Raub, Recht und Restitution: Die Ruckerstattung judischen Eigentums in der fruhen Bundesrepublik, Jurgen Lillteicher (Gottingen: Wallstein, 2007), 559 pp., cloth 49.00.

Abstract

“How, after 1945, did West Germany deal politically and legally with the destruction of the economic livelihood and the fiscal plundering of German Jews during the years of Nazi rule?” asks Jürgen Lillteicher in his in-depth study of restitution of Jewish property in the early years of the Federal Republic. Exhaustive archival research enables Lillteicher to shed new light on the implementation of restitution, the opposition of those who had gained from Aryanization under the Nazis, the hostility of the local courts, and the efforts of individuals and Jewish organizations to overcome resistance. Lillteicher argues that the handling of Jewish reparations reveals much about the nature of German political life in the decades following World War II, when the courts and Germans in general did little credit to themselves in dealing with the claimants. The initial push for restitution, the compensation of individual Jews for property either sold under pressure at cut-rate prices or stolen outright, came in 1947 from the military leaders of the American, British, and French Zones of Occupation. The present study follows the chronology of restitution from the period of the military governments' measures to the mid-1970s. The military governments recognized the moral and legal imperative of restoring property seized from Jews to its rightful owners, but the authorities faced a number of obstacles, including the inadequacies of the German legal code and antagonistic local judges. Their efforts laid the foundation for subsequent efforts, but difficulties persisted.