DECLARATION BY PRESENT OWNER OR CUSTODIAN OF PROPERTY WHICH HAS BEEN SUBJECT TO TRANSFER IN ACCORDANCE WITH PARAGRAPH 1 OF GENERAL ORDER No. 10 / Erklärung des jetzigen Eigentümers oder Verwalters von Vermögen, das unter Artikel 1 Absatz 1 der allgemeinen Verfügung Nr. 10 fällt

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In the course of the administration of assets expropriated by the National Socialists, the British military government set itself the goal of specifying the property control that had already begun in 1946, which also included the expropriated assets of persons persecuted by the Nazis. On October 20, 1947 it issued the General Decree No. 10 on the basis of Law No. 52 of the Military Government concerning the blocking and control of property. The decree obliged persons who had "owned, managed or supervised property" since January 30, 1933 to make a declaration of assets. This declaration had to be made in the form of the MGAF/P form: Declaration by the current owner or manager of property covered by Article I(1) of General Order No 10.  See Art. II Duty of disclosure, General Decree No. 10 on the basis of Act No. 52 of the Military Government on the Blocking and Control of Property, in: Rudolf Harmening / Wilhelm Hartenstein, eds., Rückerstattungsgesetz.Kommentar zum Gesetz über die Rückerstattung feststellbarer Vermögensgegenstände (Gesetz Nr. 59 der Militärregierung). Frankfurt a. M. 1950.Blatt Nr. 50. That such a form was to be developed had already been established in the winter of 1944: “It is contemplated, however, that shortly thereafter the submission of detailed reports of such blocked property will be required.” Handbook for Military Government in Germany prior to defeat or surrender. Dec. 1944, Part III, 340 Blocking Control (d). The British Military Government also required banks in the British Occupation Zone to fill out this form in order to collect information on confiscated assets and freeze them. In particular, one article of General Order No. 10 required bank administrators to report expropriations which they had witnessed or in which they had aided the authorities. For this reason, Rudolf Herms, the owner and manager of the Hamburg bank Herms & Co., filled in the form shown here on April 19, 1948 and "declared" in it the confiscation of assets owned by his former customer Elsa Saenger. A compensation procedure drawn out over about 20 years between 1948 and 1966 began, conducted between civil servants of the tax authorities in Hamburg and Freiburg and a representative of Elsa Saenger’s. The form is part of a set of files comprising several hundred pages in the state archives of Freiburg and Hamburg (621-1/77_13).
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DECLARATION BY PRESENT OWNER OR CUSTODIAN OF PROPERTY WHICH HAS BEEN SUBJECT TO TRANSFER IN ACCORDANCE WITH PARAGRAPH 1 OF GENERAL ORDER No. 10 / Erklärung des jetzigen Eigentümers oder Verwalters von Vermögen, das unter Artikel 1 Absatz 1 der allgemeinen Verfügung Nr. 10 fällt (translated by Insa Kummer), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, <https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-197.en.v1> [April 28, 2024].