The foreign currency offices Devisenstelle between controlling and plundering

The list shown is taken from the doc­u­ments of De­part­ment F within the Ham­burg For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle, which was in charge of ap­prov­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for em­i­gra­tion. As in the en­tire Ger­man Reich, such a for­eign cur­rency of­fice De­visen­stelle had been es­tab­lished in Ham­burg as early as 1931 to com­bat cap­i­tal and tax flight abroad in the face of the eco­nomic cri­sis. Under Na­tional So­cial­ism, the of­fice soon de­vel­oped into a cen­tral player in the plun­der­ing of the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion. The of­fi­cials co­op­er­ated closely not only with the Cus­toms In­ves­ti­ga­tion Of­fice Zoll­fah­n­dungsstelle, which was also ad­junct to the Chief Fi­nance Ad­min­is­tra­tor Oberfinanzpräsident, but also with the rev­enue of­fices, the bailiff’s of­fice, and the Se­cret State Po­lice Gestapo.

Since De­cem­ber 1936, the for­eign cur­rency of­fices De­visen­stelle had at their dis­posal a par­tic­u­larly ef­fec­tive in­stru­ment of plun­der­ing: By means of a so-​called “se­cu­rity order” “Sicherungsanord­nung”], per­sons sus­pected of cap­i­tal flight could be de­prived of con­trol over their en­tire as­sets. How­ever, after the No­vem­ber Pogrom of 1938, the au­thor­i­ties im­puted to all Ger­man Jews the in­ten­tion to em­i­grate – and thus po­ten­tially to com­mit cap­i­tal flight. Many Jews forced to have their ap­pli­ca­tion for em­i­gra­tion ap­proved by the For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle had al­ready had grave ex­pe­ri­ences with the au­thor­i­ties. Betty Levy (born on Feb­ru­ary 14, 1869), too, had been is­sued a se­cu­rity order by the For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle in Kas­sel in Feb­ru­ary 1939. When she ar­rived in Ham­burg in Sep­tem­ber 1939 to­gether with her daugh­ter Else (born on July 19, 1903) in order to or­ga­nize her es­cape from there, the Ham­burg For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle up­held this order and promptly cut the monthly al­lowance for Betty and Else Levy by half to 500 RM.

The moving goods register Umzugsgutverzeichnisse as a biographical-historical source

As part of the ap­proval pro­ce­dure for em­i­gra­tion, em­i­grants had to pro­vide this de­part­ment with com­pre­hen­sive in­for­ma­tion about their fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances. It thus formed the bu­reau­cratic con­clu­sion of a pro­tracted process of plun­der­ing and dis­en­fran­chise­ment, in the course of which com­pany shares, real es­tate prop­erty, and in­her­i­tances had to have been com­pletely set­tled al­ready. Tax clear­ance cer­tifi­cates [Unbe­den­klichkeits­bescheini­gun­gen] from var­i­ous au­thor­i­ties were also re­quired, and levies such as the so-​called Reich flight tax [Re­ichs­flucht­s­teuera] had to be paid. A cen­tral part of the doc­u­ments to be sub­mit­ted con­sisted of the mov­ing goods reg­is­ters – lists of all items to be trans­ferred abroad in the course of em­i­gra­tion. There were pre­cise re­quire­ments in place for prepar­ing this reg­is­ter. Lists had to be drawn up for bag­gage and hand bag­gage as well as for each in­di­vid­ual piece of freight. In ad­di­tion, sep­a­rate lists were re­quired to de­tail par­tic­u­larly valu­able items such as pre­cious met­als, jew­elry, and stamp col­lec­tions, which could only be reg­is­tered and sealed by ap­pro­pri­ate ex­perts. In the case of Betty Levy, who em­i­grated to South Africa to­gether with her daugh­ter Else, the com­plete list com­prised ten pages. The ex­cerpt shown de­scribes the con­tents of one of sev­eral freight crates, so-​called Lift­vans (mov­ing con­tain­ers).

The au­thor­i­ties’ in­ten­tion be­hind the metic­u­lous list­ing was, on the one hand, to pre­vent the ex­port of works of art-​historical sig­nif­i­cance or tech­ni­cal equip­ment, for ex­am­ple, and, on the other hand, to keep the out­flow of cap­i­tal in the form of mov­ing goods as low as pos­si­ble. Since tak­ing along cash was pos­si­ble only sub­ject to ex­tremely high fees – they amounted to 81 per­cent from Oc­to­ber 1936 on­ward and to 96 per­cent start­ing in Sep­tem­ber 1939 – the dan­ger as seen by the tax au­thor­i­ties was that em­i­grants would specif­i­cally in­vest their money in high-​value goods with a view to leav­ing the coun­try. There­fore, in prin­ci­ple, only the ex­port of “old prop­erty” that had al­ready been ac­quired prior to Jan­u­ary 1, 1933 was ap­proved. In the case of all later pur­chases, tak­ing them along was in prin­ci­ple per­mit­ted only “within the scope of what was nec­es­sary” and such as­sets were also sub­ject to a levy, which is why the date of ac­qui­si­tion had to be spec­i­fied in the list for each entry. The mov­ing goods were thus bro­ken down into three cat­e­gories, de­pend­ing on whether they were ac­quired be­fore 1933 (sec­tion 1), after 1933 (sec­tion 2), or di­rectly in prepa­ra­tion for em­i­gra­tion (sec­tion 3).

In Betty Levy’s in­stance, the list con­tains an un­usu­ally large num­ber of en­tries with the ac­qui­si­tion date of 1939. She ex­plained to the For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle that she was un­cer­tain about the al­lo­ca­tion of these items: She had op­er­ated a fur­ni­ture store in Mel­sun­gen, Hes­sen, which had been de­stroyed in the No­vem­ber Pogrom of 1938. In South Africa, she was plan­ning to open a new store, and by then a large part of her mov­ing goods con­sisted of the new store fur­nish­ings. These items were thus at the same time re­place­ments for ear­lier prop­erty and they had been pur­chased specif­i­cally in prepa­ra­tion for em­i­gra­tion. In order to make clear the ur­gent need for this fur­ni­ture, she noted sev­eral times by way of ex­plana­tory re­mark that it con­sti­tuted a “re­place­ment for the de­stroyed items!!!” – not at all com­pris­ing any un­nec­es­sar­ily ex­pen­sive new pur­chases.

For his­tor­i­cal re­search, these lists of com­plete house­hold items pro­vide re­mark­able in­sight into the liv­ing sit­u­a­tion of the Jews prior to em­i­gra­tion. To­gether with the other doc­u­ments from the ap­proval pro­ceed­ings, a de­tailed pic­ture of fam­ily and fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances emerges. The files are there­fore also of great im­por­tance in historical-​biographical re­search such as that con­ducted by the Ham­burg Stolper­stein Ini­tia­tive. Be­yond that, the ob­jects de­clared for ex­port – and es­pe­cially the newly ac­quired ones – also show what ex­pec­ta­tions the em­i­grants as­so­ci­ated with their life abroad. Some­times they even stated them ex­plic­itly. Betty Levy, for ex­am­ple, ar­gued in favor of tak­ing along an elec­tric stove that had been deleted from her list of items to be moved, say­ing that she would “be ex­tremely lim­ited in terms of space abroad and might have to cook and live in the same room. Under these cir­cum­stances, an elec­tric stove con­sti­tutes a con­sid­er­able re­lief, es­pe­cially at my ad­vanced age.” State Archives Ham­burg, StaHH 314–15 Oberfinanzpräsident, F 1455, Betty Levy to For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle, 13.12 [19]39, fol. 49.

Latitude in the audit process

By means of the lists sub­mit­ted, the mov­ing goods were sub­jected to metic­u­lous scrutiny, with the Ham­burg For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle com­mis­sion­ing ex­ter­nal ex­perts from the bailiff’s of­fice or the cus­toms in­ves­ti­ga­tion of­fice to this end. These ex­perts checked the packed boxes and suit­cases against the lists, as­sessed the plau­si­bil­ity of the ac­qui­si­tion dates pro­vided, iden­ti­fied in­di­vid­ual items whose mov­ing was to be re­fused, and – mostly in the case of art­work – sug­gested fur­ther ap­praisals. They then sub­mit­ted an in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port and cor­rected lists to the For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle. In the case of Betty Levy, these show some dele­tions. For ex­am­ple, ju­di­cial in­spec­tor Jus­tizin­spek­tor Carl Bürkner, act­ing as an ex­pert wit­ness, barred Betty Levy from tak­ing along, among other things, a cof­fee ma­chine (marked “new”) and a lamp from sec­tion 3 (“not ap­proved”). The check­ing of the list was doc­u­mented by the stamp the ex­pert ap­plied.

Based on the stated ac­qui­si­tion dates and the pur­chase prices, the ex­pert also drew up a “tax index” to cal­cu­late the levies due. The ex­port of all items from cat­e­gories 2 and 3 was only pos­si­ble sub­ject to a pay­ment to the ac­count of the Reich Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics held with Ger­man Gold Dis­count Bank Deutsche Gold­diskont­bank, the so-​called DEGO levy. It usu­ally amounted to 100 per­cent of the pur­chase price, but could also be sig­nif­i­cantly higher. In Betty Levy’s case, Bürkner’s es­ti­mate hardly de­vi­ated from the pur­chase price and val­ued the mov­ing goods at 2,130.50 RM as de­tailed in a three-​page in­voice. Once this fee had been paid, the mov­ing goods were cleared for ex­port.

Using the files on em­i­gra­tion pro­ceed­ings, re­searchers can specif­i­cally ex­am­ine dis­crim­i­na­tion against and plun­der­ing of Jews as part of every­day ad­min­is­tra­tive work. After all, the legal re­quire­ments af­forded in­di­vid­ual of­fi­cials like Bürkner con­sid­er­able lat­i­tude. Just which mov­ing goods were con­sid­ered “nec­es­sary,” which re­ceipts and cer­tifi­cates were rec­og­nized, and how high the es­ti­mate was, re­mained largely at the dis­cre­tion of a small group of ex­perts. Their con­duct can be ex­am­ined based on the processed in­ven­to­ries, es­pe­cially with re­gard to mech­a­nisms of tar­geted an­ti­se­mitic dis­crim­i­na­tion. At the same time, cases such as that of Betty Levy il­lus­trate that the ap­pli­cants had the op­por­tu­nity, at least for­mally, to argue to the of­fi­cials for tak­ing along cer­tain items – and ac­tu­ally made use of those means.

In this con­nec­tion, one can also gain in­sights into the per­se­cu­tion process be­yond the con­duct of in­di­vid­ual of­fi­cials. For ex­am­ple, con­tra­dic­tory goals col­lided in the em­i­gra­tion ap­proval process. On the one hand, the For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle was charged with closely con­trol­ling em­i­gra­tion and the ex­port of goods and with ap­prov­ing ei­ther only under cer­tain con­di­tions. More­over, the au­thor­ity was able to use its con­trol to plun­der on a com­pre­hen­sive scale. On the other hand, there was ini­tially no doubt about the po­lit­i­cal maxim aimed at en­cour­ag­ing the em­i­gra­tion of Jews on prin­ci­ple. The bu­reau­cratic and eco­nomic hur­dles were there­fore not al­lowed to be so high as to make em­i­gra­tion seem un­at­trac­tive or even im­pos­si­ble. An­a­lyz­ing the con­duct of the For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle to­ward Jew­ish em­i­grants thus en­ables re­searchers to gain struc­tural in­sights into the po­lit­i­cal prac­tice of the fi­nan­cial bu­reau­cracy under Nazism.

Nei­ther the cen­tral po­si­tion of the For­eign Cur­rency Of­fice De­visen­stelle in the re­gional per­se­cu­tion net­work nor the course of the ex­am­i­na­tion pro­ce­dure is spe­cific to Ham­burg. What is re­mark­able in this con­text, how­ever, is the fa­vor­able sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing the doc­u­men­ta­tion pre­served: Ac­cord­ing to the Ham­burg State Archives, 97 per­cent of all in­di­vid­ual pro­ceed­ings have been pre­served – over­all some 10,000 case files of Jew­ish and non-​Jewish em­i­grants be­tween 1931 and 1945. These com­pre­hen­sive archive hold­ings pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about pro­ce­dures within the au­thor­ity, but also about the broad net­work in which the sys­tem­atic plun­der­ing took place. Pho­to­graph, pre­sum­ably de­pict­ing Betty Levy and her daugh­ter Else.

Lists of moving goods in the LostLift provenance database

In the case of Betty Levy, the pro­ceed­ings were suc­cess­fully con­cluded on Jan­u­ary 5, 1940, and tak­ing along her be­long­ings was ap­proved with some re­stric­tions. On Feb­ru­ary 25, 1940, she em­i­grated to­gether with her daugh­ter Else from Ham­burg via Am­s­ter­dam to South Africa. How­ever, the freight she had listed in her reg­is­ter was not shipped as planned due to the state of the war im­ped­ing civil­ian ship­ping; in­stead, it con­tin­ued to be stored at the Ernst Vogt ship­ping com­pany in Ham­burg-Eil­bek. In Sep­tem­ber 1941, it was seized there by the Se­cret State Po­lice Gestapo, the “lift­vans” were opened, and the mov­ing goods were put up for pub­lic auc­tion by Schop­mann auc­tion­eers.

In this way, Betty Levy’s fate re­sem­bled that of thou­sands of other em­i­grants who left the Ger­man Reich via the major em­i­grant ports. Around 3,000 “lift­vans,” also known as “Jews’ boxes,” were stored in the port of Ham­burg from 1939 on­ward, and an­other 1,000 in Bre­mer­haven. In the prove­nance re­search project en­ti­tled “LIFT­Prov – The han­dling of Jew­ish em­i­grants’ re­set­tle­ment goods in Ham­burg after 1939” con­ducted at the Ger­man Mar­itime Mu­seum in Bre­mer­haven, the paths of this prop­erty are being re­con­structed. The source hold­ings of em­i­gra­tion ap­proval pro­ceed­ings cen­tral to this re­search have been eval­u­ated in co­op­er­a­tion with the In­sti­tute for the His­tory of the Ger­man Jews. As part of the project, LostLift, a pub­lic on­line data­base, is being cre­ated to fa­cil­i­tate resti­tu­tion. The prove­nance of Betty Levy’s be­long­ings can also be traced there in de­tail.

The mov­ing goods reg­is­ters, which doc­u­ment te con­tents of the con­fis­cated freight crates, are of great im­por­tance for this re­con­struc­tion. The sep­a­rate list­ings of sealed mov­ing goods such as jew­elry some­times con­tain pre­cise de­scrip­tions and weight in­for­ma­tion that may en­able the sub­se­quent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of in­di­vid­ual valu­ables and art­work.

The data­base also makes it pos­si­ble to link var­i­ous cases via the per­sons in­volved in each case, thus en­abling sys­tem­atic re­search into the broad net­work of per­se­cu­tion. The data­base en­com­passes tax au­thor­i­ties, cus­toms in­ves­ti­ga­tion of­fices, bailiff’s of­fices, and Se­cret State Po­lice Gestapo, but also ship­ping com­pa­nies, jew­elry stores, auc­tion­eers, and the many buy­ers. The plun­der­ing was a col­lab­o­ra­tive project in­volv­ing broad so­cial par­tic­i­pa­tion and nu­mer­ous prof­i­teers.

The reg­is­ters of mov­ing goods thus prove to be sources with mul­ti­fac­eted re­search po­ten­tial. They make it pos­si­ble to ex­am­ine the bi­ogra­phies and imag­i­na­tions of the em­i­grants them­selves, shed light on the process of con­trol and plun­der­ing within the net­work of the Nazi per­se­cu­tion bu­reau­cracy, and they are of par­tic­u­lar value for prove­nance re­search as well. At the same time, a sys­tem­atic study of the files from the Ham­burg em­i­gra­tion ap­proval pro­ceed­ings has yet to be con­ducted.

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