Claims for compensation from the Hohenzollern

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The claims for compensation of the Hohenzollern against the German state are related to the expropriation of the Brandenburg-Prussian line of the Hohenzollern by the Soviet military administration in Germany (SMAD) in 1945.

The demands of the head of the family Georg Friedrich von Prussia for the return of several thousand works of art and the desire to use Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam are heavily discussed in public and often criticized. The previous boss of the house already demanded financial compensation for the expropriated real estate in the 1990s. At this point in time (June 2020) no consensus has been reached.

Negotiations and public debate

After reunification , an initiative by the head of the family, Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, to return the private property expropriated by SMAD in 1945 without compensation to his family, failed in 1991 because of the law governing unresolved property issues (VermG) that was still in force from the GDR era , which explicitly did not refer to expropriations based on occupation law or was applicable under the sovereign occupation. In 1994, the federal government passed the “Law on State Compensation for Expropriations that Can No Longer Be Reversed” (Compensation Act - AusglLeistG) (EALG) , mainly to provide compensation for those injured by the land reform in the Soviet occupation zone in 1945 . It provided for welfare state-based payments to the injured party that were very low in relation to the loss. The land reform not only expropriated real estate without compensation, but also the entire inventory of the associated castles and mansions. According to § 5 of the EALG "Return of movable objects" (1) "movable objects not included in a unit value [...] were to be transferred back", whereby according to (2) "cultural objects intended for public display for a period of 20 years were free of charge "Dedicated to public or research purposes", so it was not to be returned immediately.

The statutory claims for compensation became due in 2014 after the 20-year period had expired, without the Hohenzollern and the public sector having reached an agreement in accordance with the law . Since then, Georg Friedrich von Prussia , who had succeeded his grandfather as head of the Hohenzollern family in 1994, has been in discreet negotiations with the federal government as well as the states of Berlin and Brandenburg for the return or compensation for important works of art that once belonged to his ancestors and are now legal Based in museums. Section 1 (4) of the Compensation Services Act (AusglLeistG) became of particular importance, according to which no compensation is possible if the expropriated persons “made a considerable contribution” to the National Socialist system. The question of unworthiness is clarified differently by lawyers than by historians, since they do not only consider the reports of the historians commissioned. According to estimates, the total value of the expropriated cultural assets could even be in the three-digit million range. Possible compromise solutions have not yet been publicly communicated by the negotiating partners. The dispute escalated in 2019 when parts of the demands of the House of Hohenzollern and their classification became known to the public as "largely excessive and unacceptable" through a joint statement by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundations and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundations and the German Historical Museum . Among the claims are several thousand art objects and a right of residence in Cecilienhof Palace . This caused widespread criticism.

It was less the legal side of the Hohenzollern claim than the ethical evaluation that was criticized. In this context, the dramaturge Bernd Stegemann referred to the Hohenzollern as a “family clan” in an article in the magazine Cicero , which “haunted Central European history with wars, nepotism and catastrophes for over a thousand years” and “started again after the last two total defeats come "and now" sue for the handing over of his criminally gathered wealth ". Also in the Cicero , the historian Benjamin Hasselhorn commented that the debate "can only be explained with a combination of deep-seated anti-aristocratic resentment and the sad continued effect of the thesis of the German special path". The latter is "basically nothing other than the anti-German propaganda of the First World War, which has entered history." The journalist Stefan Kuzmany said that families who were too close to injustice systems such as the Nazi regime were not entitled to compensation and called the demand "an insult." of the Republic ”. The politician Katja Kipping ( Die Linke ) described the demands as "excessive and forgotten about history". According to the historian Sven Felix Kellerhoff , these demands would "[undermine] the foundations of a democratic society". The historian and expert on the Hohenzollern, Stephan Malinowski , described the demands as "speechless indulgence".

The reporting included the inclusion of a legal dispute between the municipality of Sankt Goar and the House of Hohenzollern over Rheinfels Castle in Rhineland-Palatinate , which was not related to the publicly discussed claims for the return of art objects as a result of Soviet expropriations. Under certain conditions, the castle had contractually passed into the ownership of the municipality in 1924, before the family property was divided up with the Free State of Prussia . Because of the violation of these conditions by the municipality, the Hohenzollern raised a claim for return. In June 2019, the Koblenz Regional Court dismissed the Hohenzollern's lawsuit in the first instance . Here one claim had already been "rejected", reported Der Tagesspiegel , and in the Frankfurter Rundschau the art historian Nikolaus Bernau accused the Hohenzollern of "sheer greed" and put both claims in a direct connection in an interview.

Georg Friedrich von Prussia rejected the allegations and criticized what he believed to be a “selective disclosure” of confidential documents from the negotiations. He defended his family's property claims, which would build upon requests from his grandfather Louis Ferdinand of Prussia after reunification. As far as the right of residence in various castles is concerned, the draft contract only takes up what the public sector has repeatedly offered the family since the 1990s. Berlin's former Senate Chancellery Chief André Schmitz ( SPD ) considers the claims of the Hohenzollern to be justified and called for moderation in the debate. He had seen Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia “always as a fair contractual partner”. Georg Friedrich von Prussia repeatedly declared his readiness for a “comprehensive amicable settlement”. His goal is for all museum pieces to remain in their place and free access for citizens and scientists.

In August 2019, Die Linke launched a popular initiative in Brandenburg against claims for compensation and reimbursement by the House of Hohenzollern. Your parliamentary group in the Bundestag spoke out in favor of an end to the talks on possible compensation for the Hohenzollerns. With an application in the Bundestag in January 2020, the Left Party demanded that any future claims be prohibited by law. Representatives of all other parliamentary groups (Union, SPD, AfD, FDP, Greens) spoke out against the request. The state association of the Greens in Berlin declared at the beginning of 2020 that they would reject "all demands of the Hohenzollern family for compensation or restitution of art objects from public collections as part of our cultural heritage" and that the settlement negotiations with the Hohenzollern family should be stopped. The journalist Jens Bisky criticized the demands of the Left Party and the Greens as incompatible with the basic principles of the rule of law and warned of the "risk that everyone loses in the end" if the negotiations fail.

A working paper on the “Hohenzollern dispute”, written by the sociologist Marcel Schütz and the historian Konrad Hauber, which was published at the Northern Business School Hamburg (NBS) in early 2020, comes to the assessment of a mixture of political and historical categories. Literally it says: “History and jurisprudence seem to be linked by a peculiar network of categories. In the struggle for truth and clarity, the banality of this problem is hardly registered any more. ”Since the assessment complexity for the administrative court is further increased, the authors see a comparative agreement between state and family as a possible scenario for settling the dispute.

In November 2019, FragDenStaat published a collection of letters from Wilhelm von Prussia to Adolf Hitler , from which it emerged that the House of Hohenzollern had given the National Socialists a considerable boost. The letters contain, among other things, personal birthday wishes and express "feelings of admiration" "because of the start of the war.

Other noble houses came to amicable solutions to the return problem in negotiations with the affected federal states before the end of the 20-year period, for example the Free State of Saxony and the House of Wettin signed a settlement agreement in July 2014 , which also contains a settlement clause.

The legal dispute with the municipality of St. Goar ended at the end of January 2020 through an out-of-court settlement. Thereafter, the House of Hohenzollern irrevocably recognizes St. Goar's property rights to Rheinfels Castle, in return the city on the Rhine will work closely with the Princess Kira von Prussia Foundation to support disadvantaged children.

At the beginning of February 2020, the opinion institute Infratest dimap conducted a survey among the population as to the extent to which the federal government and the states concerned should respond to the demands of the Hohenzollerns. 53 percent of those surveyed were against, 33 percent partially for it and 6 percent completely for it.

The Berlin business lawyer Torsten Tristan Straub wrote in the daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel at the beginning of March 2020 that Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia was raising his claims on the basis of an inheritance regulation with non-constitutional motives. It is questionable whether he is even the legal (main) heir. By the will of Louis Ferdinand Prince of Prussia from 1950, from which his grandson Georg Friedrich derived his preferred heir status, legal co-heirs were disadvantaged or completely disinherited because they were not called to the throne according to the "old constitution of the Brandenburg-Prussian House" (among other things because they were women, not “equal”, married to a not “equal” person or did not belong to the Protestant denomination). In response to a complaint by the sons Friedrich Wilhelm and Michael Prince of Prussia , who had been disinherited because of their “inappropriate” marriages , the Federal Constitutional Court in 2004 declared individual provisions of the will to be ineffective. Straub is critical of the will and the succession regulation not only because of the illegal discrimination, but also because of the underlying motive - future restoration of the monarchy - which is why the democratic state should not negotiate with the (alleged) heirs on this basis.

The outcome of a legal dispute is difficult to predict, even for experts. The state of Brandenburg is currently in a decision-making process as to whether negotiations with the Hohenzollerns will be resumed or legal recourse will be taken.

Alleged proximity to the Nazi regime

Judgment by historians

In November 2019, the satirist Jan Böhmermann published four confidential reports by historians, which deal with the question, which is decisive for the legal assessment, as to whether the expropriated Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia had given the Nazi system a "considerable boost". The historians Peter Brandt and Stephan Malinowski, commissioned by the then Brandenburg Finance Minister Christian Görke (Die Linke), answered the question in the affirmative, while the counter-reports by Christopher Clark and Wolfram Pyta then ordered by the Prince of Prussia denied it.

On January 29, 2020, a hearing on the compensation claims took place in the German Bundestag, which lasted several hours. Several reviewers appeared for this. According to the historians Peter Brandt , Stephan Malinowski and Stefanie Middendorf , the Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia made a significant contribution to National Socialism before and after 1933. The historian Benjamin Hasselhorn came to the conclusion that both views could be historically justified, but not clearly substantiated. According to Hasselhorn, a final judgment can hardly be made. He also pointed out that of the reviewers only Pyta had used the Hohenzollern house archive, which was freely accessible to scientists.

Action against critical scientists

In December 2019, it became known that the Hohenzollern people are taking legal action against scientists who have critically examined the history of the house. Among them is Stephan Malinowski, who is an appraiser for the State of Brandenburg and who denies the family's claims for compensation. The Association of Historians in Germany (VHD) criticized this approach. Science is based "on an open exchange of arguments," said the association's deputy chairman. The VHD condemned “emphatically that the Hohenzollern take legal action against historians”. The historian and director of the Leibniz Center for Research on Contemporary History (ZZF), Martin Sabrow , described this approach as an “unculture of intimidation” and “endangering freedom of science ”. In an open letter, he demanded that the Hohenzollern should " immediately withdraw the injunction against an employee of the ZZF, and that one should no longer use legal means to attack historical statements on dealing with the Hohenzollern inheritance". The lawyer of the Hohenzollern, Markus Hennig, rejected the allegations, described the contested statements of the historian Sabrow as not historical, but legal, and described the debate as "characterized by a lot of false information". FragDenStaat founded the Prinzenfonds in order to provide those affected by the lawsuits with the financial means for legal proceedings .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

This article or section needs to be revised: See Help: Itemized evidence # Internet receipts . - Olaf Studt ( discussion ) 23:46, Jan. 25, 2020 (CET)
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  1. ^ Text of the Property Act .
  2. ↑ https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/ansprueche-auf-tausende-bedeutsame-kunstwerke-wie-der-streit- between- kaiser-ururenkel-und-bund-eskalieren-konnte/ 24588740.html
  3. ^ Text of the Compensation Act .
  4. ↑ Hohenzollern give in to a dispute with historians Der Spiegel Online. Retrieved January 27, 2020.
  5. ↑ https://www.tagesschau.de/kultur/hohenzollern-lösungen-101.html
  6. ↑ https://www.rbb24.de/kultur/beitrag/2019/08/hohernzollern-endung-kunstwerke-stiftung-preussischer-kulturb.html
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  9. ↑ https://www.cicero.de/kultur/bedarf-hohenzollern-sonderweg-cecilienhof-zweiter-weltkrieg
  10. ↑ Stefan Kuzmany: Hohenzollern Compensation: His Royal Highness has not yet had enough. In: www.sueddeutsche.de. October 14, 2019, accessed October 15, 2019 .
  11. ↑ https://www.fr.de/politik/hohenzollern-linke-mobilisiert-gegen-entschaedigung-nazi-schergen-12908752.html
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  13. ↑ https://www.welt.de/kultur/article196840021/Georg-Friedrich-von-Preussen-Die-unbescheidenen-Forderungen-der-Hohenzollern.html
  14. ↑ https://www.maz-online.de/Brandenburg/So-ahrungt-ein-Historiker-ueber-die-Forderungen-des-Hauses-Hohenzollern-nach-einem-Wohnrecht-in-Schloessern-wie-Cecilienhof
  15. ↑ How the dispute between the Emperor's great-great-grandson and the Bund could escalate . Contribution by Thorsten Metzner, Der Tagesspiegel from June 13, 2019.
  16. ↑ Nobility have high standards. Hohenzollern want to cash in - behind the scenes there is sheer greed , Frankfurter Rundschau
  17. ↑ Renewed Hohenzollern ownership claims - why now? , Interview in MDR on July 15, 2019.
  18. ↑ "Selective distribution" of papers regrets. Retrieved November 10, 2019 .
  19. ↑ "The prince was always a fair negotiating partner". Retrieved November 10, 2019 .
  20. ↑ a b Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia ready for comparison. Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
  21. ↑ https://www.rbb24.de/kultur/beitrag/2019/08/hohenzollern-volksinitiative-linke-brandenburg.html
  22. ↑ https://www.shz.de/27029942
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  24. ↑ a b Jens Bisky: Hohenzollern debate: The Crown Prince and his heirs. Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
  25. ↑ Marcel Schütz, Konrad Hauber: Debt and Stage - A Critical Assessment of the "Hohenzollernstreit" Working Paper by Konrad Hauber (Freiburg) and Marcel Schütz (Hamburg). Northern Business School Hamburg, January 21, 2020, accessed on February 2, 2020 .
  26. ↑ The brown nobility and the Nazis: We publish the letters from Crown Prince Wilhelm to Hitler. November 14, 2019, accessed May 21, 2020 .
  27. ↑ https://new.l-iz.de/melder/wortmelder/2014/07/Vergleichsvertrag- Zwischen-Sachsen-und-Haus-Wettin- 56328
  28. ↑ Hohenzollern come to an agreement with the city of St. Goar. Accessed February 1, 2020 .
  29. ↑ Jacques Schuster: Restitution: What the Germans think of the claims of the Hohenzollern . In: THE WORLD . February 15, 2020 ( welt.de [accessed February 21, 2020]).
  30. ↑ "The state should not negotiate with pseudo-heirs to the throne". Retrieved March 6, 2020 .
  31. ↑ https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/expertenanhoerung-zum-hohenzollern-streit-alles-drehen-sich.1013.de.html?dram:article_id=469114
  32. ^ Neo Magazin Royale : Official website of btf GmbH in cooperation with the show Neo Magazin Royale on the Hohenzollern vs. Federal government ; accessed on November 23, 2019
  33. ↑ Südwest Presse Online-Dienst GmbH: The Hohenzollern family answers questions about returns and compensation in detail: Prussia Prince goes on the offensive. December 27, 2019, accessed January 12, 2020 .
  34. ↑ https://www.morgenpost.de/kultur/tv/article227692655/Jan-Boehmermann-veroeffentlicht-brisante-Geheim-Dokumente-und-sracht-fuer-Wirbel.html
  35. ↑ https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/jan-boehmermanns-coup-gegen-die-hohenzollern-16491683.html
  36. ↑ https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/boehmermann-hohenzollern-debatte-1.4687884
  37. ^ German Bundestag: Role of Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia in the judgment of historians. January 21, 2020, accessed February 2, 2020 .
  38. ↑ https://taz.de/Die-Causa-Hohenzollern-im-Bundestag/!5657283/
  39. ^ Klaus Wiegrefe : Compensation dispute : Historians defend themselves against the legal campaign of the Hohenzollern . spiegel.de, December 13, 2019.
  40. ↑ Martin Sabrow: Historians react to the Hohenzollern dispute: "Your approach attacks the freedom of science" . tagesspiegel.de , December 21, 2019.
  41. ↑ Compensation dispute about Hohenzollern - "I think it's absurd". Interview with Martin Sabrow , in: Cicero , January 3, 2020.
  42. ↑ Nikolaus Bernau: Hohenzollern: What we owe to the nobility . berliner-zeitung.de , December 30, 2019.
  43. ↑ Hohenzollern attorney counters accusations from historians - Is the freedom of science in danger? Markus Hennig in conversation with Vladimir Balzer , in: Deutschlandfunk Kultur , February 4, 2020.
  44. ↑ The Prince's Fund. In: FragDenStaat . Retrieved June 20, 2020 .