Ministry of Agriculture, General Records, 1939-1944. Thematic unit no. 27 - Collection pertaining to the confiscation of Jewish estates

Collection description

Collection

Country:: Hungary

Holding institution:: National Archives of Hungary, National Archives

Holding institution (official language):: Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára

Postal address:: Budapest, Bécsi Kapu tér 2-4., 1014

Phone number:: +36 1 225 2843

Web address:: http://mnl.gov.hu/

Email:: info@mnl.gov.hu

Reference number:: K 184

Title:: Ministry of Agriculture, General Records, 1939-1944. Thematic unit no. 27 - Collection pertaining to the confiscation of Jewish estates

Title (official language):: Földművelésügyi Minisztérium Általános iratok, 1939-1944. 27. tétel - zsidó birtokokkal kapcsolatos iratok

Creator/accumulator:: Ministry of Agriculture

Date(s):: 1939/1944

Extent:: 224 fascicles

Scope and content:: The bulk of the material contains statistics and registries prepared by the local municipalities on the Jewish landholdings upon Act IV of 1939 and Act XV of 1942, which included the name of the owners, the size and value of the real estate and comments about the utilisation of the property. The records also include a large number of requests of individuals, social organisations and municipalities for the Jewish estates as well as requests of Jewish owners for exemption, protocols of the surveys of Jewish-owned lands and various other types of administrative material concerning the land reform.

Archival history:: The records pertaining to the confiscation of Jewish estates in the files of the Ministry of Agriculture (1939-1944) were arranged in the unit no. 27 (27-es tétel). The records were obtained by the Hungarian National archives in the early 1950s.

Administrative/biographical history:: Hungarian Jews gained the right to unrestricted land ownership through an imperial decree issued on 18 February 1860. During the following half century, Jews obtained significant agricultural and forest estates, mainly from the stocks of the noble medium-sized or large estates. According to the estimation of Alajos Kovács, in 1916, Jews owned a total of 2 million and rented 3.5 million cadastral holds of land, which constituted 11% of all the cultivated lands in Hungary. After WWI, a land reform law was introduced (Act XXXVI of 1920) to quell the hunger for land among the rural masses. Instead of requisitioning the large estates from the two pillars of the system, the aristocracy and the Catholic Church, it seemed more practical to take over the lands of the (largely Jewish) middle-class. The possibility of requisitioning Jewish-owned property was first made explicit in the Second Jewish Law (Act IV of 1939), which also restricted the rights of Jews to obtain landed property. From this point on, settlement projects were developed primarily on land requisitioned from Jewish owners.

Act XV of 1942 on Jewish-owned agricultural land and forests, also known as the Fourth Jewish Law, was the final stage of a two-decade-long process of “Aryanisation” in the agricultural sector. Jews had to hand over their estates and any production facilities connected to them. The compensation offered was significantly less than the real value of the estates.

The Royal Ministry of Agriculture (1889-1945) was the central authority to conduct and supervise the implementation of land reforms and other measures of land policy. Department no. VII. of Land Policy and Settlement (Birtokpolitikai és telepítési főosztály) was largely responsible for the implementation of anti-Jewish measures.

Subject terms:: Agriculture; Antisemitism; Antisemitism--Antisemitic legislation; Land; Plunder; Plunder--Aryanisation; Real estate

Finding aids:: Indexes are available for the entire collection (1889-1944). An item-level description is available for the collection pertaining to the confiscation of Jewish estates in Hungarian. Furthermore, the archivists of the Hungarian National Archives are preparing a database of the collection on the confiscation of Jewish estates.

Yerusha Network member:: Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives

fullscreen: Ministry of Agriculture, General Records, 1939-1944. Thematic unit no. 27 - Collection pertaining to the confiscation of Jewish estates

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