The Liechtensteiners want back the Lednice-Valtice Area and the castles, the dispute has started to be resolved by the court

Břeclav - The District Court in Břeclav began today to deal with the lawsuit of the Prince of Liechtenstein Foundation against state institutions, in which it requests the return of property that it claims is being used unlawfully by the Czech state. This includes, for example, the Lednice-Valtice area, as well as the Lednice and Valtice castles. The Liechtenstein princely family asserts that the Czech state unlawfully confiscated the property from them based on the Beneš decrees after 1945. The defendants have labeled the lawsuit as unfounded.

The foundation filed lawsuits at 26 Czech district courts at the end of 2018, with the Břeclav court being one of them. In its lawsuits, the foundation primarily points out that the last holder of the extensive family estates in Czech territory, Franz Joseph II, was not a citizen of Germany, but of neutral Liechtenstein, furthermore the head of a sovereign state. Thus, according to the foundation, the confiscation of property was illegal. However, according to the administrative body at the time, Prince Franz Joseph II declared himself to be of German nationality in the 1930s, and as such, his property was forfeited to the state after World War II based on the Beneš decrees.

"This is about the redress of injustice that has occurred here and which has been maintained by the state for several decades. If we want to be a law-abiding state, we must eliminate injustice,” stated the legal representative of the foundation. He referred to the current state as an occupation of property. He added that the lawsuits only concern real estate that is recorded in the land registry as being owned by the state. They do not seek, for example, land owned by regions, municipalities, or private individuals, nor land that is used by the Czech state but on which there is highway infrastructure.

Among the 14 state institutions facing the lawsuit in the Břeclav court are the National Heritage Institute and the Agency for Nature Conservation and Landscape Protection of the Czech Republic. According to their legal representatives, the foundation's claims are unfounded, and they do not recognize the foundation's claims. They generally pointed out the lack of active legitimacy and referred to the course of the confiscation proceedings. They suggested dismissing the lawsuit as unfounded.

In the past, the foundation was unsuccessful in a dispute with the Czech Republic over a forest near Říčany in Central Bohemia at the Constitutional Court. Subsequently, it filed a complaint regarding the dispute to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The House of Liechtenstein was among the wealthiest nobility in the Czech lands, especially in Moravia. They owned extensive properties, including the present-day Lednice-Valtice area, which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, they lost a considerable part of their properties in the territory of former Czechoslovakia due to land reforms after World War I, and the remaining properties were confiscated by the state after World War II.