Family feud over Czech castles and palaces

An interesting article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph recently was about a family feud between the Czech Foreign Minister and his sister for their castles and palaces in the Czech Republic. Elizabeth von Pezold is the daughter of one of Central Europe’s most aristocratic families. She has begun a legal battle for the castles and palaces worth hundreds of millions of euros that were expropriated by the Czechoslovakian state in 1947. However, her adopted brother, Karl Schwarzenberg, the Czech Foreign Minister, apparently does not. The homes include the Czech Krumlov castle, a jewel in the crown of Czech tourism, which towers over an ancient town in southern Bohemia. But Mrs von Pezold claims her brother has blocked her case. She argues that the Prince of Schwarzenberg, to use his formal title, has failed to the wishes of their father, whose will asked that his successor should fight to get the property back. “It is a question of justice,” said Mrs von Pezold. “After the end of communism he kept promising that he would claim property restitution but then at the last minute he changed his mind. Maybe he thought a big restitution was incompatible with his political career.”

Category: Czech Republic / Castles and palaces / Restitution

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