Citizenship, Expropriation, and Redress: ‘Migrating Objects’ and the Case of Holocaust Victims from Austria

Abstract Forced displacement brings with it the loss of property, belonging, and identity. Objects encode the nexus between citizenship, property, and sense of belonging/emotional attachment. The article explores the connection between citizenship and property and thereby highlights the agency of victims and their refugee’s polis. This case-study focuses on Jewish Austrian citizens who fled from Austria to Shanghai during the Nazi occupation era, expelled by the Nuremberg racial laws. During this racial persecution, they lost their citizenship and subsequently all their assets, with most of their belongings stored at the port of Trieste. Surprisingly, even after the end of the Second World War and Nazi occupation, it proved very difficult for Jews to regain their citizenship and property, for reasons highlighted in this article. The post-war nation-state could not deliver justice to actors whose economic, social, and cultural lives had been shaped through forced migration. Following scandals like the ‘Woman in Gold’ dispute concerning the return of a painting by Klimt in 2006, legal transformation in the fields of monetary compensation and citizenship laws was only brought about by resolutely transnational political-legal activism.