Conflict of Laws Problems Relating to Restitution of Property in Germany

Abstract

ON January 5, 1943, the governments fighting against the Nazi government of Germany issued a declaration regarding acts of dispossession committed in territories under occupation or control. They reserved their right to declare invalid any transfer of property situated in these territories, whether such transfer had taken the form of open looting, or of transactions apparently legal in form, even when they purported to be voluntarily effected. This declaration did not cover private property, which, at the time of transfer, was situated within Germany, and which by means of seizure or by means of transactions had been transferred by people persecuted by the Nazi r6gime to the German Government or to other private persons in Germany. The declaration of January 5, 1943, was implemented by legislative enactments in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and by measures of the occupying authorities in Germany, which had in mind what was later called external restitution of spoliated property. But legislation of the occupying powers dealt also with the restitution of property situated in Germany which had formerly belonged to people persecuted within Germany. The practical application of these latter laws has raised a number of very interesting legal questions, and also of questions in private international law, which, neither in Germany nor in other countries, are treated in the textbooks; therefore it may be of interest to give a short introduction to the conflict of laws problems raised by the special restitution laws which are in force in Western Germany. One might have expected that the Control Council would have enacted uniform provisions concerning restitution for Germany as a whole; but the divergences between the political aims of the Soviets and of the Western powers respectively were so great from