The majority of the legacy, which consists of 40,000 pages, was saved from the Nazis, by a British man, Eric A. Blackall, who lived in Vienna at the time and acted in the name of the British embassy. The Nazi government respected that they had no access to the cellar of Schnitzler's villa where the documents were stored. The documents were later “donated” to the Cambridge University Library. Olga, Schnitzler's divorced wife, donated the documents when she had in fact no right to do so. The actual owner of the documents was Schnitzler's son, Heinrich, who was not in Vienna at the time. During the Second World War and afterwards, Heinrich Schnitzler tried to get the documents back but did not succeed. Thomas Trenkler wrote in an article in the newspaper, Kurier, that the acquisition of the documents by British forces was not legitimate and that the documents should be handed to Schnitzler's remaining family in 2015. Schnitzler's grandsons, Michael and Peter, announced that they indeed wanted the documents handed over to them.
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