The search engines I use for the Web are:

Lycos (http://www.lycos.com/), Webcrawler (http://webcrawler.com/), and Infoseek (http://www2.infoseek.com).

Sites which may be of assistance to you include:

http://langlab.uta.edu/germ/gic/gic_search.html (a search engine for material, in English and German, at the German Information Centre)

http://fub46.zedat.fu-berlin.de:8080/~stummel/Jura.html (this is supposed to provide access to a search engine for German legal issues in German)

http://seamless.com/bzt/index.html (this is the home page for Bender Zahn Tigges, which claims to be the first German law firm on the Web. Their info indicates that they do work relating to "property restitution." Maybe someone there can help you out).

If you are interested in comparative work with the situation in South Africa (where land confiscated under the apartheid regime is subject to restitution), you might look at the following:

http://www.os2.iaccess.za/jutastat/constit/chap8.htm (chapter 8 of the new constitution which includes the restitution provisions in ss 121-123)

http://www.polity.org.za/gnuindex.html (an index of material for the current government, including documents on restitution)

http://www.polity.org.za/lists/govnotices.html (includes a notice about the application of the Restitution of Land Rights Act, 1994 (Act No. 22 of 1994)).

Hope this helps.

Lionel Smith
Faculty of Law
University of Alberta
403 492 2599; Fax 403 492 4924