Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain
news.yahoo.com
news.yahoo.com
> Through the prince of Liechtenstein and his family, this country on the Alpine Rhine was still closely linked to the distant Czech lands in the first half of the 20th century, and after 1918 the prince and other family members had an influential role in Czechoslovakia as late-Medieval propertied aristocrats. There were two phases which led to the complete loss of this property – firstly, they lost more than half from 1920 to 1938 as a result of Czechoslovak land reform (with financial compensation), and they lost the rest after 1945 through confiscation. The fate of the Czech lands, Czechoslovakia and its population in the first half of the 20th century had repercussions for the Principality of Liechtenstein and the Liechtenstein princely family. The prince was both the head of state and the head of the family. He gradually lost 90% of his assets as a result of land reform and confiscation in Czechoslovakia. From the 1920s to the 1960s the prince and his family were plagued by financial difficulties.
It is easy to brush these away as long past history, but for example these properties were confiscated from the hands of the current princes father. That I'd think as pretty close connection still.
I'm having a problem coming up with a reason why we should care about the prince of Liechtenstein compared any other random person. Seriously during the period when they lost their lands whole families were totally wiped out. Especially considering they were neutral during WWII.
I see the situation in quite the opposite way; these high profile cases spearheading the effort to get the soviet/communist abuses acknowledged and establishing the principle of restitution that'll then help all those subjected to confiscations etc
2. I can only echo the sentiment that I care very little about restitution of former royals, while entire families were dispossessed or wiped out in the same periods of time. Not like anyone cared to return the millions stolen from the Jews during WW2
Neutrality is strongly in favor of Liechtenstein case here. Similarly to how when the neutral San Marino got bombed in WWII Italy was held liable for reparations.
Had the prince forfeited or sold the land for the safety of the nation then he would agree with you.
but as far as I know this is more like your uncle getting kidnapped for 4 years (human life and land are incomparable, so this makes little sense) by a different country to fight their war.
Note that this sort of already happen when regions that want to/should be independent get exploited in war times.
Once someone is worth $4billion, the idea that we should care that they're not worth 10x more is ludicrous.
And in regards to Soviet confiscation in Czechoslovakia, I would argue that the Communist revolution in Europe is related to the fall of the Monarchy, and when Communists come to power it makes sense that they would seize the land of nobles (even those from other countries).
Examples include Palestinians, descendants of slaves in the US, Native Americans, indigenous peoples around the world.
Just about everybody has a history of their ancestors taking things in ways which weren't "legal" AND having things taken from them. It is hard to come up with a consistent moral and legal philosophy to deal with these kinds of things. Do I owe reparations to the British isles and Normandy because most of my ancestors were Vikings (or to myself because many of my ancestors would also have been victims)? Should I give the family farm back to the Native Americans who were kicked off the land? Does Rome still deserve much of Europe?
It's super difficult to determine these things, especially when the people who have had things taken from them are dead and maybe several generations back.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/lets-be-clear-israels-long-runnin...
One thing that link throws around is the word "illegal". There are customs and treaties, but there is not a world government to enforce the rule of law for these treaties. Many of the definitions like "occupied territory" are up for debate as well. It just doesn't come down to a clear set of rules and an authority to enforce them.
The inability to enforce a law does not make a crime legal. The occupied territories are a violation of international law, even if they are never punished for them.
Happened throughout history. When it didn't, led to conflict.
If you want people to be liberated from discrimination and oppression the best thing to do is change the general mindset to unity "we're both human" instead of reinforcing differences and creating new categories for people and then trying to enforce rights that only people in a certain classification can have.
The best summary of this I saw was the sign for a coffee shop bathroom. It had a list of genders: men, women, and a few others I don't quite remember. The problem I have with this is the bathroom was one room with a toilet and sink. There was obviously no need to be "inclusive", just put a sign up that says "restroom" and that's it. Nobody needs to be included or excluded, progress is made by making the shallow distinctions which get discriminated against – making those irrelevant to day to day life.
It's less about the people you are supposedly trying to help and more about the power you're trying to wrestle away from some elite.
Nazi's did along racial divides, communists along class divides. Both failed and so time to try some other divide. This one is even more insidious because it's not even clear sometimes where the divide is.
Disrespectful - these complicated issues involve people who have been and continue to be disadvantaged by these issues, your flippancy is disrespectful.
The only explanation there is that I'm talking about "issues involve people who have been and continue to be disadvantaged"
Those rich folks have been "disadvantaged" by being deprived of things they have claims on. Obviously they are already quite advantaged, but you can't deny they have less advantage without the things they're claiming.
So, it only matters that one group has fewer resources therefore they have a moral advantage?
I think you are being flippant and disrespectful by calling me names instead of providing substantial counterpoints.
Yet at the same time, you can't see how you have been "flippant" and "disrespectful" to the complicated issues (with real people who are affected by this) you pulled together in your 2 paragraph comment.
Ignoring all detail when there have been 10000s of academic books written trying to explain and understand these issues from all viewpoints.
It is impossible, because you quickly run into contrafactual history.
Let's say the descendants of Scandinavian vikings owe repairs to descendants of people living in Normandy, because the vikings raped and pillaged.
Except, they also settled. And became Normans. And invaded England. Changed the English language forever, changed the ruling class of England. Changed the history of Europe forever. Maybe the Norman conquest was ultimately a good thing for England? Maybe the Anglo-Saxons would have been wiped out by some other conqueror if the Normans hadn't come?
There are millions of people who live today because history happened the way it happened. If the vikings hadn't raped and pillaged and settled in Normandy, those millions of people would never have been born. So do they owe money to the descendants of the vikings as thanks for their existence?
It was, let's say 1000 years ago and most people affected descended from both perpetrators and victims. You could go as far as saying this kind of violence was important and necessary for the development of civilization; if every human respected property rights for the last 10,000 years we would live in a very different world.
So a 1,000 year old crime is wiped out in the present. When does that stop? How soon to now should the statute of limitations be?
300 year old Native American issues? 150 year old American slavery issues? 100 year old Israel/Palestine issues? 50 year old American discrimination issues?
If I go out and steal something today, obviously there is a legal remedy. How far back does it go? Does it flow through generations?
It seems impossible but there has to be a line or some distinction between historic issues which are necessarily "done" and present issues which deserve justice.
People are deciding these issues but I haven't heard or seen a justification for one way vs the other.
Waldron tries to solve the problem that you and your parent comment are laying out by changing the basis of property rights from the Lockean idea (we mix our labour with something to make it our property) to a new idea, that property is based on the organisation of a person's life around a particular object. Intuitively, this gives credence to the idea that the nice fountain pen I found on the ground four years ago is now nearly totally mine, and that the person who lost it has much less claim over it, particularly if they only bought it a few months before losing it.
It also makes sense of our intuition that I ought to give it back if it has been in their family for three generations. Four years of my life organised around the thing does not stand up to his deeper attachment and ownership of the object.
Obviously, there are traps inherent to the subjectivity of these judgements here, but it does provide a nice philosophical answer to the historical issues.
Sites that continue to be sacred probably ought to be handed back because they continue to play a central role in the lives of indiginous people. But the CBD of Sydney, for instance, has a far stronger claim by those who own the land and have built several hundred thousand lives around the property. Generic indiginous claims to the land there don't hold water any more.
Doesn't seem to apply here. The comment above yours points out:
> It is easy to brush these away as long past history, but for example these properties were confiscated from the hands of the current prince's father.
I guess the same is true across countries: former royal/noble families hold onto the land of past glory. But should we really accept this? Is a king's claim not simply the land of the state once the country transitions to democracy?
That depends on how the state and personal domains of the monarch are disentangled when the monarchy is disestablished (in the case of the UK the moanrchy hasn't been disestablished, merely almost entirely politically neutralized.)
The former monarch could be left with anything between vast private domains and nothing. But there is no one uniquely correct answer.
How come everybody want to keep it like the kaiser?
(sorry)
What’s missing here and other land claims around the world is that the Kaiser didn’t sue anyone or plead in international court for the right to have those properties.
The monarchs kept those lands through the strength of their armies, and I don’t think that world of might can just transition over to the new world of law
Not really. The lands in question were granted to them after abdication, when they had very little might anymore. So the question of transition to new world of law was pretty much already resolved in 1925
There is zero consistency in these kinds of claims because what is really happening is an influential family with plenty of resources for lawyers is going to grab a shipload of German taxpayer euros using tortured legal arguments.
The real issue is whether one believed that property rights can really be destroyed. What does it mean to "own" something? Is it ownership in the eyes of a particular government? What if that government falls? Is it a super-governmental right? Is the Church an authority (ie church records)? Imho it boils down to who is in power and what they decide to do, whether they choose to respect your claim or not. All the legal arguments are secondary.
Anyone who thinks they "own" part of the moon knows this problem. Your ownership only matters to a country that wants to respect your moon rights, ie none of them.
There are similar claims processes in place for property confiscated by Nazis. Is that also inconsistent?
Taxpayer money was spent on maintaining these properties which is unfortunate but I suppose that that should not prevent rightful heirs from being able to claim property.
If you read the article, this boils down to a dispute very specifically about compensation for property seized by the Soviet Union, well after the Hohenzollern's became private citizens.
Given that Australia, Canada, and the US were at no point seized from private citizens by the Soviet Union, the answer to your question would appear to be "no".
> There is zero consistency in these kinds of claims
If you read the article and determine what type of claims are being discussed, you'll see there's a LOT of consistency.
The moral principle is sound. That the situation of each petitioner under any mildly related system are inconsistent and varied is to be expected. Everyone's circumstances are different.
> In a newspaper in 1932, the crown prince called for people to vote for Adolf Hitler in the presidential election, he added.
Seems rather straightforward to me.
The nazis did exactly what they said they would do prior to this election - they rearmed Germany, killed the communists and marginalized all other parties, acquired “living room” in the east, expelled Jews from berlin (and then murdered them en mass) in a way that was completely consistent with what Nazi press organs such as the stormer and mein kampf told Germans they would.
People make a mistake comparing the nazis with present day political parties or characters like Trump. They were not - they were extraordinarily violent and racist by the standards of the day, to say nothing about modern day. They did little to hide it.
[1] https://www.amazon.de/dp/3981405234
[2] https://ia800301.us.archive.org/3/items/Hitler-Adolf-Mein-Ka... / https://ia802801.us.archive.org/9/items/Hitler-Adolf-Mein-Ka...
It was pretty clear from that incident that Hitler was campaigning for violence long before the first election the Nazis ran in.
> The Beer Hall Putsch was a failed coup d'état by the Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, which took place in November in 1923. 603 SA [Sturmabteilung - Storm Detachment, the Nazi's original paramilitary unit] surrounded the beer hall. Hitler, surrounded by his associates, advanced through the crowded auditorium. Hitler fired a shot into the ceiling and jumped on a chair yelling: "The national revolution has broken out! The hall is filled with six hundred men. Nobody is allowed to leave." He went on to state that the Bavarian government was deposed and declared the formation of a new government.
> Following the initial failure of the putsch, approximately two thousand Nazis were marching to the Feldherrnhalle, when they were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 16 Nazis and four police officers. Hitler, who was wounded during the clash, escaped immediate arrest; after two days, he was arrested and charged with treason.
> The putsch brought Hitler to the attention of the German nation and generated front-page headlines in newspapers around the world. Hitler was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison.[1]
Mein Kampf has had also been published by 1926, sections of which gave a rather stark insight into Hitler's thought process:
> At the beginning of the War, or even during the War, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison-gas, just as hundreds of thousands of our best German workers from every social stratum and from every trade and calling had to face it in the field, then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain. On the contrary: If twelve thousand of these malefactors had been eliminated in proper time probably the lives of a million decent men, who would be of value to Germany in the future, might have been saved.[2]
[1] Paraphrased from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch
[2] James Murphy translation - http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt ; the original German can be found at "Hätte man zu Kriegsbeginn..." in this document: https://ia802801.us.archive.org/9/items/Hitler-Adolf-Mein-Ka...
well, it's theirs after all.
1) Hitler was in the kaiser's military,
2) sent to spy / infiltrate a left-wing worker's party (DAP, "German Worker's Party"),
3) out of world-wide fear of communism (justified or not), turned it into the NSDAP ("National Socialist German Worker's Party")
4) including Jews as scapegoats (incidentally copying the failed tactic of the russian tsarist secret police, who fabricated the scrolls of zion thing, also to prevent communism)
5) with the well known clusterfuck that was WWII and the holocaust as a result
again, all due to 1) the kaiser's military sending Hitler on this path
then I don't know if there is much to inherit from the kaiser: if you or my parents have both property and debt, you either inherit both or neither, none of us get to cherry pick, why should the heirs of the kaiser get special treatment?