Information on data processing: Aryanization files of the Office of the Reich Governor – Upper Austria

Terms of reference

The file series Arisierung/Reichsstatthalterei (“Aryanization/Office of the Reich Governor”) of the Archives of Upper Austria relates to assets “liquidated” before 1944 and restitution proceedings after 1945 (Erstes Rückstellungsgesetz ["First Restitution Act”] and Zweites Rückstellungsgesetz [“Second Restitution Act”]). Overlapping data matching with information contained in the holding of the judicial restitution files pursuant to the Drittes Rückstellungsgesetz (“Third Restitution Act”) can be detected in several cases. These file series were of relevance to the General Settlement Fund in the course of its investigations on seized properties.

Digitization

The records of the file series "Aryanization/Office of the Reich Governor” (abbreviated: ARIS) were obtained from the access database “aryanizations” compiled by the Provincial Government of Upper Austria on 17 October 2002. This “aryanization-database” is divided into three sections: BVVR (“Confiscated assets, restitution of assets”), RK Linz (“Restitution Commission Linz”) and RSTG (“Restitutions”). The BVVR section, containing the five following file series: FLD – BV (“Financial Directorate – Confiscated assets”), ARIS , GSV (“Reich independent regional administration”), FLD - VR (“Financial Directorate – Restitution of assets”) and FiRK (“Restitution Commission of the Financial Department of the Province of Upper Austria”), has been entered into an excel spreadsheet for further processing. These files, consisting of a total of 1,763 records, constitute the “aryanization files” of the Archives of Upper Austria.

Processing the digitized data

In the excel spreadsheet, under the BVVR section, 579 records can be found under the title “Aryanization/Office of the Reich Governor”. These records have been entered in several stages and adapted according to the requirements of the Findbuch.

Both natural and legal persons have been recorded in separate columns in order to distinguish them from one another. Data on the aggrieved person was either assigned to the legal and/or natural person accordingly and spellings were standardized. In addition, if more than one person was entered in each line, they were each given their own line in the column for either the legal and/or natural person as appropriate. Due to this division the total number of the file series “Aryanization/Office of the Reich Governor” increased from a total of 579 to a total of 751 records.

Moreover, the following columns were added: type of file, holding, file number, signature, archive and data source.

The entire data holdings were edited and standardized using the following criteria: spelling mistakes were corrected and spellings standardized.
Abbreviated place names were written out in full. To facilitate geographical location, Austrian residential addresses were supplemented with a district and province and international addresses with a country.
The formal processing standards developed were also applied.

The records in the excel worksheet were processed for the Findbuch between October and December 2011.

The file series are stored in 13 boxes in which the names (of natural and legal persons) are listed in alphabetical order. It is necessary to state both the holdings “Aryanization/Office of the Reich Governor”, as well as the box number when submitting orders to the Archives of Upper Austria.