Tablecloth with the inscription “Hotel Metropole 1931”

A tablecloth made by Siegl & Co in 1931 for Hotel Metropole. In 1938 the Gestapo dispossessed the Jewish owners of the luxury hotel and established its offices and torture chambers there. The Siegl textile company was “Aryanized.” After the “rampant Aryanization” in early 1938 – uncontrolled plundering of apartments and offices in Vienna thought to be owned by Jews – had gone too far even for the new authorities, a bureaucratic system for the confiscation of assets was gradually put in place. In a complex procedure the “Property Control Office” began in May 1938 to transform “Jewish” assets into “Aryan” ones.