In 2005 we were made aware of a flat in one of the richest neighbourhoods of Vienna which, after the death of the owner, would have passed to the state if we hadn’t found the legitimate heirs within a certain period of time.

We soon found out that the late owner of the flat was a lady called Ludmilla D., allegedly from Mannheim, Germany.

But when our German registry office searches did not provide us with any information, we carried out further research and discovered that she was not born in Germany, but in the Ukraine in Mannheim near Odessa, a former German "colony" in Bessarabia.

One of our members of staff, supported by one of our partners, traced the woman’s origins. As we know that most ethnic Germans had to leave their homes after the Second World War, we assumed that the family had emigrated to either Germany or Austria.