Czech castle Opočno changed hands several times from owners to state management
As Radio Prague notes, in the Czech Republic the term "restitution" refers to the return of property nationalized or confiscated between February 25, 1948 and January 1, 1990, to its former private owners, churches and other institutions.
This concerns real estate lost due to emigration or as a result of expropriation without compensation; nationalization carried out contrary to the legislation in force at the time; nationalization under a purchase agreement concluded on clearly unfavorable terms. Not only the state was obliged to return real estate, but also those people who acquired it from the state over many years.
However, the return of property as a result of restitution after 1989 often led to years of litigation, some of which continue to this day. The return of property was complicated, for example, by the requirement for compatriots to have permanent residence in Czechoslovakia, later the Czech Republic. This condition was abolished in 1994 by the Constitutional Court, but the condition of Czech citizenship remained.
However, more often than the issue of the applicant's current citizenship, another topic arises in restitution disputes: whether the applicant or his ancestors had Czechoslovak citizenship at the time of the confiscation of property. Thus, restitution debates between the Gratzinger families over a house in Liberec and the Polacky family over a villa in Pyšely ended only in 2002 at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
The Czech authorities refused to accommodate the applicants because they had only American citizenship. The Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg Court dismissed the complaint on the grounds that the citizenship condition is not objectionable from the perspective of the Convention on Human Rights.
The issue of citizenship also played an important role in the case of a descendant of one of the most famous Czech aristocratic families, František Oldřich Kinský. He sought to return family property estimated at up to 40 billion crowns. In 2001, the registry office (Czech: matrika) in Prague 1 issued him a certificate of Czech citizenship, but in February 2004 the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic ruled that the certificate was invalid. However, the Prague City Court overturned the internal decision in January 2007, and Kinský remained a citizen of the Czech Republic.
Another dispute, in which the issue of Czechoslovak citizenship of Count Hugo Salm played an important role, reached the Constitutional Court. The Count is a member of a family that was considered one of the richest in the Blansko region before World War II. In 1997, the Prague City Court ruled that Salm received a certificate of Czechoslovak citizenship after the war, but died before receiving the document. However, five years later, then-Minister of the Interior Stanislav Gross decided otherwise, and the Supreme Administrative Court did the same.
Despite the fact that the verdict of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic was overturned by the Constitutional Court in August 2005, in the spring of 2006 the ministry re-issued a negative decision and revoked the citizenship certificate. The restitution process – involving six thousand hectares of land, forest and a castle in Rájec nad Svitavou – was suspended. The Salm family is currently awaiting another decision of the Constitutional Court on one of the many complaints filed.
The Constitutional Court has intervened in the restitution law several times. Thus, in March 1999, the court annulled part of the law on extrajudicial rehabilitation, which allowed the restitution of national cultural monuments. For example, the Lobkowicz Palace in Prague's Hradčany subsequently passed to the descendants of the original owners.
One of the most successful heroes of restitution litigation is the Colloredo-Mansfeld family: in addition to the castle in Dobříš in the Příbram region, they received 17 thousand hectares of land. Initially, the castle Opočno in the Rychnov region also went to the family as a result of a protracted dispute, but after a negative decision of the Constitutional Court, the architectural monument was nevertheless left in state ownership. However, the dispute over the interior furnishings continues; the Constitutional Court decided to open the castle to the public in 2020.