The German Restitution Laws were a series of laws passed in the 1950s in
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 ...
regulating the restitution of lost property and the payment of damages to victims of the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
persecution in the period 1933 to 1945. Such persecution included widespread theft of art and antiques and property owned by
German Jews
The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...
as well as
aryanization
Aryanization (german: Arisierung) was the Nazi term for the seizure of property from Jews and its transfer to non-Jews, and the forced expulsion of Jews from economic life in Nazi Germany, Axis-aligned states, and their occupied territories. I ...
of Jewish companies in the early 1930s after the Nazis came to power. The crimes escalated throughout their rule and culminated in the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
from about 1939 on as Jews in Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia were isolated and deported to their deaths in
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as con ...
,
Nazi ghettos
Beginning with the invasion of Poland during World War II, the Nazi regime set up ghettos across German-occupied Eastern Europe in order to segregate and confine Jews, and sometimes Romani people, into small sections of towns and cities further ...
and
death camps
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. T ...
. Their remaining personal property such as wedding rings were stolen before their murder.
.
First Law
A first law for the restitution of private persons was the ''Bundesergänzungsgesetz zur Entschädigung für Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung'' (BErG) of 18 September 1953.
This law was passed after only 3½ month of deliberations, and it was felt that improvements and amendments would be needed. Such changes were made in the ''Bundesgesetz zur Entschädigung für Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung'' (BEG), which was passed on 29 June 1956 and modified again in the ''Bundesentschädigungsschlussgesetz'' (BEG-SG) of 14 September 1965. Both the BEG and the BEG-SG became effective retroactively as of 1 October 1953.
Other Laws
Other restitution laws were the ''Gesetz zur Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts im öffentlichen Dienst'' (BWGöD) for (former) employees of public service institutions of 11 May 1951 and the ''Bundesgesetz zur Regelung der rückerstattungsrechtlichen Geldverbindlichkeiten des Deutschen Reiches und gleichgestellter Rechtsträger'' (''Bundesrückerstattungsgesetz'', BRüG) of 19 July 1957.
[Lehmann-Richter (2002), pp. 1-2.]
The BErG/BEG deals with compensatory payments for suffered personal damage, while the BRüG covers restitutions for expropriated property. Claimants had to file their claims in order to receive payments; the term for filing claims under the BEG expired on 31 December 1969.
After the fall of the German Democratic Republic and the reunification of Germany 1990, German authorities had to wrestle with the enormous complexity of applying these laws and former GDR law in addressing property claims.
[A. James McAdams, "Judging the Past in Unified Germany (Cambridge UP, 2001), 124-157]
See also
*
Nazi plunder
Nazi plunder (german: Raubkunst) was the stealing of art and other items which occurred as a result of the organized looting of European countries during the time of the Nazi Party in Germany. The looting of Polish and Jewish property was a k ...
*''
Wiedergutmachung
The German word ''Wiedergutmachung'' after World War II refers to the reparations that the German government agreed to pay in 1953 to the direct survivors of the Holocaust, and to those who were made to work at forced labour camps or who othe ...
''
References
External links
*
German Compensation for National Socialist Crimes', German Embassy in
Washington, DC
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morg ...
. URL last accessed 2006-12-13.
Restitution
The law of restitution is the law of gains-based recovery, in which a court orders the defendant to ''give up'' their gains to the claimant. It should be contrasted with the law of compensation, the law of loss-based recovery, in which a court ...
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