The community of heirs of Hedwig Adlon will not receive any compensation for her hotel expropriation in November 1949 for the time being, according to a ruling by the Berlin Administrative Court (VG 29 K 131/20). Hedwig Adlon was expropriated at the time as a result of the "Law on the Confiscation of Assets of War Criminals and Nazi Activists".
According to the Berlin Administrative Court, one of the charges against her was that she and her husband Louis had joined the NSDAP in 1941 and that the hotel had been under the leadership of Nazi activists with their consent. The community of heirs does not share this view and believes that her relatives were wrongly placed on the so-called "List 3" as Nazi activists. There is new evidence of this.
The Administrative Court takes a different view. As some of the evidence was already known in the completed administrative proceedings, it is no longer "new". The ruling is not yet legally binding. The dispute could now go into the next round - the community of heirs has already announced further legal steps. The hotel, which was demolished in 1984 and rebuilt around 1997, is one of the most famous luxury hotels in Germany.
Sources: berlin.de/berlinjournal.biz
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