Descendants of Last German Kaiser Fight to Reclaim Royal Property

It has been over a hundred years since the last German monarch, but the Prussian royal descendants have continued to battle the government for what they believe are royal assets and properties. The Hohenzollern family argues that the bulk of the properties and possessions under dispute were expropriated by Soviet authorities at the end of World War II. The list includes Cecilienhof, the spatial palace that hosted the 1945 Potsdam conference between the leaders of the US, Britain and the USSR that settled the postwar order in Germany, which the family states they should be allowed to reside rent-free.

Günther Winands, a senior chancellery official, said that a meeting between representatives of the family and government officials did not come to a settlement. “But our goal remains to find a mutually agreeable solution soon, so we can avoid long-running legal confrontations.” Markus Hennig, a lawyer for the Hohenzollerns, said the family does not want to remove artifacts that are housed in museums, but rather desires to untangle the legal status of the possessions.

The revelation that the Hohenzollern family is striving to reclaim their former possessions and homes has sparked political outrage among German citizens. Many of the objects and Cecilienhof have been preserved through tax payer money, and thus they believe should not be handed over to the royal family that was involved with the rise of World War I and Nazism.

See Tobias Buck, Descendants of Last German Kaiser Fight to Reclaim Royal Property, Financial Times, July 26, 2019.

Special thanks to Joel C. Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.