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Case file s1231 · States and spies · 1913
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1913
Adolphus Busch: Adolphus busch2
Adolphus Busch. Unknown author. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
10 October 1913
Place
Villa Lilly, Bad Schwalbach, Germany; St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Field
brewing (Anheuser-Busch) · Business and finance on the timeline
Legal tradition
US Trading with the Enemy Act 1917 (Office of Alien Property Custodian) · Common law
Historical event
World War I
States and spiesBodies, bones and burialsIndustry and empireNorth AmericaEuropeUnited StatesBusch family

Adolphus Busch's widow stayed in Germany during World War I, and the US Alien Property Custodian took her share of the brewery until she came home

Adolphus Busch, co-founder of Anheuser-Busch, died at Villa Lilly, his estate at Bad Schwalbach in Germany, on 10 October 1913. His estate was valued at up to $60 million. His body was shipped to St. Louis for burial. His widow, Lilly Anheuser Busch, daughter of the brewery's founder Eberhard Anheuser, went to Germany in 1914 to visit two daughters, Clara and Wilhelmine, who had married German citizens. When war came she stayed. In October 1917 the United States created the Office of Alien Property Custodian under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The first custodian, A. Mitchell Palmer, sought to seize the Busch estate. The custodian confiscated the two daughters' inheritances, about two-eighths of the estate, and took Lilly's own inheritance, a one-eighth stock interest in the brewery. Her donations to hospitals in Germany were treated as aiding the enemy. Lilly Busch returned to the United States and got her property back in December 1918. She oversaw a new family mausoleum at Bellefontaine Cemetery, completed in 1921. She died in Pasadena, California, on 17 February 1928, and was buried beside her husband in St. Louis.

What the law took from it

Where an heir lives decided whether her inheritance was hers; the daughters married to Germans lost theirs to the custodian.

Sources
  1. missourioverthere.orgPress
  2. immigrantentrepreneurship.orgPress
  3. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia
  4. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Adolphus Busch's widow stayed in Germany during World War I, and the US Alien Property Custodian took her share of the brewery until she came home,” story s1231, https://www.celebrity.estate/lilly-busch-property-1913, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

States and spiesBodies, bones and burialsIndustry and empireNorth AmericaEuropeCommon lawUnited StatesBusch family