Property transfer office

The Property Transaction Office (VVSt) was the competent authority established by the National Socialists in Austria for the control and overall organization of the compulsory expropriation of private Jewish assets and the so-called " Aryanization " of Jewish companies. The former Gauleiter Walter Rafelsberger was appointed as the leader, his deputy was Hans Georg Bilgeri . In addition to the headquarters in Vienna, there were several branches.

history

The VVSt was founded on May 18, 1938 in the Austrian “Ministry of Labor and Economy”. Her tasks included appointing trustees , commissioners and liquidators for companies as well as coordinating overall economic planning. It controlled purchase contracts, set the purchase price for companies destined for " Aryanization " and ordered the liquidation of companies. To accomplish its mandate, the VVSt cooperated with the departments of the Ministry of Labor and Economics, with NS-economic offices of the commercial economy, with the Reich Curatorium for Economic Efficiency , with commercial associations and the NSDAP .

The establishment of the property transfer office went back to a speech by Hermann Göring , who on March 28, 1938 demanded that the measures to divert the Jewish economy should be taken calmly in order to ensure an appropriate diversion and to legally carry out the de-Jewification process according to legal principles . The appointment of so-called 'wild commissioners' should be stopped immediately.

Legal basis and activity

Several successive laws regulated the state legalized company robbery in order to initiate a controlled and “legal de-Jewification” of the Austrian economy or to thwart further “wild aryanizations”. On April 26, 1938, the property registration for Jews was decreed, and on November 12, 1938, immediately after the so-called Reichskristallnacht , the “ Ordinance on the Elimination of Jews from German Economic Life ” was issued. On December 3, 1938, the " Ordinance on the Use of Jewish Property " followed.

Initially, the Jewish companies were often assigned a so-called provisional administrator who had to be paid by the owner.

The Property Transaction Office concentrated on the “Aryanization” or liquidation of small and medium-sized businesses and in 1938 controlled assets of two billion Reichsmarks, that is around two thirds of total Jewish assets in Austria. In 1939, the property transaction office “aryanized” between 4,400 and 5,000 companies and liquidated around 21,000 companies. Göring commissioned Wilhelm Keppler to "Aryanize" the large companies.

After the so-called Aryanization or dissolution of a large part of the Jewish companies, the VVSt became the “liquidator” in 1939 for the dissolution of the remaining businesses in the commercial and industrial sectors. The VVSt continued to exist until the end of the war (1945) as “Section III Entjudung” of the Reich Governor's Office in Vienna. Up to 1945 the Property Transaction Office in Austria had collected 6 billion schillings in purchase prices and 1.5 billion in Aryanization conditions, plus an additional 264 million schillings from the liquidation of numerous companies. This money was transferred to blocked accounts that only the VVSt had access to.

literature

• Gertraud Fuchs: The Property Transaction Office as the Aryanization authority for Jewish businesses . Diploma thesis at the Institute for Economic and Social History of the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna 1989
• Hubert Steiner, Christian Kucsera: Right as Wrong . Sources on the economic disenfranchisement of the Viennese Jews by the property transfer office Vienna 1993
• Hubert Steiner , "The Files of the Nationalsocialistic Authority Dealing with Properties (Property Transaction Office) within the Archives of Republic and the Records of Restitution". In The Unifying Aspects of Cultures. TRANS studies on changing the world. Vienna 2004. ISBN 3-8258-7616-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Murray G. Hall / seminar introduction ( memento of the original from December 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed November 4, 2009) 
2. ↑ The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , p. 39.