Post-war Hostility

The government of Austria in the post-war period after 1945 was extremely hostile to restitution claims by exiled Jews.  For example, at the end of the war, in April 1945, Dr. Karl Renner, a noted legal scholar, chancellor and president of Austria (and, incidentally, formerly an intimate friend of Adele Bloch-Bauer), wrote:

Restitution of property stolen from Jews, this [should be] not to the individual victims, but to a collective restitution fund. The establishment of such and the following foreseeable arrangements is necessary in order to prevent a massive, sudden flood of returning exiles.  A circumstance, that for many reasons must be paid very close attention to. . . . The restitution to the victims cannot follow naturally.  As soon as the property of the fund, which shall serve to compensate collectively all of the robbed individuals, is established, shares will be given out, for each pro rata based on the suffered damages -- not by the measure of whether a person's property is completely, partially or not at all recoverable; this collective procedure naturally provides that claims can only be satisfied in relation to the recovered property and only after the completion of investigation, prosecution and return of valuables (that is after years!). . . . Basically the entire nation should be made not liable for damages to Jews.

This overwhelming hostility to the claims of Jews on the part of the Austrian government carried over from the Nazi period into the post-war period and placed every Jewish family with claims against the government in a very precarious position. If a claimant was to have any success at all, deals had to be made to assuage the government ministers and their cohorts, who in most cases were as anti-Semitic as their Nazi predecessors.