. Arnold S. entered into negotiations with both the German Settlement Society, which wanted to acquire the estate as replacement land, and the Reich Forestry Administration, which was interested in acquiring the estate’s floodplain forests as hunting grounds. However, when these negotiations broke down, in 1939 the estate was expropriated for the German Settlement Society in exchange for financial compensation in accordance with the provisions of the Gesetz über die Landbeschaffung für Zwecke der Wehrmacht (“Act on Land Procurement for Purposes of the Armed Forces”).

In 1944, Dr. Arnold S. died in France. In 1948, his wife and three children were certified as his heirs. They had survived the Holocaust in foreign exile.

Ida S. and her children subsequently requested the restitution of the estate, which continued to exist as an independent agricultural operation and had not been confiscated despite being situated in the Soviet Occupied Zone. In 1956 the restitution claimants concluded two settlements with the Republic of Austria, which had become the owner of the estate’s properties due to the State Treaty of 1955 and had agreed that the estate had been seized in 1939. In accordance with these settlements the estate, its area identical, passed into the ownership of the heirs of Dr. S. The claims which were not offset against each other at the time were settled in 1958.

Ida S. and her children sold the properties between 1956 and 1958, mainly to local farmers. During the course of these sales, in 1957 the 59 hectare property subject of the present applications was created for several property parcels from the estate’s holdings. The City of Vienna acquired this property in 1977.

As such, the holdings of the property subject of the applications have already been restituted in the past. In cases such as this the Arbitration Panel has repeatedly ruled that it cannot recommend a renewed restitution and rejected the applications for in rem restitution.

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