From 1938, families with a Jewish heritage were forcibly detached from Austrian society and no longer shared the same destiny as their compatriots. One third of those affected were murdered and two thirds dispersed across the world. Austrian society and culture continued evolving but without 200,000 former citizens, their contributions or their descendants.

The scars carried by the surviving refugees overseas ensured their relationship to Austria was ambivalent at best. It did not help that Austria was slow to engage with restitution and did not allow its former citizens to have their citizenship simply restored on request until 1993, in the aftermath of the first significant period of national introspection.

Nevertheless, a minority of surviving refugees reclaimed what had been denied them. Sigmund Freud’s refugee granddaughter Sophie Freud was one of their number, saying: 

“I applied for Austrian citizenship because I think I am due it. They took it away from me. I want it back. It is satisfying. I'm also very interested in what's happening in this country. I also want to be able to vote. I don't want to give up U.S. citizenship either. It is due to me too. This [the US] is the country where I live, where my children grew up—and where I want to stay.” (The Kurier newspaper 8/1/98)

Clearly, restoring citizenship contributed to a reckoning with a painful past for some, confirming their entitlement to be recognised as Austrian, even as they remained physically in their adoptive homelands.

The question of citizenship for the refugees’ descendants would similarly be resolved piecemeal. It was not directly inheritable from refugee parents who benefitted from the 1993 law. It was only available to descendants under very limited circumstances before the early 2000’s, when eligibility expanded under case law.*

Citizenship was only opened to all with a dedicated law supported by all major political parties, that was enacted in 2020. One year later over 13,000 descendants had applied from around the world.

Descendants were driven by different motivations to apply. In the case of the UK, many such as author Meriel Schindler expressed a desire to regain the privileges of EU citizenship, lost under Brexit: 

“This is the landscape after Brexit, in which the idea that borders might close has induced a collective panic, reawakening slumbering ancestral memories. While Austria, like much of Europe, has its fair share of right wing extremists, it is a country at the heart of Europe, and that [Europe] is where we feel we both belong.” (from The Lost Café Schindler)

But a sense of unease attended the applications for some and prevented others from applying in the first place. A Jewish Historical Society project seeks to capture some of the conflicts, recognising how unprecedented the phenomenon of a mass ‘return’ to lands of historical persecution is (https://www.jhse.org/passports).

In terms of further engagement with the land of their forebears, some descendants are content to keep their passport handy for emergencies. Others want to open up possibilities to work, travel and live in Europe for themselves or their children. A contingent, spurred by curiosity or memories of culturally and linguistically Austrian parents or grandparents, want to engage with contemporary Austria and Austrians.

This initiative is for everyone in the latter camp.

Wider reading (in German): 

Heimatrecht und Staatsbürgerschaft österreichischer Juden Vom Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts bis in die Gegenwart

By Hannelore Burger
https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/book/10.7767/boehlau.9783205793045

*Effectively, before the early 2000's, in order to qualify for inherited Austrian citizenship as a second citizenship, one had to prove one's ancestor was forced to take on the citizenship of their adoptive homeland. Coercion was understood to only apply in authoritarian countries such as the Soviet Union - everywhere else, it was assumed the acquisition of a second citizenship was voluntary...and under conventional citizenship law which was applied without considering the unique circumstances of the refugees, this meant they had automatically lost Austrian citizenship (Austria only allows its citizens to hold another citizenship under very exceptional circumstances). In the early 2000's a case brought by an Israeli descendant established the principle that the acquisition of any another citizenship by the refugees was not voluntary. This opened the way to many more descendants to acquire Austrian citizenship by descent through the onerous 'Feststellung' process.  However...only descendants of male refugees were eligible because conventional Austrian law only recognised inheritance of citizenship via mothers from  birth (legitimate of course) after 1981. Very few descendants claimed via this route. Only in 2020, when the new law was introduced, could descendants of all refugees, including female and unmarried refugees apply. Moreover, a large contingent of Jews from Galicia legitimately resident in Austria after WWI but denied citizenship by Austria on racial grounds were recognised as effective citizens for inheritance of citizenship purposes. Finally, persecuted individuals who had remained in and left, or returned to and left, Austria after 1945 were also taken into account by the new law.