Mandate

The Historical Commission was established jointly by the Austrian Federal Chancellor (i.e. Prime Minister), the Vice-Chancellor, the Speaker of the National Assembly and the Speaker of the Federal Council (i.e. the second chamber of the Austrian Parliament). The Commission will be their agent.

The Commission's mandate is to investigate and report on the whole complex of expropriations in Austria during the Nazi era and on restitution and/or compensation (including other financial or social benefits) after 1945 by the Republic of Austria (cf. the decision of the Austrian Cabinet of 1 October 1998).

One reputed foreign expert. The “Yad Vashem” Institute, Jerusalem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, and Mr. Simon Wiesenthal, Vienna, were invited to draw up short list of three.

One Austrian economic and social historian. The heads of the Departments of Economic and Social History of the Universities of Vienna, Linz, Innsbruck and Graz and of the Vienna University of Economics were invited to draw up a short list of two.

Two Austrian experts on contemporary history. The heads of the Departments of Contemporary History of the Universities of Vienna, Graz, Linz and Innsbruck, the head of the History Department of Salzburg University, the head of the Contemporary History Section of the History Department of the University of Klagenfurt and the head of the Boltzmann Institute for Research into the Consequences of the War, who also heads the Documentation Archive of Austrian (Anti-Nazi) Resistance, were invited to draw up a short list of four.

From the nominations submitted by these organizations, the Austrian Federal Chancellor, the Vice-Chancellor, the Speaker of the National Assembly and the Speaker of the Federal Council selected the members of the Commission.

The constituent session of the Commission took place on 26 November 1998.

As the Federal Chancellor said in the Cabinet on proposing the Commission, the object of the exercise is to make "another significant step towards an objective, transparent, independent and comprehensive coming to terms with one of the most painful chapters" of the history of the Republic of Austria.