"Aryanisation" means the forced expropriation of Jewish property during and after the Nazi takeover of Austria either within the framework of the law as it then was or outside that framework. It does not matter in this context whether these assets were transferred to non-Jews ("Aryans") or organisations owned by such persons or whether they were liquidated or destroyed. This process of "aryanisation" extended to all persons who were defined as Jewish by Nazi standards and legislation and were thus liable to aryanisation. Hence it also involved persons who were not members of the "Kultusgemeinden", i.e. the official Jewish religious and cultural communities.

The area of dispossessions of Jewish people and of restitution and compensation is so big that it surely cannot be covered by a single project, simply because of the large number of cases and the variety of of questions which arise with respect to restitution and compensation in each category of assets.

Nonetheless, the various subprojects should proceed in close cooperation, not only in order to avoid overlapping and duplication but also to permit overall assessments of the Jewish assets involved, of the total amount of expropriations and of the scale of restitutions.

We therefore suggest (a) to establish a general overview on a sample basis of the registered Jewish assets or to obtain these data in close cooperation with projects already underway, and (b) to let the various subprojects proceed on this data basis.

1. Basic project: Amount of Jewish assets and scale of confiscations

The Jewish property in the sense of industrial and business concerns subject to compulsory reporting in the whole of Austria was found to have been 320 million Reich marks. More than half a billion was stated for real property, 266 million for securities, and about 900 million for other property: the total being about 2 billion Reich marks. This is a lower limit. 2.5 billion was an estimate made in 1952. According to other sources, the Jewish property in Austria has been estimated at more than 10 billion Reich marks.

2. Subproject: Immovables

The fundamental data on how much real property was owned by Jewish persons in 1938 should be ascertained by the basic project in a first step.

To what extent these data must be complemented from other sources should then be determined.

In a second step, the project should document both the Nazis' norms and their practices with regard to expropriating Jewish owners of buildings and land, and selected individual cases should be studied.

Point three is the legal position after 1945 and the relevant practices and decisions. The result should be an estimate of restituted real property in relation to the original possessions: how much was not returned, what the reasons and justifications were, and what problems of evaluation result from this situation.

On these considerations, a specific project design will have to be developed in each case to permit a scientifically reliable answer to the questions.

3. Subproject: Business enterprises