Revoked German Citizenship and Property Seizures 1933-1945
Introduction by Peter Landé

Background

Beginning in 1933, the German Government revoked German citizenship for tens of thousands of German Jews as well as persons seen as political opponents, e.g. communists.  This affected not only persons resident in Germany, but also persons who had left Germany and were resident in other countries.  It took similar action against persons resident in parts of Czechoslovakia which had been annexed.  Less well known was the revocation of business licenses or even seizure of firms which had been owned by Jews or political opponents.  These public actions, totaling nearly 90,000 names of persons and firms, mixed together, were regularly published in the Reichsanzeiger, the German equivalent of the Federal Registry.

In 1985 a compilation of the citizenship revocations was published in book form by K.G. Saur, Die Ausbürgerung deutscher Staatsangehoriger 1933-1945.  (The Expatriation of German Citizens, 1933-1945).  However, persons resident outside Germany as well as firms whose names/assets had been seized were not included. The nature/location of property/assets which had been seized was not identified. 

The complete compilation, i.e. all names of individuals, companies and organizations, was prepared by Herbert Birett, a German researcher. The spreadsheet from his original work can be found at https://tinyurl.com/y7w4ue6j

Database

This database includes 89,480 total listings comprised of 81,630 records for individuals and 7,850 records for organizations.

The fields for this database are as follows:

• Status - click here for a table of status definitions
• Surname (For Individual or name of organization)
• Given Name
• Maiden Name
• Widow’s Previous Surname
• Husband’s Surname
• Husband’s Given Name
• Classification - Gender for individuals or Organization. In reviewing the material, it was clear that there are some errors in gender data entry.  We did not make any correctios or edits to the source material we started with.  We did however, add alternate spellings and previous names or aliases used where cited in the source material.
• Place of Birth
• Date of Birth
• Last Residence
• Place of Death
• Date of Death
• Title or Occupation

Acknowledgments

The information contained in this database was indexed from the files available from Herbert Birett’s spreadsheet at https://tinyurl.com/y7w4ue6j

In addition, thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible.  Special thanks to Avrami Groll for his continued contributions to Jewish genealogy.  Particular thanks to Nolan Altman, Director of Special Projects and Coordinator of JewishGen’s Holocaust Database files and for creating this database from the source material.

Nolan Altman
Director of Special Projects - Holocaust Collection
July 2020

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via the JewishGen Holocaust Database or the JewishGen Unified Search.