Dispossession : plundering German Jewry, 1933-1953 / Edited by Christoph Kreutzmüller and Jonathan R. Zatlin.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kreutzmüller, Christoph, editor.

Zatlin, Jonathan R., editor.

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Series:

Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany.

Social history, popular culture, and politics in Germany

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jewish property--Germany--History--20th century.

Jewish property.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 432 pages) : illustrations (10 tables, 6 halftones).

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, [2020]

Summary:

This collection of essays by a range of international, multidisciplinary scholars explores the financial history, social significance, and cultural meanings of the theft, starting in 1933, of assets owned by German Jews. Despite the fraught topic and the ongoing legal discussions surrounding it, the subject has not received much scholarly attention until now. As such, the volume offers a much needed contribution to our understanding of the history of the period and the acts. The essays examine the confiscatory taxation of Jewish property, the looting of art and confiscation of gold, the role of German freight forwarders in property theft, salesmen and dispossession in the retail world, theft from the elderly, and the complicity of the banking industry, as well as the reach of the practice beyond German borders.

Contents:

I. Dispossession on a Macroeconomic Scale. 1. A Jew-Free Marketplace: The Ideologies and Economics of Thievery / Jonathan Wiesen

2. Financial Destruction: Confiscatory Taxation of Jewish Property and Income in Nazi Germany / Albrecht Ritschl

3. The "Legal" Theft of Jewish Assets: The German Gold Discount Bank (Dego) / Christine Schoenmakers

II. Dispossession by Sector. 4. Jewish-owned Shoe Shops, Company Representatives, and the Daily Business of Dispossession / Pamela E. Swett

5. Taking Advantage: German Freight Forwarders and Property Theft / Johannes Klaas Beermann

6. Banking on Emigration: Reconsidering the Warburg Bank's Late Surrender, Schacht's Protective Hand, and Other Myths about Jewish Banks in the "Third Reich" / Dorothea Hauser

III. Dispossession during the War. 7. The Ruse of Retirement: Eichmann, the Heimeinkaufsverträge and the Dispossession of the Elderly / Jonathan R. Zatlin

8. Identifying "Jewish Assets" in France / Tal Bruttmann

9. Contested Dispossession: The Netherlands / Christoph Kreutzmüller

10. Plundering: Dispossession and Corruption in the Concentration Camp System / Stefan Hördler IV. Dispossession and Restitution. 11. Restitution, Memory, and Denial: Assessing the Legacy of Dispossession in Postwar Germany / Benno Nietzel

12. The Costs and Limits of Making Good / Mark Roseman

13. Art Dealers and Their Networks in Nazi Germany and Beyond / Jonathan Petropoulos

14. Dark Facets of "Appropriation": Grave Robbery at a Nazi Extermination Camp in Poland / Zuzanna Dziuban.

Notes:

Description based on information from the publisher.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-380) and index.

ISBN:

0-472-12693-8