Ministry of Agriculture, General Department of Land Policy, 1945-1951

Collection description

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

Title:: Ministry of Agriculture, General Department of Land Policy, 1945-1951

Title (official language):: Földművelésügyi Minisztérium Földbirtokpolitikai (Földrendezési) főosztály, 1945-1951

Scope and content:: The collection holds cases of landholdings and forests confiscated by Act IV of 1939 and Act XV of 1942 (Second and Fourth Jewish Laws). State expropriation of Jewish-owned lands and forests was one of the major stages of the economic deprivation of Jewish citizens by the Hungarian state between 1939 and 1944. 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. According to Act XV of 1942 on Jewish-owned agricultural land and forests, also known as the Fourth Jewish Law, Jews were forced to hand over their landed property and any production facilities connected to them. The compensation offered was significantly less than the real value of the estates.

The bulk of the material contains decisions, registries, surveys, and various other kinds of administrative material concerning the landholdings confiscated by the state between 1939 and 1944 and given to non-Jews by the National Land Mortgage Institute, the Order of Vitéz and state cooperatives (Közjóléti Szövetkezetek).

The confiscation of Jewish landed property was theoretically declared null by the laws of the Interim National Government in 1945. However, in practice many owners or their heirs did not get back their lands and Jewish-owned lands (excluding smaller estates and some special cases) were subjected to the 1945 land reform of the Hungarian state.

Administrative/biographical history:: The General Department of Land Policy of the Ministry of the Agriculture was the central authority to conduct and supervise the implementation of the 1945 land reform and other measures of land policy. Cases of the Jewish estates were under the auspices of the Department of Liquidation (Felszámolási Ügyosztály), which was dissolved in 1947 and its tasks were taken over by the Department of Land Policy before 1945 (1945 előtti birtokrendezési ügyek Osztálya).

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

System of arrangement:: Collection items 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 material is partly organised by the names of municipalities and by the registration number of the individual cases. Cases of Jewish real estate, 1950-1951 (fascicles 1132-1143) are in alphabetical order of localities.

Finding aids:: An archival unit-level description is available for the collection in Hungarian.