Raub, Recht und Restitution: Die Rückerstattung jüdischen Eigentums in der frühen Bundesrepublik (review)

“How, after 1945, did West Germany deal politically and legally with the destruction of the economic livelihood and the fiscal plundering of German Jews during the years of Nazi rule?” asks Jürgen Lillteicher in his in-depth study of restitution of Jewish property in the early years of the Federal Republic. Exhaustive archival research enables Lillteicher to shed new light on the implementation of restitution, the opposition of those who had gained from Aryanization under the Nazis, the hostility of the local courts, and the efforts of individuals and Jewish organizations to overcome resistance. Lillteicher argues that the handling of Jewish reparations reveals much about the nature of German political life in the decades following World War II, when the courts and Germans in general did little credit to themselves in dealing with the claimants.

The initial push for restitution, the compensation of individual Jews for property either sold under pressure at cut-rate prices or stolen outright, came in 1947 from the military leaders of the American, British, and French Zones of Occupation. The present study follows the chronology of restitution from the period of the military governments’ measures to the mid-1970s. The military governments recognized the moral and legal imperative of restoring property seized from Jews to its rightful owners, but the authorities faced a number of obstacles, including the inadequacies of the German legal code and antagonistic local judges. Their efforts laid the foundation for subsequent efforts, but difficulties persisted.

Early decrees of the occupation authorities assigned responsibility for adjudicating restitution matters to the German courts. Lillteicher traces in detail the operations of those courts, evaluating their decisions and offering insights into their workings. The number of cases was staggering, reaching more than one million by 1957. Judges played prominent roles, and many of them were holdovers from the Nazi period. They frequently viewed cases with displeasure and placed hurdles in the path of claimants. For a number of judges and for much of the public these proceedings were but another example of the “victor’s justice” imposed by the occupation authorities.

The court cases, as Lillteicher explains, were directed either against individuals who had obtained Jewish property during the years of Nazi rule, or against the state, itself a beneficiary of Aryanization. The actual practice of the courts revealed their difficulty in dealing with the recent and troublesome past. Allied restitution laws directed that the individual who had purchased Jewish property had to demonstrate that the transaction did not involve coercion and that it reflected fair market value. The decision, however, was left to the courts. Generally those who had obtained Jewish property vigorously contested allegations of foul play. All too often, judges sympathized with them but discounted the pressures that had been imposed on Jews under Nazi rule.

The difficulties faced by those striving to regain property taken by the Nazi state via outright confiscation or default when the owner fled or was forced out of the country, persisted too. And here as well the courts typically were openly sympathetic to the defendants, many of whom were fellow members of the bureaucracy. The determination with which officials fought to retain control of looted property and to deny restitution claims strikes one today. Lillteicher uses a number of adjudications to illustrate court operations and the hurdles faced by Jewish claimants. In practice, restitution proved a trying and unsettling experience that often took years. Consequently, an untold number of plaintiffs simply abandoned their efforts.

Conflicts emerged when organizations such as the Jewish Claims Commission, the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization, and the Jewish Trust Organization advocated for the claims of the Jewish community in general, rather than for those of individual Jews. Disagreements emerged between newly established Jewish communities in Germany and the communities’ former members living abroad after the war. Individuals who had materially supported the former community wanted its property (or the proceeds thereof...