Abstract
Only recently have historians studying the Holocaust recognised the unique value of German compensation files as historical source material. The Federal Republic of Germany created these files after World War II in the context of Wiedergutmachung, that is, compensation for damages inflicted by the Nazis on racial, religious and political grounds. This article draws attention to a different body of compensation records, one that has so far been ignored by historians of Nazi persecution: case files created under the Lastenausgleichsgesetz (Equalisation of Burdens Law [LAG]). This West German law was meant to compensate ethnic Germans for property they lost when they were expelled from Central and Eastern Europe after the war. The article demonstrates that LAG files can be especially illuminating of the interaction between Nazi profiteers and their Jewish victims in Central and Eastern Europe.
In the early 1950s, West Germany passed two sets of compensation laws: Wiedergutmachung for victims of the Nazi regime and Lastenausgleich for Germans who had suffered economic losses due to World War II and its aftermath. The legislation on Wiedergutmachung distinguishes between reparations and restitution: while reparations laws deal with compensation for intangible losses (such as health), restitution legislation regulates the return of assets, such as firms and real estate, that were Aryanised, that is, taken over by non-Jews who exploited the political and legal pressure put on Jewish persecutees. 1 The files on Wiedergutmachung contain both reparations and restitution applications submitted to the German authorities by individual victims of Nazi persecution. There are about two million such case files in the archives of the relevant authorities and in the state archives in Germany. 2 What makes these files so valuable for historical research is that, in order to prove their cases, claimants often submitted first-hand accounts of the persecution they had suffered as well as personal documents from the Nazi era. 3 Applications for restitution provide an especially rich repository for research on Aryanisation in the Altreich (Old Empire). Original records of the seizure and confiscation of Jewish assets are often no longer available – some were destroyed during bombing raids, for instance. Moreover, those documents from the Nazi era that did survive frequently provide scant information on the Aryanisation process itself. It is only the restitution files that detail the circumstances behind the Aryanisation process, the history of the Aryanised asset, and the lives of the Aryaniser and the persecutee. 4 Thus, historians focussing on the Nazi plunder of Jewish property in the Altreich (and in Austria) have lately turned to these files more frequently. 5 Nevertheless, historians continue to disregard the compensation files created under the Lastenausgleichsgesetz (West German Equalization of Burdens Law [LAG]), even though these may significantly expand our knowledge of Aryanisation. 6
The LAG was enacted by the West German legislature on 14 August 1952. Eight million ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) had fled or been expelled from Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of the Red Army's advance and in the aftermath of the war and were now living in West Germany. Among them were about three million so-called Sudeten Germans who had been expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1945–46. 7 Due to their often-brutal expulsion, many had to leave behind all their belongings. Expellees (Vertriebene) were the largest group of Germans to suffer damages as a result of the war, and their material losses were the most extensive. 8 Under the LAG, ‘expulsion damage’ was defined as ‘damage sustained by an expellee in connection with the expulsion measures directed against persons of German citizenship or of German ethnic origin in the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line or in territories outside the borders of the German Reich according to the territorial status of 31 December 1937’. 9 The ultimate purpose of the LAG was to offset these damages and to help the expellees integrate into West German society. Hence, compensation covered lost household goods as well as apartments, factories and other real estate. The money came from West German taxpayers, who thus collectively compensated the losses of their particularly hard-hit fellow Germans. Since the LAG's implementation, over 600 Ausgleichsämter (Equalisation Offices) have evaluated and compensated expulsion damages. After an expellee submitted a compensation application for personal expulsion damages, the Equalisation Offices verified the information provided, assessed the amount of material loss in Reichsmark (RM), converted this sum into Deutsche Mark (DM) and transferred the money to the claimant. Since 1989, two and a half million LAG files created in this process have been collected and stored in the Lastenausgleichsarchiv (Equalisation of Burdens Archive) in Bayreuth, Germany. 10
At first glance, it may seem surprising that the LAG files can provide fresh insights into the Holocaust and Aryanisation in Central and Eastern Europe. After all, they were produced within the framework of a law intended to compensate ethnic Germans, not the victims of Nazi persecution. How can such files be relevant to Holocaust and Aryanisation research? What new information can they offer? I will answer these questions in three steps. First, I will elaborate on the LAG's connection to Aryanisation. This connection is especially strong in the so-called Sudetenland – those areas of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia which Nazi Germany annexed from Czechoslovakia in October 1938. Second, I will give a brief overview of the state of research on the Nazi persecution of Jews in this region. Third, by exploring several LAG files as examples, I will demonstrate how they can generate new details about Aryanisation in the Sudetenland. 11
Aryanisation and the equalisation of Burdens Law 12
Recent studies conclude that ethnic Germans were among the main profiteers from Nazi extermination and looting policies in Central and Eastern Europe. 13 Well aware of that fact, the post-war German legislature had no intention of compensating ethnic Germans for property they had initially acquired through looting and then lost in the course of expulsion. 14 Paragraph 1 of Article 359 of the LAG explicitly states that there is no entitlement to LAG benefits for ‘assets acquired by taking advantage of measures of National Socialist tyranny’. Details would be specified in a ‘legal decree’. In addition to preventing Aryanisers from receiving unjustified LAG compensation, the law also provided for the victims of Aryanisation: paragraph 2 states that the future ‘legal decree’ would also determine ‘whether and under what conditions damages and losses of property which a persecutee […] has forfeited in the expulsion area as a result of measures of National Socialist tyranny may be claimed by the persecutee’. 15
On 10 September 1952, one month after the LAG was enacted, the State of Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany signed a far-reaching compensation agreement in Luxembourg. West Germany, as legal successor to the Third Reich, assumed the costs of integrating Holocaust survivors into the Jewish state. In two additional protocols, it also agreed to compensate individual Holocaust survivors represented by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference). Specifically, the Federal Republic extended eligibility for LAG compensation to Jews who were German nationals or of German origin, who had lived in the expulsion areas in Central and Eastern Europe before the war, and who had suffered Holocaust-related material losses. 16 For this group, a new legal term was created: fictional expellees (fiktive Vertriebene). 17
Although ethnic German expellees were already entitled to submit LAG applications in 1952, fictional expellees did not become eligible to submit LAG applications until the end of 1956. 18 It was only on 18 December of that year that the ‘legal decree’ mandated by LAG Article 359 was finally issued. The 11th Decree on Equalisation Benefits (11th LeistungsDV-LA) enacted the Federal Republic's obligations to the Claims Conference, namely, to extend eligibility for LAG compensation to Holocaust survivors. 19 It also detailed the status of ethnic German applicants suspected of Aryanisation. This had become urgent, because the Equalisation Offices had received ‘quite a number’ 20 of applications from suspected Aryanisers.
In contrast with the language of LAG Article 359, which described Aryanisation as the result of Nazi tyranny and thus treated Aryanisers as morally reprehensible profiteers, the 11th Decree dealt strictly with legal, material and practical matters. 21 For instance, the decree limited ‘taking advantage’ to ‘a legal transaction contrary to good morals or made under duress’. 22 Hence, not every ‘Aryan’ purchaser was seen as a beneficiary of Nazi rule who had exploited the distress and hardship of Jewish sellers. If the purchaser could credibly demonstrate to the Equalisation Offices that he had followed proper business standards – by proving, for example, that he had paid a fair price for the Jewish business – he was entitled to benefits under the LAG. 23 Even the acquisition of heirless Jewish property through a state or municipal Nazi agency was not automatically deemed indecent and improper. 24 In other words, not all acts of Aryanisation were regarded by the LAG system as having violated boni mores. The Equalisation Offices disapproved only of extreme forms of Nazi looting, for instance, when Jewish assets were acquired considerably below market value or completely free of charge, or when the Jewish owner had fallen victim to direct and personal persecution by the purchaser himself.
In cases where German expellees either proactively revealed that they had acquired Jewish assets throughout the course of Aryanisation or were suspected of having done so, the Equalisation Offices – in accordance with the 11th Decree – verified the information provided by the claimants and then determined whether and to what extent they were entitled to receive LAG benefits. The authorities paid particular attention to the answer provided to the following question on the LAG application form: ‘In what way was the company […] acquired, from whom and at what purchase price’? To verify the information provided by claimants, the authorities relied on several expert working groups, the Heimatauskunftstellen (Homeland Information Offices).
These Homeland Information Offices also played an important role in verifying the applications of Jewish claimants. To be considered fictional expellees and thus eligible for LAG benefits, claimants of Jewish origin had to prove that they had belonged to the ethnic German community (deutsche Volkszugehörigkeit) before Nazi persecution began, by showing, for instance, that they had been members of German cultural associations in the pre-war period or that they had professed German nationality in interwar censuses. 25 Many Holocaust survivors failed this bizarre identity verification and, hence, could not recover damages under the LAG. 26 Among Jewish claimants, those originally from the Sudetenland and the areas east of the Oder-Neisse line had the best chance of being recognised as ethnic Germans and receiving LAG compensation for their Holocaust-related economic damages. 27
The 11th Decree thus provided the legal basis for processing the LAG applications of both Aryanisers and their victims from the expulsion areas. The Equalisation of Burdens Archive holds nearly 55,000 individual case files that were created in the context of this decree. 28 By conducting a computer-assisted random search of these files, I found that most of the claims were filed by Sudeten German Aryanisers. Because of this, and because claims of Holocaust survivors from the Sudetenland were often approved, I will consider below some of the files featuring Aryanisation cases from this region. 29 In particular, I will analyse files involving the Hamburgers, a Jewish dynasty from the Sudetenland whose family chronicle has been lately well explored. 30 The Hamburger files demonstrate how the LAG records can illuminate lesser-known aspects of Nazi persecution in Central and Eastern Europe.
Many LAG files created under the 11th Decree contain documents from the Nazi era, such as tax records and company inventory lists. They also contain written statements about the Nazi era by both Aryanisers and persecutees. It is important to note that these post-war accounts reflect the claimants’ subjective views of past events. They were written during compensation processes and were thus shaped by interests: the Jewish claimants aimed to prove that they belonged to the German ethnicity, 31 and the Aryanisers aimed to present their acquisition of property from Jews as fair and legitimate property transfers. Subjective and interest-driven documents such as these inevitably raise the question of credibility and hence of usefulness for historical research. 32 Indeed, their epistemological value was long disputed in Holocaust research – and to some extent still is today. Nevertheless, several historians have recently recognised their value as complementary historical sources, since careful and critical reading of these unique documents can unearth previously inaccessible information. 33 In order to show that the documents contained in the LAG files can make an important contribution to the study of Aryanisation and the Holocaust in the Sudetenland, I will give a brief overview of the state of research on this topic, focussing on the main findings of the most recent studies.
The Nazi persecution of Jews in the Sudetenland
Even before the separation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and its incorporation into the German Reich in October 1938, the Nazis unleashed a campaign of antisemitic terror and many Sudeten German Jews fled to the country's interior, into the Resttschechei (literally rump Czechia). 34 Initially, Nazi persecution measures were aimed at forcing the expropriation of Jewish property and expelling or totally disenfranchising the remaining Jewish population. 35 Within a month after the annexation, about 12,000 of the approximately 29,000 Sudeten German Jews had fled or been driven from their homes. 36 In some cases, the fugitives managed to take some of their possessions with them. 37 90% of the Jews, however, had to leave behind not only their homes but also all their belongings. 38 When the Wehrmacht marched into the Resttschechei on 15 March 1939 and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia there, many of the Jews who had fled inland a few months earlier fell into the hands of the Nazi regime and were deported to Theresienstadt and from there to the ghettos and extermination camps in the east. 39 Systematic deportation from the Sudetenland itself began in July 1942. 40
Although the Sudetenland was one of Europe's most industrialised regions, its industrial infrastructure was often very outdated. For this reason, it was hit particularly hard by the Great Depression in the 1930s, and unemployment was high. Given the precarious local labour market, the Sudeten German Nazi authorities often preferred not to liquidate expropriated Jewish businesses but rather to Aryanise them. The expropriation of Jewish businesses had to happen quickly in order to keep the – oftentimes suddenly – abandoned businesses going, save jobs and create new ones for unemployed ‘Aryans’. But this did not correspond to Berlin's demands: the German Reich sought to make Sudeten German industry suitable for armament manufacture; obsolete production facilities, especially in the consumer goods industry, were to be closed. 41 The Sudeten German authorities had to yield to these broader interests of Berlin. In addition, Sudeten Germans interested in taking over Jewish businesses often lacked the necessary capital to do so, and hence, big companies were often Aryanised by purchasers from the Old Empire. 42 Especially in the food and textile industries, however, the local authorities succeeded in asserting their economic interests: production facilities in these industries were not only preserved, but they were also often acquired by Sudeten Germans. 43
This ‘predatory property transfer’ 44 of Jewish businesses in the Sudetenland took place in a relatively short time, from the end of 1938 to the spring of 1940. 45 First, Jews were pressured to sell their businesses below market value. 46 In November 1938, provisional managers (kommissarische Verwalter) were appointed in all Jewish firms. 47 One month later, all Jews had to declare their assets and have them valuated. After that, systematic expropriation began. 48 Jews could now be ordered to sell their companies and real estate, with the selling price regulated by the Nazi authorities. 49 Starting in May 1939, Jewish firms could also be confiscated for the benefit of the Reich. 50 In many cases, special trustees (Treuhänder) were appointed to run the expropriated firms and handle their sale or liquidation. In small- and medium-sized businesses, the provisional manager, the trustee and the purchaser were often one and the same person. 51 Quite frequently, Aryanisers were former employees of the Jewish company, and they now seized the opportunity to become their own bosses. Numerous Aryanisers were members of the Nazi party who exploited their connections to obtain coveted properties. 52
In most circumstances, Jewish owners could not intervene in the sale of their businesses, since they were either disenfranchised or had long since left the Sudetenland, 53 a factor that facilitated the Aryanisation process. 54 In fact, as Jörg Osterloh has demonstrated, the Jewish owner and the ‘Aryan’ purchaser usually did not directly interact at all. Yet, even when purchasers did not directly participate in the persecution of Jews or personally pressure them to sell their property, they profited from Aryanisation. 55 Without the Nazi terror, most Jews most likely would not have sold their businesses and certainly would not have abandoned them. Osterloh concludes that ‘the acquisition of a Jewish business stood in direct connection with the racist policy of the Nazi regime’. 56 Whether or not a Sudeten German purchaser was an antisemite, all new owners benefited from the Nazi persecution of Jews, which paved the way for their professional and economic advancement. 57
One of many merits in Osterloh's research findings is that he unearthed records in the Historical Archive of the Dresdner Bank pertaining to several hundred Jewish companies in the Sudetenland that were Aryanised or liquidated between 1938 and 1939. These lists contain the names of the companies, the location of their headquarters, the names of the ‘Aryan’-interested parties and purchasers and the names of the banks involved. 58 However, these lists do not reveal any details about how the property came to be Aryanised, the history of the Aryanised property, the purchase price, the Aryanisers’ scope of action or the fate of the previous Jewish owners. Nor do they show whether the interested parties ultimately acquired the companies, or whether the Aryanisers and Jewish owners were in direct contact. As I will show in the two case studies that follow, all of this information may be found in LAG files.
From Aryanisation to compensation: the case of Fridolin Hartig
Among the Sudeten German Aryanisers listed by the Dresdner Bank, the name Fridolin Hartig appears twice: once in connection with the company Gustav Kandler, Mühle und Ziegelei (mill and brickyard) in Jägerndorf (Krnov) 59 and once together with Gräfin Bellegarde, Groß-Herrlitz (Velké Heraltice), in connection with the company Hamburger & Co. AG Nahrungsmittelzusätze, Malzpräparate (cooperative, food additives and malt compounds) in Fulnek-Freudenthal (Fulnek-Bruntál). 60 After the war, engineer Fridolin Hartig, Marie Countess von Bellegarde and the heirs of Hamburger & Co. all filed LAG compensation claims. The files are located in the Equalisation of Burdens Archive. 61 In Hartig's LAG files, there is no mention of a company named Gustav Kandler. It may be that Hartig was interested in acquiring this company with the help of the Dresdner Bank in 1939, but that the purchase did not take place. 62 Thus, this case shows that the LAG files can be used to verify and complete otherwise missing information about property transfers in the later expulsion areas during the Nazi era. The files do show, however, that Hartig and Bellegarde not only Aryanised Hamburger & Co. but also – together with the Sudeten German Edwin Klamert – were involved in the Aryanisation of the company Siegmund Deutsch in Olbersdorf (Město Albrechtice). The LAG files of Klamert and the heir of Siegmund Deutsch can also be found in the Equalisation of Burdens Archive. 63 The files disclose the following detailed information about the Aryanisation of Hamburger & Co. and of Siegmund Deutsch:
Aryanisation of Hamburger & Co.
The Aryanisers: Fridolin Hartig and Marie Countess von Bellegarde
Fridolin Hartig was born in Kratzau (Chrastava) in northern Bohemia on 1 September 1897. After studying chemistry, he settled in Freudenthal in the Moravian-Silesian region in 1916, where he worked as a chemist and plant assistant at Hamburger & Co. He acted as the company's managing director starting in 1921 and, starting in 1934, as its director. After the end of World War II, he was arrested by the Soviets. In October 1946, he was expelled from Czechoslovakia and subsequently lived with his wife, Friedl, in Efferen near Cologne. 64
Marie Countess von Bellegarde, née Princess Oettingen-Wallerstein, was born in Prague on 10 December 1874. She was married to August Maria Count of Bellegarde, who died in 1929. Marie von Bellegarde was the owner of Groß-Herrlitz Castle in the Moravian-Silesian region. The castle was seized by the Soviets on 6 May 1945. After her expulsion from Czechoslovakia in July 1945, she lived in Wallerstein in Swabia. Bellegarde died on 19 February 1960 and bequeathed her estate to her five daughters. 65
The Aryanisation victims: the brothers Hamburger
The three brothers Otto (1871–1941), Guido (1874–1942) and Paul Hamburger (1879–1946) were the owners and managing directors of Hamburger & Co., which was founded by their father Nathan Hamburger in 1911. The three brothers were born in Freudenthal, converted from Judaism to Christianity, 66 and – as the Homeland Information Offices later confirmed – were of German ethnicity. 67 Their heirs were also of German ethnicity and, hence, were recognised in the post-war period as fictional expellees who were entitled to claim compensation for the loss of the business.
The company produced malt compounds and bread improvers in Freudenthal and dried milk in Fulnek; 68 in 1938, it employed 60 workers. Due to financial difficulties, the firm paid no dividends between 1923 and 1934. To cover the losses, a capital reduction took place in 1930. The share capital in that year amounted to one million Czechoslovak crowns. The company's shares were owned by the Hamburger family. 69
Otto Hamburger's second marriage was to the Danish citizen Dagmar Andersen. In 1916, their daughter Gudrun was born. 70 Until the fall of 1938, Otto was an active member of several German associations in Freudenthal, serving as a board member of the German Protestant Church Community, for example. 71 On 31 August 1939, the Protestant parish office in Freudenthal confirmed that he had ‘always been firmly committed to his faith’ and to the Protestant community. 72 In 1958, Hartig wrote to Gudrun Hamburger's lawyer: ‘I knew Herr Otto Hamburger as of 1916 and held him in extraordinary esteem. {…] Herr Otto Hamburger was a very kind, distinguished man, of outstanding commercial and technical capacities. He enjoyed the greatest respect in the city on all sides’. 73 This quotation not only confirms Hamburger's high social standing in Freudenthal but also reveals the longstanding acquaintance between him and Hartig. Indeed, as Gudrun confirmed in 1973, her parents had ‘a close social connection’ with Hartig. 74 After 1945, Gudrun remained on friendly terms with Hartig and his wife Friedl. 75
Following the annexation of the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany, Otto Hamburger was imprisoned due to his Jewish origin for six weeks. 76 After his release, he and his wife Dagmar moved inland, into the house of his brother Paul in Karlsdorf (Karlova Ves), which later became part of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. According to Hartig, Otto and Dagmar had to leave Karlsdorf in May 1939, and they found shelter with Hartig's family in Freudenthal. During this time, Otto ‘made an honest effort to still get the best out [of his company], although he was much too smart not to know that with the present status of the company, little could be achieved’. 77 Otto was already ‘impoverished’ at this point. After receiving permission to join his wife and daughter in Denmark, he left Freudenthal at the end of February 1940. 78 According to his daughter, he suffered thereafter ‘from paranoia and anxiety’. 79 Additionally, ‘the nervous distress ruined both his and my mother's health; he died in the hospital in Copenhagen on 4 July 1941, my mother six months later, also in Copenhagen’. 80
Guido Hamburger, the second brother, was married to Cornelia Bunzl, who was born in Vienna in 1886. 81 Like Guido, his wife had converted from Judaism to Christianity. 82 Their sons were born in Vienna as well: Guido-Florian in 1910 and Friedrich-Ernst in 1912. 83 In 1939, the couple was living with their elder son in Fulnek. 84 In January 1939, they were ordered by the Gestapo to leave town. They fled to Prague, where they lived in an apartment assigned to them by the Gestapo. Guido-Florian managed to escape to England in August 1939. 85 On 3 November 1941, Guido and Cornelia Hamburger were deported to Lodz Ghetto. 86 After the war, they were declared dead. 87
The youngest brother, Paul Hamburger, was married to Felicitas Koszykiewicz, a native of Freudenthal, in 1919. In 1959, she described her family's ‘terrible time of suffering’ to the Equalisation Offices: after the annexation of the Sudetenland, her husband was imprisoned for more than six months. On 10 March 1939, with the Gestapo's permission, the couple and their daughter Lizzi moved to their country house in Karlsdorf. But the local Nazis there terrorised them, and the family was forced to move to Vienna at the end of 1939. In Vienna, they lived in a meagre Judenwohnung (apartment for Jews). Because of their mixed marriage, they were constantly harassed by the Gestapo. On 23 April 1945, Lizzi died after of a bombing raid. ‘Reduced to a beggar’, Paul died in Vienna on 25 November 1946. 88
The Aryanisation process
Immediately after the Wehrmacht's invasion of the Sudetenland in October 1938, the brothers Hamburger had to cease their activities at Hamburger & Co. 89 and were denied access to the company. 90 The business was confiscated and placed under temporary management. 91 Fridolin Hartig and the company's authorised officer, Ferdinand Ehler, were appointed as provisional managers, and Otto Girschek was appointed as trustee. 92 On 1 December 1938, the authorities in Berlin closed the plant in Fulnek, because its ‘facilities and operating conditions […] were so dire’; the situation at the plant in Freudenthal was described as ‘even more difficult’, especially because ‘large parts of the factory there were empty in the first place’. 93 A month after the Fulnek plant was closed, on 1 January 1939, Hartig leased the machinery and land of Hamburger & Co. to a new company he founded, the ‘Malz & Trocknungsindustrie (malt and drying factory) Hartig & Co.’. On 1 May 1939, Bellegarde became a partner in this new company, 94 and, on the same day, the plant in Fulnek reopened, securing both the supply of dried milk for the region and the jobs at the plant. 95 The financial situation of Hamburger & Co. deteriorated further during this time, so that the firm was now heavily in debt. 96 On 30 November 1939, Girschek, the trustee, appraised the value of its machinery and land – which were being leased to Hartig & Co. – at just over RM 210,000 and calculated an indebtedness of just over RM 182,000. 97 As a result, he initiated bankruptcy proceedings on 16 December 1939. 98
In a letter to the Equalisation Offices in 1964, Otto Hamburger's daughter Gudrun asserted that ‘alongside the elimination of the previous shareholders, the Nazi administration manipulated an under-valuation of the company on 1 January 1939, which is why bankruptcy proceedings were initiated at that point in time. The assets of Hamburger & Co. AG were sold within the framework of these proceedings’. She added, ‘It is a well-known fact that valuation estimates had to be as low as possible for so-called Aryanisation purposes’. 99 Paul Hamburger's widow Felicitas also emphasised the injustice of the bankruptcy proceedings in a letter to the Equalisation Offices. She pointed out that, due to the antisemitic measures of the Nazi regime, the company had been ‘severely affected economically’ in the fall of 1938. This was a ‘welcome opportunity [for Hartig] to take over the company at an extremely favourable price. The legally enforced decline of Jewish businesses offered the Aryaniser the most valuable opportunities, which Herr Hartig exploited to the greatest extent possible in this case’. 100 On another occasion, she emphasised that the company ‘had been awarded to Ing. [engineer] Hartig after the company had been forced into bankruptcy in order to adjust the purchase price to the financial means of the purchaser’. 101
After bankruptcy proceedings concluded, on 12 March 1940, Hartig & Co. purchased the machinery and land of Hamburger & Co. for just over RM 250,000. Later, the Equalisation Offices would determine that this purchase price was ‘appropriate’. 102 Hartig and Bellegarde did not buy the shares of Hamburger & Co. 103 Several interested parties had applied to buy the firm, but since Hartig's bid was higher than the appraised value, and since he had the necessary qualifications to run the business, it was awarded to him. 104 In 1953, Hartig told the Equalisation Offices that he had taken out a loan for RM 250,000 from Dresdner Bank to manage the firm. 105 Asked why he had acquired the company, he stated that he had believed in its potential. 106
After liquidation of his company, Otto Hamburger claimed a pension bonus, and Hartig paid him a monthly pension of RM 300 voluntarily, which he continued to pay to the widow after Hamburger's death. 107 However, the trustee Girschek rejected Paul Hamburger's claims against him. 108
After Hartig and Bellegarde took over the business, they modernised the machines and renovated the buildings in Freudenthal and Fulnek, investing a total of RM 632,176 between 1939 and 1944. According to Hartig, the company became ‘efficient and one of the best in the entire Reich’. 109 Hartig & Co. operated as a supply company for the Wehrmacht and, in 1944, its net profit was approximately RM 734,000. 110 After the war, the Czechoslovak authorities appointed Guido-Florian Hamburger as provisional manager of the plant. Hartig also worked at the plant between April and September 1946. Hamburger left Freudenthal in February 1947, after which the plant was nationalised by the Czechoslovak authorities. 111
LAG claims
In the early 1950s, Hartig and Bellegarde filed LAG applications to claim compensation for Hartig & Co. They answered the question, ‘In what way was the company acquired, from whom and at what purchase price?’ with the following: ‘By purchase after the liquidation of Hamburger & Co.’ 112 for ‘RM 251,681’. 113 Based on inventory lists, balance sheets and tax documents from the Nazi era submitted by Hartig and Bellegarde, the Equalisation Offices estimated their joint loss at RM 1,526,550. 114 Because of a lack of documentation, it is not clear from the LAG files how much compensation Hartig and Bellegarde (or her heirs) actually received. The Equalisation Offices also awarded compensation to the heirs of Guido and Otto Hamburger. The authorities estimated their loss at RM 108,550. 115 Of this, Gudrun received DM 36,371. 116 Since Felicitas had her permanent residence in Austria in 1952, her compensation application was rejected, and she was left empty handed. 117
Aryanisation of the company Siegmund Deutsch
The Aryanisers: Edwin Klamert, Fridolin Hartig and Marie Countess von Bellegarde
Edwin Klamert was born in the Moravian-Silesian town Komeise (Chomýž) in 1899. 118 Initially, he was employed as a clerk in the Siegmund Deutsch company in Olbersdorf near Freudenthal. 119 By his own account, he knew the owner of the company, Friedrich Deutsch, ‘very well’. 120 Klamert later worked as a civil servant at a bank in Jägerndorf and, between 1940 and 1943, he served as managing director of the fruit canning factory Klamert & Hartig in Olbersdorf. 121 According to Hartig, Klamert acted as a local group leader of the Nazi Party in Jägerndorf. 122 On 11 September 1946, Klamert was expelled from Czechoslovakia and thereafter lived with his wife and two children in Bavaria. 123 On 17 February 1962, Klamert claimed the loss of Klamert & Hartig. In his LAG application, he stated that the company had belonged to him, Fridolin Hartig, and Marie Countess von Bellegarde, with each having one-third ownership. He answered the question, ‘In what way was the company acquired, from whom and at what purchase price’? as follows: ‘In 1940, by purchase from the [provincial] government of Troppau [Opava], for RM 120,000’. 124 Two days after he submitted the application, Klamert's wife appeared at the Equalisation Offices, explaining that Klamert & Hartig had formerly been a Jewish business – the company, Siegmund Deutsch. 125
The Aryanisation victim: Friedrich Deutsch
Friedrich Ottokar Deutsch was born in Olbersdorf in 1896 to the Jewish couple Siegmund and Rosa. 126 During World War I, he served as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army. 127 In 1924, he inherited the company Siegmund Deutsch, founded in 1889, from his father; the company produced fruit preserves, jams, fruit juices and liqueurs. 128 Since the factory's Olbersdorf buildings were outdated, he bought a plot of land in Jägerndorf in 1937 in order to build a new plant there. 129 However, this did not happen. Friedrich was married to Ilse, who was born in 1904. As the Homeland Information Offices later confirmed, the couple was of German ethnicity. 130 Because Friedrich Deutsch's sole heir, his niece, was also recognised by the offices as an ethnic German, and thus as a fictional expellee, she was eligible to claim the loss of the company Siegmund Deutsch in the post-war period. Friedrich and Ilse had two daughters: Eva Susanne was born in 1934 and Alice Renée in 1937. 131 In September 1938, the Deutsch family fled from Olbersdorf to Brno. They had to leave all their possessions behind. On 2 December 1941, they were deported to Theresienstadt and, on 1 September 1942, to Raasiku in Estonia. They were shot immediately upon their arrival. 132
The Aryanisation process
In October 1938, Friedrich Deutsch's company was expropriated and placed under provisional management of the administrative district of Troppau. 133 After the war, a friend of Friedrich's stated that Deutsch ‘would never have voluntarily sold and liquidated his company’. 134 At the time of the seizure, the appraised value of the company amounted to RM 58,200. 135 Because the factory was ‘in poor construction condition’, initially, no purchaser was found for it. 136 Klamert, 137 Hartig 138 and a daughter of Marie Countess von Bellegarde 139 then negotiated purchase with the company's trustee for months. After the war, Klamert stated that he had visited Friedrich Deutsch in Brno in early 1940 but had not told him that he was applying to buy his business. According to Klamert, Deutsch would not have been able to influence the purchase negotiations anyway; additionally, Deutsch had told him that he was receiving financial support from a Jewish-Czech aid organisation. 140 Since Klamert had ‘indispensable connections to the [Nazi] party’, 141 he finally won the bid. In the spring of 1940, he purchased Siegmund Deutsch for RM 120,000 – that is, at an ‘appropriate’ price – and sold it to the newly founded company Klamert & Hartig on the same day. 142 Subsequently, Klamert & Hartig received an order from the Nazi authorities to renovate the entire plant. 143 The firm had about 25 workers, was ‘efficient’, 144 ‘managed very well’ during the war and turned a profit as a result. 145 In 1948, Klamert & Hartig was nationalised by the Czechoslovak authorities. 146
LAG claims
Based on documents from the Nazi era, the Equalisation Offices estimated the rateable value of Hartig & Klamert at the time of the expulsion at RM 151,500. 147 It estimated the surplus value created by Klamert & Hartig before expulsion at RM 93,300 and assessed this sum as the damages amount. 148 The Aryanisers – Klamert, Hartig and Bellegarde – each received approximately DM 19,000 for their proportional damage of RM 31,100. 149 For the heir of Friedrich Deutsch, the Equalisation Offices assessed the rateable value of Siegmund Deutsch at the time of the seizure in 1938, amounting to RM 58,200, as the damages amount. 150 After the deduction of compensation payments she had already received from a non-German agency, she was paid DM 17,700. 151
Conclusion
Ari Joskowicz has recently pointed out that testimony on Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti can mostly be found in archives that were originally established to document the slaughter of European Jews. He concluded that this is probably the only case in which one persecuted group of persecutees has preserved so many documents about the fate of another. 152 However, a similar situation exists in the Equalisation of Burdens Archive: the archive was established specifically for the purpose of documenting the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe. 153 Yet it preserves a large – perhaps the largest – single collection of documents on the Nazi economic persecution of Jews in this region. Accordingly, based on already published Aryanisation lists from the Nazi era, which contain only very rudimentary information, I consulted several files from this archive and reconstructed two cases of Nazi policy in the Sudetenland – namely, the Aryanisation of Hamburger & Co. and that of Siegmund Deutsch. Through these LAG files, I was able to trace in detail the background and process of the forced property transfers, the history of the Aryanised companies and the lives of both Aryanisers and persecutees. In doing so, I fitted together, like pieces of a puzzle, already known but meagre information from research and rich new details generated from the LAG files.
The findings derived from these files largely correspond with previous research on the Holocaust and Aryanisation in the Sudetenland. Still, the documents lead to novel insights. Historiography has assumed that, as a rule, there was no direct contact between the Aryanisers and the Jewish owners. However, analysis of the Aryanisation of Hamburger & Co. and Siegmund Deutsch discloses that, at least in these cases, personal relations existed between the two sides not only before but also during, and sometimes even after, the assets were confiscated. This was the case with Otto Hamburger and Fridolin Hartig and his wife, with Gudrun and Guido-Florian Hamburger and Hartig, with Paul Hamburger and Otto Girschek and with Friedrich Deutsch and Edwin Klamert. Analysis of these social connections uncovers the various ways in which Sudeten Germans were involved in the plunder of their Jewish neighbours: as direct profiteers (Hartig and Klamert), collaborators (Girschek, for example, who acted as trustee of Hamburger & Co.) or witnesses (Hartig's wife Friedl, for instance). The LAG files also illustrate the different attitudes that Aryanisers adopted toward their Jewish acquaintances: both Hartig and Klamert profited from the persecution of Jews, but while Hartig appears to have provided Otto Hamburger with financial support and shelter, at least for some time, Klamert did not help Deutsch, even though he did visit Deutsch when the latter was already being subjected to Nazi persecution.
Moreover, the LAG files offer a unique opportunity to explore the actions taken by persecutees against the plunder of their property. While existing research emphasises that the victims of Aryanisation could not intervene in the forced sale of their properties, the example of the brothers Hamburger shows that some persecutees tried their utmost to be heard when their assets were being exploited, and they fought to play an active role in their unequal relationships with the Aryanisers. Otto Hamburger, for instance, used his acquaintance with Hartig to claim a pension bonus. Although these social relations did not affect the ultimate outcome of Aryanisations, the LAG records do reveal that social interactions between Aryanisers and their victims in the Sudetenland were often far more enduring and multifaceted than previous research suggests. It is left to future research to establish in more detail the range of personal connections between ‘Aryan’ buyers and Jewish persecutees in the Sudetenland, and to investigate these connections in other regions in Central and Eastern Europe.
Footnotes
Author's Note
Iris Nachum is also affiliated with Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) [research grant number 678/21].
