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Please send in any articles note worthy on the subject illegal
property seizures.
Further information, please contact:
Ms. Alexandra Mareschi
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Strasbourg, France (dpa) - The European Court of Human Rights ruled Wednesday that the German government is not required to pay extra compensation to people whose property was seized by the communists in eastern Germany from 1945 to 1949.
The ruling will come as a big relief to the German government which would have faced multi-billion euro payments if the court had ruled in favour of former landowners.
The German state refused to return about 3.3 million hectares of land seized after World War II, in what become communist East Germany, after the 1990 reunification.
Then Chancellor Helmut Kohl argued that non-return had been a condition of the Soviet Union for allowing unification to go ahead. This, however, was later denied by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Former owners are instead being paid a symbolic sum which is less than 5 per cent of the current market price of their property.
Meanwhile, the German state has been selling off the land for the past 15 years with the money going to federal coffers.
Former owners had argued that this was unfair given that those whose property was seized in East Germany from 1949 to 1989 have hadtheir real estate returned.
But the court, which is part of the Council of Europe, ruled that Berlin was not obligated to pay the current market price of property seized prior to the Federal Republic of Germany's creation in 1949.
Leon Mangasarian, PhD
Correspondent for European and Defence Affairs
dpa - International Service
Leon Mangasarian received Ph. D. from the London School of Economic and has been a journalist based in Germany since 1989
Copyright 2001 by Leon Mangasarian
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