This page normally works through the questions one at a time and gives you an indication at the end. That needs JavaScript, which is switched off in your browser. You can still read every question below and answer the ones you can — leave the rest blank, nothing here is compulsory except an email address — and we will go through them for you.
Question 1
Answer what you can, and leave the rest blank — blank is allowed everywhere. A “No” to one question does not rule out the others. Changed your mind about a radio button? Choose “I'm not sure”; that is the only way to take an answer back.
These questions work through the six cases in sec. 58c of the Austrian Citizenship Act. Most people answer five questions. Nobody answers more than eleven.
They are addressed to you, as the descendant. Everything the six cases turn on happened to your ancestor — the person who was persecuted — so we start there and stay there for most of the way. The questions end with you.
If you do not know an answer, say so. “I'm not sure” is on every screen, it keeps every route open, and it never counts against you.
Your answers stay on this device until you close the tab, so it is best to finish in one sitting. Nothing reaches us until you press send.
Answer for the position before the annexation of Austria in March 1938 — or, if he/she left earlier than that, for the position when he/she left. Any one of the three is enough. If he/she later became German because of the annexation, or was later made stateless, that does not count against him/her: those were consequences of the persecution, not choices.
The Austrian Citizenship Act speaks of the successor states of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy without naming them; they include:
Every one of the six cases requires one of three positions: Austrian citizenship, citizenship of one of the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, or statelessness. Case 1 accepts any of the three. Case 2, Case 3 and Case 5 require Austrian citizenship. Case 4 and Case 6 are for citizens of a successor state and for people who were stateless.
Until 1983, an Austrian woman lost her Austrian citizenship automatically when she married a man from another country, and took his. The Austrian Citizenship Act reaches that situation expressly, as long as the loss happened at around the time she left Austria.
The last sentence of sec. 58c(1) extends Case 1 to a person who was not an Austrian citizen at the time, if he/she had lost Austrian citizenship in temporal proximity to his/her exit from Austria because he/she acquired a foreign citizenship as a result of a marriage.
The Austrian Citizenship Act names two kinds of danger and treats them as equally good. Either one on its own is enough.
Every one of the six cases requires one of these two grounds. The second — advocacy for the democratic Republic of Austria — is written into sec. 58c(1), (2) and (4) in its own right, and it is easy to miss, because the rest of this subject is about the Nazi years.
This covers people who emigrated or fled; who were pressured or forced into leaving; children who left on a Kindertransport; and children sent abroad to relatives. It does not have to have been a sudden departure, it does not matter where in the world he/she went, and it counts at any time up to 15 May 1955.
This is the core of Case 1 (cf. sec. 58c(1)), which is the case most families fall under. It is also the only one of the six that is indifferent to whether the person was Austrian, a citizen of a successor state, or stateless.
Taken out of Austria against his/her will by the Nazi party or the German authorities — to a ghetto, a concentration camp, an extermination camp or occupied territory; for example the transports from Vienna from 1939 onwards. It also covers being forced or expelled across the border, and it applies whether or not he/she survived.
Deportation out of Austria is Case 3 (cf. sec. 58c(2)(2)) for Austrian citizens and Case 4 (cf. sec. 58c(2)(3)) for citizens of the successor states and for people who were stateless. The two are otherwise identical, so we do not need to ask which citizenship it was — the documents will show that.
The Austrian Citizenship Act uses the word “perished”. It covers people who were murdered; who died in a camp, a ghetto, a prison or in hiding; who died on a death march or while fleeing; and people who took their own lives under that pressure. In Austria or anywhere else.
Sec. 58c(4)(1) and (2) are written for a person who did not survive. They are independent of the other cases: a descendant of someone who was murdered has a route of his/her own, whether or not that person had first been deported or forced out.
Case 5, for an Austrian citizen who did not survive, reaches only deaths before the end of the war on 9 May 1945. Case 6, for citizens of the successor states and for people who were stateless, has no date limit. If the date falls on the wrong side of that line there are still other cases to look at, so answer as best you can.
Sec. 58c(4)(1) requires that the death occurred before 9 May 1945. Sec. 58c(4)(2) sets no date. The two are otherwise parallel, so for a person whose citizenship is known the date is the only thing separating them.
This is the situation of someone who had already emigrated — to Palestine, the United States, Britain — and who would have been in danger the moment he/she set foot in Austria. The statute puts it more strictly than we do here: it requires that he/she had no main home in Austria at any time between 30 January 1933 and 9 May 1945. If he/she still had a home in Austria in those years, answer No; Case 1 is then the one that fits.
Case 2 (cf. sec. 58c(2)(1)) is the case for a person who was already abroad and shut out. We ask a simpler question than the statute does, because the strict version is unanswerable by a great-grandchild; the strict limb is flagged as an open point on any Case 2 result.
At any point — even if he/she lost it later. Austrian citizenship in this sense dates from 1918, when the Republic was founded; having been a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before then is not the same thing. If the family became Czechoslovak, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Yugoslav, Italian or Ukrainian after 1918, answer No. Being made German by the annexation in March 1938 does not undo an earlier Austrian citizenship — in that case answer Yes.
Case 2, Case 3 and Case 5 are for Austrian citizens; Case 4 and Case 6 are for citizens of the successor states and for people who were stateless. The two groups need different things proved, so where the answer decides which case applies, we have to ask.
“Main home” means the place where he/she actually lived — not a holiday address, not a short visit — and it does not matter whether he/she was officially registered anywhere. “Austria” means the territory of today's Republic. A home in Pressburg (Bratislava), Czernowitz (Chernivtsi), Lemberg (Lviv), Trieste, Brno or Prague was in the Habsburg Empire, but it was not in Austria as the Austrian Citizenship Act means it. A registered address — the Meldezettel — is the usual proof.
Case 4 and Case 6 both require that the person had his/her primary residence in Austria before 9 May 1945. Case 3 and Case 5, for Austrian citizens, carry no such requirement at all — an Austrian citizen murdered after deportation from France qualifies without ever having returned to Austria.
A direct line runs from parent to child, in an unbroken chain — child, grandchild, great-grandchild and onwards, with no limit on the number of generations. A child adopted while still a child counts. Brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins and in-laws do not: the Austrian Citizenship Act does not pass sideways.
Sec. 58c(1), (2) and (4) are written around the person who suffered the persecution. Sec. 58c(3) and (4) then pass the route on to a “descendant in direct descending line” of that person, which is where you come in. Sec. 58c(6) counts an adoptive child as a descendant, if the adoption was completed while the child was still a minor — and Austria set the age of majority at 21 until 1973 and 19 until 2001, so that turns on the year. There is no limit on the number of generations.
This one is about you, not about your ancestor. It catches a narrow situation: someone who already was an Austrian citizen — sometimes without ever knowing it — and then lost it, usually by taking another citizenship as an adult. Almost everyone answers No.
Sec. 58c(5) shuts the descendant's route in sec. 58c(3) and (4) to a person who no longer holds Austrian citizenship because he/she acquired a foreign one (sec. 27), or who lost it under secs. 32 to 34 or 37. The same subsection keeps the route open where that person did not know, at the time he/she took the other citizenship, that he/she was an Austrian citizen at all — which is common in these families. So a Yes here is a point to look at, never a closed door.
This is a first, non-binding indication. It is based only on what you have told us on this page, it is not legal advice, and it does not create a lawyer–client relationship. Nothing here is a promise that an application will succeed. Only the competent Austrian authority decides, and it decides on documents.
A lawyer in our citizenship team will read this and reply. Only your email address is needed.
Printed from our questionnaire — a non-binding preliminary indication, not legal advice.
Eight is as far as this form goes. Put any further generations under Add details (anything else) below — a plain list of names and years is exactly as useful.
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