Priests were arrested, and church property was seized and expropriated.
His plantation was now managed by another German planter Wilhelm Mirow, who later sold it to his Australian wife to escape expropriation by the Australians.
After the revolution of 1959, the new regime promised to improve social services, public housing, and official buildings; nevertheless, shortages that affected Cuba after Castro's abrupt expropriation of all private property and industry under a strong communist model backed by the Soviet Union followed by the U.S. embargo, hit Havana especially hard.
According to Hahn, the focus is initially to be placed on projects from the big museums, such as the anthropological collection in the Vienna Natural History Museum, a study on copper corrosion in manuscripts by the Austrian National Library, or the expropriation of motor vehicles under the Nazi regime by the Vienna Technical Museum.
During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he was closely associated with the famous revolutionary fighter Kamo and served as head of the Bolshevik armed detachments that engaged in expropriation and robbery organised in the Manganese mine of Chiatura.
Also in 1996 he helped create, together with fellow-townsman Benk Korthals (VVD) the 'Victor-act', which obliged owners of buildings in which drugs were being sold and/or used to renovate, redevelop and re-rent such buildings on the penalty of expropriation.