The “Supreme Restitution Court”–set up under the “Paris Accords” that restored West Germany’s sovereignty–constituted itself this week as the tribunal of last resort in cases involving the return to the original Jewish owner of property sold or confiscated during the Nazi ear.
The court has jurisdiction over all of West Germany and replaces the formerly autonomous top restitution tribunals for the United States, the British and the French zones. Whereas the old Court of Restitution Appeals for the U. S. zone was made up of American judges only, the new court is composed of Allied and German justices in equal number, with the presiding judge recruited from a neutral nation. It is made up of three divisions, which have their seats in the same cities where the former zonal restitution tribunals were located. The first division is at Rastatt, the second at. Herford and the third at Nuremberg.
Presiding judge at Nuremberg is Hans Gram Bechmann, “a Danish jurist who formerly served on the International Mixed Court in Cairo. Named by the U. S. Government as members of the Nuremberg division are Judges Fred J. Harris and Marc J. Robinson, the latter president of the Court of Restitution Appeals in its final stage. Bonn has delegated Franz Flammger and Hans Wilden, who until recently was in charge of the indemnification section in the Federal Ministry of Justice. Danish judge Seidelin Larsen is president of the Herford division, with jurisdiction over the former British zone. In Rastatt, the president is Charles Barde, a Swiss jurist. Judges Bechmann, Larsen and Barde, together with three Allied and three German judges, from the Presidential Council, which is the policy-making body of the Supreme Restitution Court.
All judges have been appointed for two years, but their terms of office may thereafter be renewed for successive periods of one year. The court faces a backlog of some 500 suits, to which additional hundreds will probably be added out of the almost 40,000 restitution cases that remain to be adjudicated in West Germany.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
