Ilooks weird Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia hosts an event at a press center used by the government because Prussia has no government: in fact, there hasn’t been one since 1947. The March 9 event was advertised as a presentation of historical studies of the Hohenzollern dynasty, the family that ruled the kingdom and later all of Germany. Incredibly, it made headlines. The prince, the great-great-grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II, waived two demands for the return of property confiscated by the Soviet Union after World War II.
Your browser does not support
Georg Friedrich apparently wanted to restore the Prussian House’s image after years of negative press. But even conservative-leaning publications failed to applaud him.this Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung call it “a [public-relations] Collapse – what’s the monarchy other than public relations? The 46-year-old prince filed his claim in 2014, citing a law that gave descendants of victims of Soviet expropriation the right to reclaim mobile property (furniture, paintings, etc.) as well as compensation — unless their ancestors actively supported it Nazi regime.
That’s the problem. The eldest son of the last Kaiser, also named Wilhelm, supported the Nazis in the hope that they would restore him to the throne that was wiped out after World War I. In 1932 he called on the public to vote for them, and during the war he sent Hitler a congratulatory message after a battle. Historians debate whether William’s support mattered. Hitler needed little support from the future monarch. But that may be enough to disqualify Hohenzollern from its return claim. The family may discover: They may not have given up on all of them.■
