What is significant in this context is the extent to which the time lag between the end of the Nazi regime and the enactment of provisions permitting the legitimate owners to enforce their claims for restitution enabled illegal holders of assets, i.e. mostly the "aryanisers" themselves, to shift such assets or major parts of them. This is because the restitution laws, the core of this whole body of legislation, were entirely directed towards restitution in kind, making no provision for compensation where the property concerned no longer existed. It was only at a very late point that the question of indemnification was addressed through lump sum compensation payments.

The practical implementation of the restitution legislation by the restitution commissions set up for that purpose must be viewed from several different angles and with cross-references to an analysis of the laws themselves. The commissions were given a certain latitude of interpretation, which is likely to have been used in different ways both regionally and in terms of the various groups of claimants (Jews, Roma and Sinti, victims of political persecution, the Roman Catholic Church, national minorities et al). At the same time, the various groups of Nazi victims had unequal chances of enforcing their rights because of social and political factors lying outside the field of adjudication. Survivors of the Shoah and people returning to Austria after forced emigration had to face antisemitic prejudice as well as the loss of their old social networks due to expulsions and killings. Moreover it was difficult to pursue claims from abroad. The return of these persons, often called "emigrants" with a pejorative connotation, was frequently impeded by political decisionmakers in Austria; serious obstacles were opposed to their political integration - e.g. in the case of the many people who had been politically active prior to 1934 and 1938. Ethnic minorities like the Roma and Sinti had to contend with social barriers and with reservations and prejudices the roots of which went back to the pre-Nazi era. The Roman Catholic Church, the political parties and the restored professional organisations, on the other hand, had much more power and larger spheres of influence. This inequality of opportunities and the resulting differences in the possibilities to get what was one's right will have to be investigated by specific research projects.

As regards the confiscations ordered by the "Corporative State" in 1933-34, mostly of the property of the political parties affiliated with the labour movement and of the trade unions, special restitution laws were enacted without much discussion. But these assets plus the property of the "Fatherland Front" seized in 1938 had been handed over by the Nazi government to Nazi organisations, and subsequently "aryanised" property and assets from other sources had been added. To what extent this led to a confusion of claims under restitution legislation after 1945 and thereby to difficulties in actually returning the property will be an important subject for researchers.

A special range of problems is constituted by those cases where restitution was made on a voluntary basis without resorting to the help of the authorities: what is of interest here is mainly the extent of voluntary restitutions and the question whether the law as it was facilitated them or made them more difficult.