Information on data processing: Property notices - Upper Austria (holdings of the Jewish Community Linz)

Terms of reference

The Vermögensanmeldungen (“property notices”) originated at the Vermögensverkehrsstelle (“Property Transaction Office”), which was established in May 1938 at the Ministry for the Economy and Labor in Vienna. The Verordnung über die Anmeldung des Vermögens von Juden (“Ordinance on the Registration of Jewish Property”) of 26 April 1938 (German Reich Law Gazette 1938 I p. 414, Austrian Law Gazette 102/1938) forced all Jews with assets over 5,000 Reichsmark to file a property notice. The form used for this purpose contains information on the person filing the notice and on all of his/her assets, such as real estate, company assets, stocks and bonds or jewelry.

It is likely that the file material came into the possession of the Jewish Community Linz in around 1950. In 2002 the property notices (in conjunction with the Arisierungsakten [“aryanization files”]) were transferred by the Jewish Community Linz to the Archives of Upper Austria as a long term loan.

The files series is held in four archive boxes at the Archives of Upper Austria and is comprised of 500 “property notices” stored in alphabetical order in the sub-holdings Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Linz (“Jewish Community Linz”).

For the General Settlement Fund, the property notices are of fundamental importance for determining and valuing the property losses asserted in the applications.

Digitization

The data on the sub-holdings “Jewish Community Linz” and on the property notices was provided by the Archives of Upper Austria to the General Settlement Fund in digital form on 7 June 2011. It is takes the form of a list of 502 names on Upper Austrian property notices.

Since the list of property notices only contained forenames and surnames but no file numbers were provided, staff of the General Settlement Fund copied the file numbers into forms by hand and then transferred the data into an excel list. Recorded in this list are the person’s forename, surname and date of birth, the spouse’s name, the file number and, if available, the real estate owned or company assets.

The property notices had to be filed in triplicate in 1938 with the Vienna Property Transaction Office. Each property notice submitted to the Property Transaction Office was allocated a consecutive file number. Later on, notices which were filed for amounts under the amount 5,000 Reichsmark and were therefore not compulsory, were apparently allocated a number over 60000. The file number which had subsequently “been freed up” was re-allocated to another property notice with the result that two people are occasionally listed under one number. In the database, the property notices can be found under their new file number.

These holdings also contain several property notices with no file number. These were generally filed by persons resident in the German-speaking territories of southern Bohemia, which were joined with the Reichsgau (“Reich region”) Upper Danube in November 1938. In total, the sub-holdings “Jewish Community Linz” of the Archives of Upper Austria contain 504 property notices in four boxes.

When placing an order at the Archives of Upper Austria, the holdings title Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Linz (“Jewish Community Linz”) must be given, as well as the name of the person sought, the file number and the box number.

Processing the digitized data

The data was processed using the following criteria: obvious spelling mistakes were corrected and standardized. Abbreviated place names were written out in full. “Aryanizers” and “buyers in good faith” were anonymized. Where necessary, Austrian residential addresses were supplemented with a district and province and international addresses with a country, in order that they may be placed geographically. The formal processing standards developed by the working group were also applied.