Where the will went.

A sealed will, and the entry that proves it existed

Every question on this site runs through one missing document. On 14 January 1966 La República printed the closest thing to the document itself that has ever been published: a photostat of the registry entry for the sealed will of Othmar J. Hitz, with his signature at the foot. The same piece, by Luis Arismendi, reported that the Policía Técnica Judicial had reopened its file expressly to search for the will.

The paper trail begins in Caracas. A Caracas daily of the same date carried the headline El Testamento Fue Registrado en el Registro Subalterno del Tercer Circuito: the will was registered in the Registro Subalterno del Tercer Circuito, because notaries were not empowered to receive wills. La República of 15 January 1966 gave the date: registered in Caracas on 6 October 1954, and taken to Switzerland in 1960.

Five roads into Switzerland

The 1966 press did not place the will in Switzerland once. It placed it there five separate ways, each through a different office, and each office is a place where paper survives.

Últimas Noticias of 11 January 1966 reported it first and most precisely, in the words of the widow: the will of the millionaire was in Chur, Switzerland, in a court of minors. A Caracas daily reported that after notarisation the document was sent to the Swiss police, through Pierre Dupont, the Swiss Minister Plenipotentiary in Venezuela. La Verdad reported that Venezuelan Interpol formally asked Swiss Interpol to investigate it, and a further piece had Interpol awaiting a Swiss report on another will. Another daily reported papers formally requested from Berne. And La República of 14 January reported the representatives of the Swiss government in Venezuela saying the document was handed to the Venezuelan legation in Berne.

Últimas Noticias of 17 January 1966 added the piece that changes the question. It reported that in Switzerland, at the request of Hitz's own sister, a will was opened, presumed drafted in Venezuela, instituting as universal heir the daughter, Anna Maria Hitz Spring.

The heiress went looking herself. La República of 26 January 1966 reported that Anna Maria wrote to the Swiss court of minors, and that the reply said the will had been handed to the police with the undertaking to deliver it to the Venezuelan representation in Berne, a handover made in 1960 according to the Swiss embassy in Venezuela.

The record disagrees with itself

Carried, not resolved: the same weeks produced the opposite claim. The lawyer José Vicente Graterol Roque told the press that the will had never surfaced and was in Caracas, and separately claimed to know the name of the person holding it. El Mundo of 11 January 1966 reported there were two wills, one that must be in Switzerland and one destroyed. El Mundo also reported another will deposited in a Caracas notary, and La República of 25 January reported that a will of O. J. Hitz had surfaced in the Notaría Tercera de Caracas.

Four documents, or one document described four ways. The registries are named either way, and registries keep books.

The American channel

La República of 23 January 1966 reported Graterol Roque saying a copy of the will exists in a United States bank. La Verdad Meridiana of 14 January reported forty million bolívares of the estate in a United States bank. Últimas Noticias reported nine million in bearer shares in a New York firm the papers print as the Warranty Trust Company. And El Nacional of 14 January reported that the United States State Department was formally asked to intervene through its consulate in Caracas.

What the heiress herself knew

La República of 26 January 1966 printed her own words on the will, given the day she accepted the estate only under benefit of inventory: “Mi tía dice que me mostró el testamento a los 12 años, pero nada recuerdo de eso.” My aunt says she showed me the will when I was twelve, but I remember nothing of it.

The same paper put a date and a place on that year. In 1959, it reported, Lina Rosa Fuentes, María Lourdes Fuentes and the racing commentator known as Mr. Chips travelled to Switzerland and visited Anna Maria at the colegio Saint Moritz. She was twelve.

March 1966: the door closes

By March 1966 the Caracas press printed the outcome under a headline that answers this page's question as far as any paper ever did: Allí Está el Testamento: Herederos de Hitz Tendrán Que Viajar a Suiza Para Poder Cobrar la Herencia. Citing a source it called highly credited, the report said the legitimate heirs would have to claim payment of their inheritance from the authorities in Berne, because the will had been opened there. The same report said the will ought to have been opened in Venezuela, and that its opening by the Swiss authorities legally voided its content, leaving the claimants to seek indemnification from the government in Berne.

Sixty years later, that is still the live end of the trail: a sealed will that entered Swiss official custody, an opening the Venezuelan press called improper, and offices in two countries whose books do not burn.

What this is, and is not

None of the above is a finding of any court. It is what the Caracas papers reported in January and March 1966. The figures on this page are press figures: Últimas Noticias put fifty millions in the widow's mouth, Rafael Naranjo Ostty told La Esfera the estate had never reached five million bolívares, and Últimas Noticias itself asked in print whether the inheritance was imaginary. Both readings are in the record. This page carries both.

If you worked in the legation in Berne, in the courts of Chur, or in the registries of Caracas, or if your family kept papers from anyone who did, the door is open.