61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

In cases where foreign exchange policies were supposed to be paid out outside
Germany following their expiration date or redemption, the German currency
authorities demanded assurances that the company would not demand foreign
exchange from the Reichsbank, so that Germany’s foreign exchange and gold
reserves would not be overstretched. In general, the Swiss insurance companies
gave such assurances to the German authorities, although there were exceptions.
Despite a clear and comprehensible legal basis, from 1937 on, one Swiss
company – Basler Leben, whose clientele included many German Jews with
foreign exchange policies – attempted to halt the payment of cancelled policies
in Swiss francs as they would have had to import funds from Switzerland to
Germany for this purpose. It considered such transfers to be irresponsible, as the
«emigration of German Jews was thus financed on the back of the Swiss
economy». 14
In accordance with a law which came into force on 26 August 1938, all hard
currency policies held by policyholders living in Germany had to be fully
converted into reichsmarks. This step made it far more difficult for people who
were contemplating emigration to acquire the necessary hard currency. Overall,
the Swiss companies had to convert around 25,000 policies. One company,
Basler Leben, welcomed the measure, as it was already concerned that it would
have to resort to using Swiss reserves to settle German policies. The rest of the
insurance sector initially protested against the measure, however. Koenig asked
the Federal Political Department (Eidgenössisches Politisches Departement, EPD)
whether such an approach, which he described as «the rape not only of the
policyholders but also the companies», was legal; 15 The Department answered
that these contracts were subjected to German law. Once the Swiss companies
realised that they could not prevent the conversion, they successfully lobbied
for a legal requirement for full conversion, which henceforth denied policyholders
their freedom of choice; the advantage for the insurance companies was
that they could now convert their covering funds to reichsmarks as well.
Another controversial area was the willingness of Swiss insurance companies to
pay out on German Jews’ confiscated policies. The companies were offered a
declaration stating that in the event of later repayment claims by the policyholders
concerned, the German state would indemnify the companies. Some
Swiss insurance companies were satisfied with this assurance; one company,
Rentenanstalt, initially rejected the German offer on the grounds that the
policies contained an ownership clause (and would therefore have to be settled
again on production of the policy in future); after mid 1940, however, it too
paid out on confiscated policies in exchange for the appropriate renunciation
declaration.
The enactment of the 11 th Ordinance of the Law on German Citizenship
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