My Home is Your Castle? Umkämpftes Eigentum vom Dritten Reich bis heute

Iris Nachum’s study focuses on the 1952 West German “Equalization of Burdens Law”, which was enacted to compensateethnic Germans, among others, who were expelled at the end of the Second World War from Eastern Europe to West Germany. Her central interest concerns cases where expellees demanded redress for lost property acquired in the Nazi period in the context of “Aryanization”.

Sagi Schaefer’s work focuses on new land registries generated in the FRG as part of the Cold War. The people and organizations behind these projects saw their land registries as bulwarks against Eastern Bloc expropriations. Schaefer’s research shows that property disputes and the ideological positions they pushed played crucial roles in the process of German division.

Kerstin Brückweh studies property restitution in reunited Germany in a long-term perspective, reaching back to the GDR as well as to Nazi Germany. She focuses particularly on practices regarding homeownership in the GDR and inquires how the principle of “restitution before compensation” affected the everyday lives of East German residents after 1990.