Areas of Focus

Real Estate

Initial Research Steps

  1. What real estate properties were owned by a person in March 1938?
    • The "Ordinance on the Registration of Jewish Property of April 26, 1938" required Jews in Austria to submit a list of Jewish assets as of April 27, 1938, to the Jewish Property Declaration Office and to both indicate and value their entire assets both in Austria and abroad, provided that they exceeded 5,000 Reichmarks. Under item I they were required to indicate farm and forestry assets, under item II "landed assets" (land, buildings).
      Asset declaration files can be found in the Austrian State Archive (see the Research Guide)
    • Lehmanns Wiener Adressbuch contains a listing of all of the persons registered in Vienna as heads of household (listed according to name, as well as street name and house number). For private persons, family name, first name, occupation, address, the Land Register number (EZ) and owner of the property for house addresses are indicated.
      Lehmanns Wiener Adressbuch can be found at the library of the Austrian State Archive and in the Vienna City and Municipal Archive. (see the see the Research Guide)
  2. Transfer of ownership during the National-Socialist era and restitution proceedings

    The historic Land Register (until ca. 1990) lists properties and the associated private rights and obligations. The land register is accessible to the public and is kept by the District Court for the District where the property is located. It consists of a main register (for each cadastral community) and a collection of documents. The latter contains documents on encumbrances, on the sale or on the confiscation of any property, and in some cases also documents on restitution procedures.

    The Land Register can be found at the competent district courts. The collection of documents is also found at the competent district court or at the competent provincial archives (see the Research Guide)

  3. Owner of the real estate at present and/or as of January 17, 2001

    It has been possible in Austria since 1990 to request information from the electronic Land Register kept by the respective district court on the current owner of a real estate property for a fee. The owner as of January 17 , 2001 , is indicated in the electronic land register as a rule (in some cases via the list of deleted entries) (see the Research Guide)