The Sequestration of Property
For a "German" country, Alsace-Lorraine seems to have a great number of landowners who are French, if one is to judge by the sequestrations and confiscations with which the authorities have been so desperately busy for three years.
In fact the local newspapers contain lists of sequestrations that are almost as long as the lists of deserters.
And these confiscations apply not only to the landowners who live in France. A large number have been pronounced against inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine who live abroad. Orders were given them to reënter the German Empire, orders they had no possible chance of obeying, but which gave the imperial government an easy pretext for pronouncing their denationalization and the confiscation of their property.
Also, the sequestrations followed by sales under the hammer, of French and Alsatian properties were extremely numerous. Among these properties there are a certain number of considerable importance.
On the twenty-fourth of August, 1916, Les Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg, advertised the sale under the hammer of the properties of Prince de Tonnay-Charente, situated at Hambourg and consisting of a splendid château, furnished in Louis Fourteenth style, Gobelin tapestries of great value, family portraits, green houses, outhouses, ponds, farms, etc., etc.
The Strassburg Post for the twenty-ninth of October announced the liquidation sale of Cité Hof, belonging to the heirs of Paul de Geiger, including "forty-two hectares of fine arable land, fine dwelling houses, barns and stables, a very fine park, summer houses, a coach house, etc." ... "of the Villa Huber, with a fine park, servants' quarters, garden, surrounded by twenty-eight hectares of fields."
The same paper for the fourth of October announces the sale of the famous château of Robertsau, the property of Mme. Loys-Chandieu, née Pourtalès, with two hundred and thirty hectares of farm land and one hundred and thirty hectares of forest.
The Metzer Zeitung for the twentieth of October announced the liquidation of twenty properties in the Moyeuvre Grande district, and of eleven in that of Sierek.
Many people have obviously been covetous of these French possessions.