The Rothschilds turned to the Strasbourg court due to a dispute over the estate

Prague – The heirs of the Rothschild family have filed a complaint against the Czech Republic with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg regarding the family estate in Šilheřovice in the Opava region. This was communicated to ČTK by Hana Hikelová, the media representative of the Rothschild family in the Czech Republic. The heirs have unsuccessfully sought restitution of the property, which was first confiscated by the Nazis and later by the communists, in general courts. In January of this year, their claim was also dismissed by the Constitutional Court. According to the Rothschilds, the Czech Republic has violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

"The Rothschild family considers the refusal of today's Czech courts to address the matter as a legitimization of Nazi anti-Jewish measures from the Holocaust era, which is unacceptable and, in today's context of an ever-deepening loss of historical memory, extraordinarily dangerous," Hikelová stated. She added that the heirs are only seeking the eviction of properties, the overwhelming majority of which are held by the state or municipalities, not private individuals. Therefore, they are not requesting the return of the Šilheřovice castle, which is privately owned, nor of mines and steelworks.

The lawsuit concerning the land in Šilheřovice involved around forty parcels. However, the Constitutional Court also ruled on an additional 11 complaints from the Rothschilds regarding claims to property managed by the municipality of Ludgeřovice, the city of Ostrava, the Office for the Representation of the State in Property Affairs, the Ostrava Sports Association, and Czech Forests.

Before World War II, the Rothschilds held extensive properties in Silesia. However, in 1939 they transferred the real estate under duress to the German Reich. After 1945, presidential decrees impacted their property, and the state confiscated the real estate.

The heirs and family trusts sought through a series of lawsuits to establish that at the time of his death in 1942, Alphonse Mayer von Rothschild was still the owner. In practice, this would mean that neither the transfer to the German Reich nor the post-war confiscation would be valid.

The main reason for the heirs' unsuccessful attempts to regain the land was that the widow of the last holder of the property after 1945 allegedly did not fully use the opportunity to claim her ownership rights. The legal system at the time allowed her to do so.

However, the constitutional complaints pointed out that the legal predecessor of the claimants did assert the claim after the war, but documentation regarding the outcome has not been preserved. The state supposedly took over the property without legal justification, therefore it never properly acquired ownership rights.

"Official documents indicate that surviving family members submitted a request after the war for the state to vacate their estate, but the state prolonged the proceedings. After the communists came to power in February 1948, they then thwarted the proceedings by the state authorities intentionally not continuing with the eviction process," Hikelová added today.