Prague, Oct 6 (CTK) – A Czech court on Thursday definitively dismissed a lawsuit which a descendant of the Valdstejn (Wallenstein) noble family, Ernst Waldstein Wartenberg, lodged to claim plots in Prague that were confiscated from the family after WWII, state representative Radek Lezatka has told CTK.
Lezatka, spokesman for the Office for Government Representation in Property Affairs, said Wartenberg claimed plots in the central historical Hradcany and the Lesser Town neighbourhoods, including some situated next to the seat of the Senate, the upper house of parliament.
The state confiscated the plots after the war based on decrees issued by Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes.
Wartenberg’s lawsuit was first dismissed by a lower-level court in December 2014. Its verdict, available to CTK, shows that Waldstein wanted the confiscation to be cancelled. He argued that it is not clear what decree served as a basis for the confiscation, which means that it did not take place.
The judge stated, however, that there is no reason to cancel the confiscation because the claimant’s father failed to meet the condition of regaining Czechoslovak citizenship.
In 1946, a people’s court in Ceska Lipa, north Bohemia, sentenced Wartenberg’s father Karel to one year in a tough prison, and stripped him of his civic honour and all property over his previous membership in the NSFK group, an organisation similar to SS, in a period the Czechoslovak state faced an increased danger.
His son insists that the NSFK aviation group definitely was not like fascist organisations. He says his father never claimed his adherence to the German ethnicity because he never signed any census document in this respect.
