"Aryanization"

The term Arisierung, or "Aryanization", was coined by the Nazis to describe the process whereby Jewish people were ousted from their jobs and from working life in general. "Aryanization" encompassed both illegal and state-sanctioned measures such as dismissals, disbarment from practicing a profession, restrictions on commercial activities, and the forced transfer of rights and property to non-Jewish Germans.

Until 1937, seemingly unsystematic, isolated anti-Semitic actions took place which already posed a serious threat to the livelihood of the majority of Jews still living in Germany. However, with 1938 came a radical worsening of the situation. First, all Jewish assets were registered. This information was then abused to initiate a wide-scale pseudo-legal transfer of Jewish enterprises to non-Jewish owners.

After the Pogrom Night this process was accelerated by means of additional force and a large number of new legal regulations. By the start of 1939, most Jewish enterprises in Germany and Austria had either been "aryanized" or closed down. Whereas in the earlier years Jewish proprietors received part of the value of their property when they "sold" it, as things stood in 1938, "Aryanization" was increasingly becoming state-organized expropriation.

_{Form for registering the assets of Jewish citizens, 1938 (Berlin, Landesarchiv)}

Julius and Else Basch were proprietors of a commercial property located on one of Munich's main shopping thoroughfares. After the Pogrom Night of November 9, 1938, Julius Basch, like thousands of other Jewish business people in Germany, was taken to Dachau.

The only people with any hope of being set free were those who could credibly assert that they would immediately emigrate from Germany. This entailed considerable costs for the emigration itself as well as a large number of discriminatory levies and special taxes.

Julius and Else Basch decided to join their son in the USA. They sold the commercial property to Vermögensverwertung München GmbH, an institution that had been founded by Nazi officials to "aryanize" the assets and enterprises of Munich's Jews. Julius Basch was not allowed to represent his interests himself in the sale. He was placed under the care of a "trustee" selected by the Nazi party. In January 1940, this "trustee" sold the building to Allianz.

The price fixed for the sale remained controversial even in the restitution proceedings after the war. On the one hand, it was higher than the officially fixed standard valuation from 1935, but well below an offer that Julius Basch had received from the City of Munich in 1937, which he had turned down. In 1949, the Baschs' son claimed the restitution of his parents' former property. Allianz and the son eventually agreed on a compromise settlement. In addition to the price paid in 1940, the insurer paid him a sum of 1.1 million marks.

_{The Kaufingerstrasse Store in Munich, “aryanized” through purchase in 1940. After the war it became the object of a restitution suit - Stadtarchiv München}

In November 1941, the Reich government took a decisive step toward the total dispossession of Jewish assets. As the first deportations began in Germany and the SS built the first extermination camps in occupied Poland, the 11th Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz (ordinance on the Reich Citizenship Law) was promulgated. This determined that all property of those deported and murdered was to be forfeited to the Nazi state.

In 1945, the assets of the Jewish population had either been almost completely destroyed or split up among the profiteers. The state, Nazi institutions, individual party officials, companies, and private individuals had appropriated the former property of the Jewish population.

_{The 11th ordinance on the Reich Citizenship Law of November 1941. It provided the legal basis for expropriating the assets of deported Jews. (Reichsgesetzblatt)}