Göring took over "the Petschek question" in 1938, Flick's companies got the mines, and the Nuremberg court said the seizure was outside its jurisdiction

Ignaz Petschek was born in Kolin in 1857 and founded his own coal firm in Aussig in 1880. His group came to control large lignite companies in Germany. His brother Julius led a separate Petschek group in Prague, where he built a bank headquarters between 1923 and 1929. The Neue Deutsche Biographie says Ignaz, unlike the Prague group, underestimated the Nazi danger, relied on family friends and advisers, and saw no reason to act. He died in Aussig on 15 February 1934. He had four sons. On 4 January 1938 Hermann Göring decided to handle "the Petschek question" himself and set up a commission that included the industrialist Friedrich Flick. On 19 January 1938 Flick valued the Ignaz group's lignite shares at a nominal 77.5 million Reichsmarks. In 1938 and 1939 the Ignaz holdings were aryanised. The Reich expropriated the lignite mines, and Flick's companies and others acquired most of them. After Germany occupied Prague in 1939, the Gestapo made Julius's bank building its headquarters. In 1947 a US military tribunal at Nuremberg tried Flick. Count three charged him with crimes against humanity for aryanising Jewish property, chiefly the Ignaz Petschek mines. On 22 December 1947 the tribunal dismissed the count as outside its jurisdiction. It convicted Flick on other counts and sentenced him to seven years. The Prague building holds a memorial to those interrogated there.