Information on data processing: List of Jewish shops/businesses in Vienna (March and April 1939)

Terms of reference

This data is the result of the inquiries carried out by the Reich Commissar for the Reunification of Austria with the German Reich, Executive for Party Expansion, at the Vienna District Committees of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, concerning Jewish businesses and companies which had to be closed down during the course of the November Pogrom of 1938. The inquiries were carried out to determine the inventories and stock supplies of the businesses and trade companies in March and April 1939.

The lists, written by typewriter, were found in the Austrian State Archives in the holdings of the so called Bürckel-Nachträge (“Bürckel supplements”) under the heading Verwertung d.i. Judengeschäften befindlichen Warengegenständen [sic] (“Utilization of the stock supplies found in Jewish businesses”). The lists cover eight districts of Vienna with their political borders as at October 1938: Meidling, Hietzing, (Rudolfsheim-)Fünfhaus, Ottakring, Hernals, Döbling and Floridsdorf.

The digitized list was produced in order to supplement the data (predominantly on liquidated companies) which already exists with specific qualitative information on business assets.

Digitization

The lists were transferred directly into an excel chart. Additional information from the lists relating to the businesses was also adopted: surname, forename, type of business and the business address. If stated, the business description was recorded in the relevant data entry field.

When carrying out this transfer, the following approach was selected: obvious spelling mistakes were corrected. Missing forenames, business or company descriptions and incomplete addresses were supplemented with the help of the Viennese address directory “Lehmann Wohnungsanzeiger 1938”. The standards for processing the data which were developed by convention in the working group were applied and the designated data entry fields filled out if the data was available.

The individual entries in the lists may also contain specific remarks providing supplementary information on the business or company closure. Depending on which National Socialist authority compiled the lists, these lists may also contain data relating to a group of businesses and companies or to individual businesses and companies. In order to standardize the way the information is displayed, it is categorized and entered into the data entry field “remarks”. The following phrases or combinations thereof were used for this purpose:

• small inventory available
• small stock supply available
• business earmarked for liquidation
• inventory available
• no valuation available
• business (shop) is empty
• stock supply unknown
• stock supply and inventory available
• stock supply available

Individual remarks on the location of a warehouse or a means of production were transferred unaltered into the data entry field "remarks".

Around 400 records created in 2007 by the staff of the General Settlement Fund’s Historical Research Department were digitized. These records were revised and prepared for the finding aid in 2011.