Glossary

The Amt für den Rechtsschutz des Vermögens der DDR (Office for the Legal Protection of the Assets of the GDR, AfR) was an authority created on 18 August 1966 with the task of settling unresolved property issues between the GDR and non-socialist countries. The AfR was also responsible for state property claimed by foreign countries (restitution claims) and foreign property (e.g. equity securities, works of art and cultural assets), some of which was kept in GDR museums and included in negotiations conducted by the →Ministerium für Kultur (Ministry for Culture, MfK) on the mutual return of cultural property displaced as a result of war. The government was able to conclude some bilateral agreements (e.g. with the Kingdom of Sweden in 1986 on the waiver of restitution claims for items confiscated by the Nazis), but they became obsolete when the GDR was dissolved in 1990. Archived materials held by the Bundesamt für zentrale Dienste und offene Vermögensfragen (Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues, BADV): "Records: statements, analyses, correspondence and individual cases concerning the treatment of state-managed assets in the GDR from 1960, the property negotiations conducted by the GDR from 1970, the state administration of property belonging to foreign beneficiaries from 1950, proof of security deposits belonging to natural persons in the Soviet Occupation Zone / GDR / East Berlin with closed banks in the SBZ on 8 May 1945, 1950-1960. Finding aids: numerous index files, detection of individual documents, electronic search". (MD)

For more information on the Amt zur Kontrolle des Warenverkehrs (Office of Customs and the Control of Goods Traffic, AZKW), please refer to →Customs authorities in the GDR

This was the name of a secret operation carried out around 8 November 1961, in which files, books, flags and other items from the period between 1933 and 1945 that could be found in communities, towns and companies were confiscated by police officers from the district offices of the →Volkspolizei (People’s Police). All confiscated documents and objects were temporarily stored at the district headquarters of the Volkspolizei, where some of the property had already been destroyed when employees from the regional archives arrived to assess and evaluate the holdings and allocate them to specific archives. It is currently unknown whether this operation was orchestrated by the →Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Ministry for State Security, MfS) or another ministry. (MD)

This was the name of a threefold secret operation carried out by the →Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Ministry for State Security, MfS) in 1962 with the aim of confiscating the contents of all vaults and safe deposit boxes that had been locked since 1945 in all economic and financial buildings (e.g. bank branches) in the GDR, as well as in castles, palaces, former large companies, museums and similar building complexes. The authorities were looking for "documents that could be evaluated for operational purposes" and generally for "objects of value". The objects found were recorded in lists and handed over to the Ministry of Finance, and some were also transferred to museums. According to a report, the operation led to the discovery of "gold, jewelry and precious stones worth 1.5 million marks, silverware worth 300,000 thousand marks, postage stamps worth 1.1 million marks. Gold and silver coins, medals, official estimated value of confiscated items: 2,367,326.81 marks. Oil paintings, copperplate engravings, porcelain and glassware not valued, historical manuscripts and much more […] of unknown value". The relevant archival records can be found in the Federal Archives under "BStU HA XVIII No. 13326 and No. 13327"; other files (e.g. from the MfS district offices involved in the operation) have been unearthed through the basic research project on Operation "Light" carried out by the German Lost Art Foundation with the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at the TU Dresden. (MD)

This was the code name for a major state-organized raid which targeted private owners of hotels, guesthouses and holiday homes – especially on the Baltic coast – with the aim of accelerating the nationalization of private businesses. By carrying out targeted house searches between February and March 1953, the →Volkspolizei (People's Police) identified pretexts and motives to brand such owners a reactionary, bourgeois social class and "criminal agents". A widespread deterrent effect on other members of the middle classes was created by issuing disproportionate prison sentences and expropriating movable and immovable private assets based on the Volkseigentumsschutzgesetzes (National Property Protection Act, VESchG) passed on 2 October 1952. A total of 408 convicts lost their property in this way and due to the allegations (e.g. of hoarding food, listening to RIAS, possessing Nazi literature and having contacts with the West). A total of 219 persons who fled from the GDR (→desertion from the republic) before being sentenced also lost their property to the state. The extent to which Nazi crimes (e.g. →Aryanization) and GDR crimes are mixed up in Operation Rose is yet to be researched. (MD)

From a historical perspective, the term “overseas possession” can be seen as a synonym for “colony”. It was originally used to describe the land owned by colonial powers beyond their own seas or oceans. Due to colonial history, however, the term also has slightly →“exoticizing” connotations today. (SF)

This was the term used to describe cultural property that had been left behind by owners or previous owners, as was often the case in many places after the hostilities had come to an end in 1945. "Ownerless" cultural assets were collected by public authorities and officials (e.g. mayors, monument conservators, confiscation officers) to allegedly protect them from destruction or looting. "Ownerless" cultural assets are said to have been "salvaged" when a person's property was held in trust to prevent third-party access and a search was actually launched to find the owner (i.e. when action was taken in the interests of the rightful owner). On the other hand, "ownerless" cultural assets are said to have been "confiscated" when a person’s property was expropriated and passed on to third parties.

The ownership issues relating to "ownerless" cultural assets were discussed as early as 1945, as reflected by a directive issued by the state administration of Saxony: "Ownerless private collections are to be cataloged and returned by local museum directors with the items from their own museums." (state administration of Saxony to local museum directors with reference to Command No. 85 issued by the Soviet Military Administration of Germany (SMAD) on 2 October 1945). (MD)