The term ‘Aryanization’, originally coined in ethnic-chauvinist and Nazi circles, was generally taken to mean the entire process of material expropriation of Jews during the Third Reich in favor of non-Jewish (‘Aryan’) profiteers. In the research, the term is also applied, although not uniformly, to the complete forced exclusion of Jews from economic life. The anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis, particularly the various measures to force Jews out of economic life, such as the boycott of Jewish businesses, occupational bans and discrimination in a wide range of areas, resulted in many Jewish people seeing themselves forced to sell their property at below market value. While so many non-Jewish Germans directly benefited from the antisemitic policy of the Nazi state, the state also siphoned off substantial parts of the proceeds generated by the Jewish sellers through the ‘Reichsfluchtsteuer’ (Reich flight tax) – to be paid upon emigration – as well as through exchange control measures. By early 1938, this ‘voluntary’, legally unregulated ‘Aryanization’ had already resulted in the majority of Jewish businesses being sold or wound up.
After the annexation of Austria, Jewish businesses were taken over by the Nazi Party or self-appointed commissioners, also there was a massive wave of looting. However, during the following months, the authorities succeeded in getting this ‘rampant Aryanization’ under control, in the interests of regulating a structural adjustment of the Austrian economy. These events, particularly in the context of the precarious financial situation of the Reich as a consequence of rearmament, strengthened efforts to legally regulate ‘Aryanization’. Important steps towards this goal were the Ordinance on the Registration of the Assets of Jews of April 26, 1938, the Third Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Act of June 14, 1938, which introduced a special trademark for Jewish businesses and a decree of the Reich Minister of Economics of July 5, 1938, which provided for an authorization procedure for the sale of Jewish property and granted the Regional Leaderships a right to comment. The intention was to ensure that the Nazi Party and its close clientele would benefit from the ‘profits of Aryanization’. A change to the Commercial Code of July 6, also led to a series of further occupational bans for Jews, namely that they could no longer work as commercial agents.
The urgency of the expropriation of Jewish assets from the state’s point of view was stated by Hermann Göring, as commissioner for the Four-Year Plan with extensive economic powers, on October 14, in a meeting of the General Council of the Four-Year Plan: Forced to finance a further gigantic armaments program with almost empty coffers, he declared that the “Jewish Problem” had to be tackled now “with all means” because they “have to get out of the economy”. The pogrom of the night of November 9–10, 1938 provided the occasion for the completion of the 'Aryanization' by legal means shortly after. Following a demand made by Hitler in 1936, not only was an ‘atonement tax’ of a billion Reichsmarks imposed on the Jewish minority, but through the Ordinance on the Elimination of Jews from Economic Life of November 12, and the Ordinance on the Use of Jewish Assets of December 3, 1938, the compulsory transfer of ownership and compulsory liquidation completely ended the economic activity of the Jewish population. The ‘Aryanization’ of the other Jewish assets was concluded with the Eleventh Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Act of November 25, 1941, by which the assets of Jews who had left the territory of the Third Reich – which is how the deportations were euphemistically described – fell to the Reich.
