Georg’s Pipe Dream
Pulling the right strings at the right authorities, Georg von Waldenfels managed to acquire from the DAG the trusteeship over the ‘abandoned’ estate property at Angern on the River March between Lower Austria and Slovenia. As a trustee he worked there for two months from August 3 to October 1, 1938.
His ultimate goal was by hook or by crook to take possession of the property of the Jewish family Löw, who had owned and worked this large parcel of land of prime agricultural land for many generations. The DAG (Deutsche Ansiedlungsgesellschaft), the so-called German Settlement Agency, had set into motion punitive court proceedings against the Löw family to the tune of 13 million Reichsmark (RM). Eight million RM were covered by the sale of all movable equipment. Remained the five million RM, which the DAG desired to collect. To fully comprehend the value of the entire estate, one can easily peg the sale’s price on today’s real estate market at around 100 million dollars. The commissioned administrator von Waldenfels bragged among friends that he could easily come up with the five million RM. Through marriage he had connected with father-in-law Jan F. Jannink, “one of the wealthiest mega-industrialists of Holland, who would throw the five million RM on the table with a smile.”
Von Waldenfels had also set his eyes on the palace-like mansion of the Löw family located at the 19th District of Vienna. This stately and historically important residence also belonged to the total ‘aryanized’ property of the SS. The low ranking SS officer of Lagowitz, swept up by his incredible pipe dreams, now beyond all reasonable dimensions appeared to drift away into the fantasy world of his own desires.
The Peter and Gertrud Klopp Family 
This story is a chilling example of what greed will make people do. Mind boggling and sad.
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Let’s hope that the world learns a valuable lesson from these examples of horror.
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Incredible story of selfishness and forgetting to treat others as you would want to be treated.
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So far removed from the love of Christ! So true!
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So many Jews had their property expropriated by the Nazis and selfish people like Georg. This post reminded me of The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding. Have you read that book? It’s about one house and the five different families that owned it over the course of about 150 years.
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I heard so much about this book. I will put it on my shopping list. I believe they even made a movie out of it.
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I don’t know about the movie, but it tells the recent history of Germany in a dramatic and often heart-breaking way—from the 19th century aristocracy to the Soviet-era in East Germany.
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that sounds interesting. I think I buy it. 🙂
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Let me know what you think.
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It will take some time. I ordered it today and I will fetch it on the local bookstore next town. I just like to support the local stores.
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That’s great! I hope you find it as interesting as I did.
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I have read the first dozen chapters or so and I must say I am absolutely delighted with the author’s handling of this important material. Often such books are biased in one direction or another. This one is refreshingly different. Thanks for the tip, Amy!
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I am glad you are enjoying it. I also found it fairly presented and well-written and also heart-breaking and fascinating.
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I know now why you recommended the book to me. There so many parallels to the Anna von Waldenfels story. Thanks agin, Amy!
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🙂
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I will let you know, Amy.
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What’s up with Lagowitz? Did I miss something?
Self-enrichment had been method then.
Last year I read the biography of Speer and there it da a diferent dimension, for example large areas in Berlin.
I wonder why Georg came through so easily? Did he have such high merit in the SS? Or was he just simply crafty ?!
In any case, such “profits” were always short-lived.
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I think the latter was the case. He was very crafty, but all his craftiness did not help him in the end, as you will see on my next post. Of course, he was also lucky to have a high ranking officer in Sepp Dietrich to support him.
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I can imagine what follwed.
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Yet another example of what happens when we worship riches and power….. So very sad!
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All this must have split up the family. I mean what did his mother say to his goings-on?
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Remarkable story. Often we stay limited to the lives of rulers and conquerors when reading history. But, each individual is making a history of his/ her own. Maybe at a smaller scale, but, in many cases, no less interesting.
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So true, Ankur! I firmly believe that each human being has an interesting story to tell. Too bad, only a few the effort to write them down.
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