What are the six relevant cases?
The Austrian Citizenship Act does not ask one broad question about persecution. It defines six situations, very casuistically, and an application has to land inside one of them. This page is for working out which.
All six share two things. The ancestor has to have been at risk from the Nazi party, the authorities of the German Reich, or because he/she stood up for the democratic Republic of Austria — and you have to be his/her descendant in a direct line, with no limit on the number of generations between you.
Everything else varies, and it varies on four axes: which citizenship the ancestor held, whether a main home in Austria has to be proved, what actually happened to him/her, and the date the case stops at. Those four axes are the table below.
More than one case can be open at once. That is a better position than one, because a file fails on documents far more often than it fails on law.
What distinguishes the six
| Case | Ancestor’s citizenship | Residence in Austria | What happened | Cut-off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Case 1 cf. sec. 58c(1) |
Austrian, successor-state, or stateless | A main home in Austria before 15 May 1955 | Left Austria because of persecution, suffered or feared | 15 May 1955 |
| Case 2 cf. sec. 58c(2)(1) |
Austrian only | No main home in Austria at any point between 30 January 1933 and 9 May 1945 | Would have had reason to fear persecution on entering or returning | 30 January 1933 – 9 May 1945 |
| Case 3 cf. sec. 58c(2)(2) |
Austrian only | None required | Deported out of Austria | 9 May 1945 |
| Case 4 cf. sec. 58c(2)(3) |
Successor-state citizen, or stateless | A main home in Austria before 9 May 1945 | Deported out of Austria | 9 May 1945 |
| Case 5 cf. sec. 58c(4)(1) |
Austrian only | None required | Perished, in Austria or abroad, due to persecution | Death before 9 May 1945 |
| Case 6 cf. sec. 58c(4)(2) |
Successor-state citizen, or stateless | A main home in Austria before 9 May 1945 | Perished, in Austria or abroad, due to persecution | No date limit on the death |
Two pairs sit close together and are worth reading against each other. Cases 3 and 4 cover the same event — a deportation — and differ only in the citizenship the ancestor held, which decides whether a residence record has to be proved at all. Cases 5 and 6 likewise cover the same ending, but they part on something that runs the other way: Case 5 reaches only deaths before 9 May 1945, and Case 6 sets no date limit on the death.
The six cases in full
Each page sets out the statutory wording verbatim, restates every limb in plain English, and lists the records that specific case turns on. If none of the six looks like your family, the questionnaire is the faster way to find out — it works through the elements one at a time rather than asking you to match a whole case at once.