A German court has ruled against a claim by the great-great-grandson of the country’s last kaiser to the picturesque ruins of a 13th-century castle overlooking the Rhine valley.
Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia argued the ruins of Rheinfels Castle should be returned to the Hohenzollern family because the current owners had breached a century-old agreement, a claim rejected on Tuesday by a court in Koblenz.
Georg Friedrich is the great-great-grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was deposed in the German revolution of 1918 at the end of the first world war. While he is allowed to use the term “Prince”, it is considered to be part of his surname, not a title.
The 43-year-old had wanted to claim back Rheinfels Castle, the largest of the ruins overlooking the Loreley valley, a 42-mile (67km) section of the Rhine, a Unesco world heritage site that has inspired countless Romantic poems and fairytales.
The castle, which dates back to 1245 and is known for its labyrinthine network of tunnels and trenches, belonged to the former ruling Hohenzollern dynasty from the 19th century. In 1924, after the fall of the kaiser, the ruin was handed over to the nearby town of St Goar, on the condition that it not be sold.
But in 1998, the town agreed to a 99-year leasehold with a four-star luxury hotel overlooking the ruin, with the option of an equally long extension. In his claim against the town, hotel, and the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Georg Friedrich argued that this amounted to a sale, thus voiding the town’s claim to ownership.
He argued the site should be returned to the Hohenzollern dynasty. However, the Koblenz court dismissed the case, saying that even if the agreement had been breached, the Hohenzollerns would not have a legal right to reclaim the property.
The defence for the state said Georg Friedrich had known about the deal with the hotel and was only now trying to profit from it. He owns two-thirds of the family’s original seat, the Gothic Hohenzollern Castle in Swabia.
Town and state are in talks over a multimillion-euro renovation of the castle ruins, work which had been postponed due to the legal battle.
