Hrubý Rohozec Castle in Turnov, March 23, 2019. According to the mayor of Turnov, Tomáš Hocke, the Supreme Court in the Walderode restitution case rejected the appeal of the heiress of the family due to the possibility of returning the castle.
Brno/Turnov – In the Walderode restitution case, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal of the heiress of a noble family due to the possibility of returning the property, Turnov Mayor Tomáš Hocke (Independent Bloc) told ČTK. This was also confirmed by Miloš Kadlec from the National Monument Institute (NPÚ). Both Turnov and the NPÚ are parties to the proceedings. The court has not yet communicated the outcome of the decision due to delivery. Hocke has not yet had time to familiarize himself with the detailed justification of the decision, according to Kadlec, he confirmed the previous decision of the courts in Semile and Hradec Králové.
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“He confirmed the judgments of the first instance and the appellate court, the regional one. We will now wait to see how the other party will react,” added Kadlec.
According to the InfoSoud database, the file was returned to the District Court in Semile last week, which should notify the parties to the proceedings. Rod has been trying to get the property back since 1992, so far without success. The claim is made by the widow of Charles des Fours Walderode, Johanna Kammerlander. That the decision on her appeal was made was confirmed by ČTK without further details by the spokesman of the NS Petr Tomíček.
The mayor of Turnov does not consider the decision of the Supreme Court to be the definitive closure of this restitution case. “I assume that (Kammerlander) will turn to the Constitutional Court,” added Hocke. Even Kadlec assumes that this is just another step in a long-standing dispute.
The state confiscated the property after the Second World War on the basis of the Beneš decrees. Several entities are on the defendant's side. Among them are the National Institute of Monuments, the Office for Representation of the State in Property Matters or the state enterprise Forests of the Czech Republic. The dispute concerns the castle Hrubý Rohozec in Turnov and the surrounding land. The file has about 1,600 pages.
The First Instance District Court in Semily rejected the claim of the Walderode family last December. Kammerlander did not succeed even with an appeal to the Regional Court in Hradec Králové. The legal representative of the Roman Heyduk family already announced at the time that he wanted to file an appeal with the Supreme Court and then a constitutional complaint. He pointed out the contradictions between the older verdicts.
In September 2017, the district court recognized the family's claim with a so-called interim judgment, which was confirmed by the Hradec Krávy court in 2019. However, the Supreme Court accepted the appeals of the Forests of the Czech Republic, the town of Turnov and the State Land Office and returned the case to the Semila court for a new hearing with a binding legal opinion, which led to the rejection of the claim. Liberec after the Second World War as a German on the basis of the Beneš decrees. In 1947, the authorities returned his Czechoslovak citizenship. However, he did not get the seized property back. After the communist coup in February 1948, he emigrated and lost his citizenship again.
In 1992, the Ministry of the Interior returned Walderodem's Czechoslovak citizenship again, and he then applied for the return of his family's former property. Immediately there were testimonies that he had collaborated with the Nazis during the war. Justice therefore also dealt with whether he committed crimes against the Czechoslovak state during the Second World War. Walderode died in 2000.
