Rudolfine Steindling

Rudolfine Steindling (born September 10, 1934 as Rudolfine Eckel, † October 27, 2012 in Tel Aviv ), also known as Rote Fini , was an Austrian entrepreneur and commercial councilor .

Life

After the Second World War, Rudolfine Steindling worked as an accountant in the Vienna branch of the Hungarian Central Wechsel- und Creditbank . There she met her husband - who was then still married to the former resistance fighter Vilma Steindling - the Jewish Holocaust survivor and Resistance fighter Adolf Dolly Steindling (1918–1983), who was the bank's general manager from 1974. Rudolfine Steindling left the bank in 1966 and began her ascent in the corporate empire of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ), of which she was a member from 1959 to 1969. It was considered to be well connected with the Austrian economy and the political elite of the GDR . Even after she left the KPÖ, as a trustee based on Kohlmarkt in Vienna, she managed not only the KPÖ's assets, but also GDR funds.

From 1973 she was the managing director of Novum GmbH , through which the GDR maintained foreign trade relations with the West. As part of the commercial coordination division, the company represented companies such as Bosch , Ciba-Geigy , Voest-Alpine and Steyr Daimler Puch in the GDR and thus generated considerable commission income . In 1978, Steindling took over half of Novum's shares and in 1983 all of the company's shares, which had never been transferred to the SED's own organization , but instead retained the legal form of a GmbH . At the time of German reunification, Novum GmbH had assets of around half a billion DM in accounts in Austria and Switzerland.

Due to trustee agreements in favor of the SED company VOB Zentrag , the Treuhandanstalt took over the administration of Novum GmbH from 1992 . Thereupon Steindling sued the Treuhand successor, the Federal Agency for Unification-Related Special Tasks (BvS), before the Berlin Administrative Court . She stated that she had been the sole shareholder of Novum on behalf of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) since April 1983 and was initially right in the first instance. However, the Berlin Higher Administrative Court ruled in the second instance that Novum GmbH had only been run by Steindling on the pretext of 1983 in order to transfer SED assets abroad and was therefore to be regarded as a legal entity affiliated with the SED.

Before the final legal clarification of the case, Steindling withdrew around half of the credit from the Novum accounts, the whereabouts of which remained partly unclear. In 2009, the BvS concluded an enforcement settlement with Steindling for the payment of 106 million euros plus the proceeds from reserves, so that the Federal Agency received a total of 120 million euros, which was paid out to the new federal states . Steindling last lived in Vienna and Tel Aviv, where she appeared as a donor and patron. Among other things, she supported the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and established the Dolly Steindling Fund in honor of her deceased husband . Steindling lived an extravagant lifestyle and had larger assets - like her villa in Döbling - transferred to her daughter during her lifetime. Rudolfine Steindling died on October 27, 2012 in Tel Aviv; she is buried in the New Israelite Department of the Vienna Central Cemetery .

The Bank Austria , the (then as Länderbank ) was Steindlings bank and complicity was accused with the businesswoman was sentenced for damages in March 2010 by the Superior Court of the Canton of Zurich to pay a total 245 million euros, but on appeal the sentence was initially repealed and the proceedings referred back to the court of first instance. A new ruling by the Zurich Higher Court became final in 2013 after the Swiss Federal Court rejected a complaint, so that Bank Austria had to pay the Federal Republic of Germany EUR 128 million plus 5% interest since 1994.

On August 21, 2014, filed Bundesanstalt für vereinigungsbedingte Sonderaufgaben (BvS) as trustee for the assets of the former East Germany at the Zurich District Court lawsuit against the Swiss bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd. to compensation for vanished East German state assets amounting to the equivalent of EUR 135 million a. This sum is said to have been transferred to the Swiss accounts of Bank Cantrade via Novum GmbH by Rudolfine Steindling. Later Steindling is said to have withdrawn the money and stored it in bank safes, although the final whereabouts are unknown. 2019 Swiss condemned Federal Court in Lausanne , the Bank Julius Baer as the legal successor of the Bank Cantrade to pay 88 million euros plus interest to the Federal Republic. The bank could not invoke the settlement concluded between Steindling and the BvS in 2009.

Documentary film

• The incredible story of the SED million . Monitor broadcast on September 20, 2010.

Web links

• Businesswoman Rudolfine Steindling made 130 million euros disappear without a trace , Profil.at, April 10, 2010
• SED party funds : reviewed and adjusted , Der Spiegel 48/2001, November 26, 2001.
• Obituary Rudolfine Steindling: The clever Rote Fini , TAZ, October 29, 2012.

literature

• Steindling, Dolly , My Youth: A Report. Self-published, Vienna 1990. (Autobiography by Dolly Steindling).
• Klein, Erich , Die Rote Fini. The life of Rudolfine Steindling and the missing GDR millions. Residenz-Verlag, Salzburg 2017.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The German legacy of the Rote Fini . Martin Machowecz. In: zeit.de of December 6, 2012. Retrieved on December 6, 2012.
2. ^ The "red fini": Shimmering career , ORF, December 2, 2011.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Rudolfine Steindling , Der Standard, March 31, 2010.
4. ↑ Steindling, Dolly. In: Susanne Blumesberger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin from the 18th to the 20th century . Volume 3: S – Z, Register. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 1310.
5. ↑ German Bundestag Printed Matter 13/10900 of 28 May 1998th
6. ↑ ^{a b} SED party money : reviewed and adjusted , Der Spiegel 48/2001, November 26, 2001.
7. ^ Obituary Rudolfine Steindling: Die clever Rote Fini , TAZ, October 29, 2012.
8. ↑ ^{a b} The legacy of the red Fini , ORF, November 2, 2011.
9. ↑ ^{a b} VG Berlin , judgment of December 12, 1996, Az.VG 26 A 789.92 ( juris ).
10. ↑ Kerstin Gehrke: Rotgeld . In: Der Tagesspiegel , November 27, 2001
11. ↑ OVG Berlin-Brandenburg, judgment of 23 September 2003, Az. OVG 3 B 12.96 ( juris ).
12. ↑ ^{a b} Ms. "Fini" and her KPÖ million Die Presse , November 9, 2012
13. ↑ Eastern federal states receive 120 million euros from old SED funds. MOZ.de, accessed on April 26, 2019 . 
14. ↑ Businesswoman Rudolfine Steindling had 130 million euros disappeared without a trace , Profil.at, April 10, 2010.
15. ^ The millions of the Rote Fini , Trend.at, November 3, 2012.
16. ^ GDR millions: Another verdict against Bank Austria , ORF April 20, 2012
17. ↑ Bank Austria has to repay SED black money , Welt.de, April 11, 2013.
18. ^ Judgment of the Federal Court of April 8, 2013 4A_258 / 2012. Retrieved November 3, 2019.
19. ^ Disappeared GDR state assets: Germany is suing the Swiss bank ( memento of August 21, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ), Tagesschau.de, August 21, 2014.
20. ↑ Bank Julius Baer is not yet off the hook in the dispute over GDR assets | NZZ . February 6, 2019 ( nzz.ch ).