Fled Austria before 15 May 1955
This is the widest of the six cases, and the one most families turn out to be inside. It is built for the ordinary shape of the story: someone who was living in Austria, who was in danger, and who got out.
Three things have to be true of the ancestor — a citizenship the Austrian Citizenship Act recognises, a main home in Austria, and a departure caused by persecution. The date limit is the part people misjudge. It is 15 May 1955, the day the Austrian State Treaty was signed, not 1945. Someone who escaped in 1938 and someone who left in 1951 are both inside this case.
| Ancestor’s citizenship | Austrian, successor-state, or stateless |
|---|---|
| Residence in Austria | A main home in Austria before 15 May 1955 |
| What happened | Left Austria because of persecution, suffered or feared |
| Cut-off date | 15 May 1955 |
The statutory text
A descendant in direct line of an individual
- who had been:
- an Austrian citizen;
- a citizen of one of the successor states of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy; or
- a stateless person;
- who had his/her primary residence in Austria before 15 May 1955; and
- who had left Austria because he/she:
- had reason to fear, or had suffered, persecution by organs of the NSDAP (i.e., the National Socialist German Workers' Party) or the authorities of the German Reich; or
- had reason to fear, or had suffered, persecution because of his/her advocacy for the democratic Republic of Austria.
This provision also applies to a non-Austrian citizen, who 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 words above are sec. 58c(1) of the Austrian Citizenship Act. Read sec. 58c in full
What each limb means
“Who had been an Austrian citizen; a citizen of one of the successor states of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy; or a stateless person”
The Austrian Citizenship Act does not require the ancestor to have been Austrian. Citizenship of a successor state — Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Poland, Romania, Italy, or the Ukraine — counts, and so does having been stateless. A great many Viennese families held Czechoslovak or Hungarian papers in 1938 and assume, wrongly, that this closes the route.
“Who had his/her primary residence in Austria before 15 May 1955”
A main home, not a visit. The registration record is what proves it. Note the date: this limb reaches a decade past the end of the war, so an ancestor who stayed on after 1945 and only left later is still inside the case.
“Who had left Austria because he/she had reason to fear, or had suffered, persecution by organs of the NSDAP or the authorities of the German Reich; or because of his/her advocacy for the democratic Republic of Austria”
Two separate grounds, and either is enough. The first is persecution by the Nazi party or the German state — the ground most files rest on. The second is political: persecution for having stood up for the democratic Republic. And reason to fear is its own standard. The ancestor did not have to have been arrested, deported or harmed. It is enough that a person in his/her position had grounds to be afraid.
“This provision also applies to a non-Austrian citizen, who 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”
A specific rescue for a specific injustice. A woman who lost her Austrian citizenship by marrying a foreign national, at around the time she left, is not shut out by having become foreign on paper. If a marriage sits close to the departure in your family’s timeline, this limb is worth reading twice.
What this case turns on
Two things carry this file: the registration record showing a main home in Austria, and whatever shows why the ancestor left. Departure is rarely documented as flight — it is documented as an exit permit, a visa, an affidavit, a passenger manifest. The persecution and the departure are usually proved by different records, and both are needed.
That you are descended from him/her in a direct line
- Your birth certificate, and the birth and marriage certificates of every person in the chain between you and him/her.
- Where a surname changed, the marriage certificate that changed it.
- For an adoption, the adoption order — and note that Austria set the age of majority at 21 until 1973 and 19 until 2001, so whether an adoption counts turns on the year.
Which citizenship your ancestor held before March 1938
- Old passports and travel papers.
- A citizenship certificate — Heimatschein or Staatsbürgerschaftsnachweis.
- The right-of-domicile record (Heimatrecht / Zuständigkeit) of the home municipality.
- For statelessness, a Nansen passport or an alien’s registration.
Why your ancestor was at risk
- IKG Vienna community records; Yad Vashem; the Arolsen Archives.
- Restitution and compensation files — Opferfürsorge, Hilfsfonds, Nationalfonds, Claims Conference.
- The 1938 property declarations (Vermögensanmeldung).
- For the political limb: party, Schutzbund or trade-union records, and police or court files.
Why your ancestor left Austria, and when
- Emigration and exit records.
- The immigration file in the country he/she went to; ship or passenger manifests.
- Visa and affidavit papers.
- The IKG emigration department files (Auswanderungsabteilung).
Where your ancestor had his/her main home, and when
- Vienna or other municipal registration records (Meldezettel).
- The 1938 census of the Jewish community (IKG).
- The 1938 property declarations.
- Address books; school, tax or employment records.
Whether you have ever held Austrian citizenship yourself
- Any Austrian passport, citizenship certificate or registration among the family papers — people are sometimes citizens without ever knowing it.
- The naturalisation record of the country whose citizenship you took, and its date.
- Sec. 58c(5) keeps the route open for a person who did not know he/she was an Austrian citizen when he/she acquired the other citizenship, so what was known at the time matters as much as the dates.
How this case differs from the ones next to it
Case 2 — Already abroad, 1933–1945
Case 2 is for an ancestor who was already outside Austria and could not come back. If he/she had a home in Austria at any point between 1933 and 1945, Case 2 is closed to him/her and Case 1 is the one to read.