Information on data processing: List of assets expropriated by the German Reich or declared forfeited - Tyrol

Terms of reference

The Liste vom deutschen Reich eingezogener Vermögen und dem deutschen Reich für verfallen erklärter Vermögen mit Nachweisung der Ergebnisse der eigenen Kassenvorgänge, die sich auf diese Vermögen beziehen (“List regarding assets expropriated by the German Reich and declared forfeited to the German Reich with proof of the outcomes of the cash-flows relating to these assets”) – to give it its full title – is held at the Tyrolean Provincial Archives, in fascicle 1 of the holdings Rückstellungsakten der Finanzlandesdirektion für Tirol (“Restitution files of the Financial Directorate for Tyrol”) in the file series Rückstellungsunterlagen (“Restitution documents”). According to the Tyrolean Provincial Archives, this list covers the money on bank accounts which were seized expropriated by the German Reich through the Chief Finance President in the Reich Financial Administration. The list was complied in 1945, probably on the instruction of the National Socialist Chief Finance President Innsbruck, the majority was, however, completed under Austrian rule.

As the aryanization files and other files relating to the seizures of assets by the National Socialist authorities no longer exist due to their destruction in Tyrol at the end of the war in 1945 , the list is the only available source of information, particularly regarding cases of aryanization. Moreover, according to the Tyrolean Provincial Archives, the files which were opened by the Financial Directorate in Tyrol in this regard no longer exist. For the General Settlement Fund, this list was of secondary importance as it only provides a snapshot of the assets seized by early April 1945. Its informational content is limited to possibly tracing people who were resident in North Tyrol or who had property there. Therefore, within the Findbuch, the information does not serve as a finding aid for locating documents but is merely a source of information.

Digitization process

In April 2002, the Tyrolean Provincial Archives sent the General Settlement Fund a copy of the “List regarding assets expropriated by the German Reich and declared forfeited to the German Reich with proof of the outcomes of the cash-flows relating to these assets”. During the work for the Findbuch, the list was transferred into an excel sheet. In this process, the whole list was included, consisting of surnames and forenames or names of the legal person (monastery, company), the former residential or business address, the amount in Reichsmark and the finance department to which the case of seizure was transferred.

The column title “Subject area P4” with the letters of reference “b”, “d” or “e” is a special feature of the list. This is likely to have been an object-related, organizational division of the file material which no longer exists. This information was transferred into the “remarks” field of the detailed view of the Findbuch. The professions, gathered from the historical address directories, were also entered in this field. The numbers preceding each name were not included as they were not related to the file numbers but simply a consecutive numbering from 1–342.

As the original list is both typewritten and handwritten, in several cases further research had to be carried out and data corrected. Missing forenames, company descriptions and incomplete addresses were completed. To assist in this process, address directories from the era were used (Herold for Tyrol and Vorarlberg as well as Salzburg and where appropriate Upper Austria as well as address books of the respective provincial capitals – Innsbruck, Bregenz, Salzburg, Linz) and in-house databases of the Fund. For historical addresses, internet research was carried out in order to ascertain the present address in cases where streets and squares had been renamed between 1938 and 1945. Dates of birth, academic titles and titles of nobility were only added to the list if these were come across by chance in other sources. Obvious spelling mistakes were corrected. Abbreviated place names were written out in full. If more than one person was mentioned in an entry (spouses, siblings, children or business partners), these persons were allocated a separate record. Otherwise, the formal processing standards conventionally developed by the project team were applied and the data entry fields were adapted according to the information available.

The list originally consisted of 342 individual entries which rose to 414 records as a result of the attribution of a single record for each person mentioned.