ESTATE TO ANIMALS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 291, 4 September 1931, Page 14

ESTATE TO ANIMALS

‘ Eccentric Woman’s Will Recently the ex-Baroness Franziska von Dittner died at the town of Moedling. near Vienna. In her villa she kept a large number of cats and dogs, and she was known as “the cats’ baroness. In tier will she ignored rll her relatives, and left'her whole properly to the creatures, including the villa and furniture. The courts held the will invalid, maintaining that it was. impossible in Austria to make animals residuary legatees. A meeting of "animal lovers” at Moedling has protested against this decision. The Vienna Society for the Protection of Animals holds that according to Austrian law. animals cannot be made residuary legatees, but a legacy may he left from which an intermediate person may feed and tend them during their lives. Thus there is a touch of comedy in the fact that the villa and other belongings of the baroness are heavily mortgaged, so that the real inheritance is small. The Austrian Union of Lovers of Animals has under consideration a proposal to place at the disposal of the prison authorities on Christinas Eve cages containing canaries and other exotic birds for the edification of prisoners on that day.