Ø Ø N A9INTERNATIONALTHE NEW YORK TIMES MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2007

By CRAIG S. SMITHKONOPISTE CASTLE, Czech Re-

public — When a young Serb namedGavrilo Princip stepped forward ona Sarajevo street and fired a pistol ata middle-aged couple 93 years ago,he sent history stumbling down anunexpected new path.

The couple, of course, was FranzFerdinand, archduke of Austria-Este, heir to the Austro-HungarianEmpire, and his wife, Sophie. Theywere killed. The world went to war.Millions of people died and the politi-cal map of Europe was redrawn.

Now, Franz Ferdinand’s great-granddaughter, Her Serene High-ness Princess Sophie von Hohenberg(or Sophie de Potesta to her neigh-bors), is trying to right what she seesas one of the wrongs from thoseyears. She hopes to get Franz Ferdi-nand’s castle back in the bargain.

The 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye carved up the old Hapsburgempire into new states: Austria,Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslav-ia and parts of Poland. The Haps-burg family, which had ruled thatpart of Europe for more than 600years, was stripped of its propertiesand titles. Franz Ferdinand’s chil-dren had already been turned out oftheir parents’ beloved home, Kono-piste Castle, in the empire’s provinceof Bohemia, now the Czech Republic.It was taken by the state.

The problem, Princess von Hohen-berg says, is that Franz Ferdinand’schildren — Sophie, Maximilian andErnst — were not Hapsburgs and sothe castle and its dependencies —nearly 15,000 acres of woodland anda brewery — should never have beenseized.

That is because Franz Ferdinandmarried a woman a rung below hisroyal status. His uncle, EmperorFranz Jozef, would only allow theunion on the condition that Sophieand any children she bore never beconsidered heirs to the throne. Hegave the young bride her own titleand a new name instead: Princessvon Hohenberg, which has beenpassed down to her great-grand-daughter today.

In part because of the tensioncaused by his marriage, Franz Fer-dinand preferred to stay at Kono-piste rather than at his official resi-dence, the Belvedere in Vienna.

When he and his wife left for Saraje-vo that fateful June, they intended toreturn in just a few days. The chil-dren were left behind in the care ofnannies.

But Franz Ferdinand and Sophiedied at Sarajevo and his children in-herited Konopiste Castle, which hehad bought with money from the saleof properties in Italy that he had in-herited from his uncle, Francesco Vd’Este.

By the time the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was signed, Prin-cess von Hohenberg argues, the cas-tle was a Hohenberg, not a Hapsburg,estate.

But in 1921, Czechoslovakia passedlaw No. 354, whose Article III man-dated the seizure of royal propertiesfrom the Hapsburgs, including FranzFerdinand and “his descendants.”

“What happened in Czechoslova-kia was an overenthusiastic way ofinterpreting the Saint-Germain trea-ty,” Princess von Hohenberg said re-cently over tea at an elegant Brus-sels hotel. “They associated mygrandfather Max with the Haps-burgs, though he was not a memberof the family any more.”

Princess von Hohenberg’s Czechlawyer, Jaroslav Broz, said the lawrefers to the Treaty of Saint-Ger-main-en-Laye but betrays the trea-ty’s principles.

The newly minted Republic of Aus-tria seized all of the Hapsburg pal-aces there but left Franz Ferdi-nand’s children with the Hohenbergproperties, which included theArstetten Castle where Franz Ferdi-nand and his wife are buried andwhere Princess von Hohenberg’s sis-ter, Anita, lives today.

The children were sent to live inArstetten Castle. The eldest, Sophie,was 17 at the time. She lived until1990 and Princess von Hohenberg re-members her stories.

“They had to leave Konopiste witha small little suitcase and the suit-case was searched to be sure thatthey didn’t take any souvenirs,” shesaid. Her grandfather tried at onetime to recover some of the family’spersonal belongings but was refused.“What has always shocked my fam-ily is that our whole history, our pri-vate history, the letters, the photos, isall in Konopiste,” she said.

The family fought the Czech law,even after the Communists came topower, to no avail. They made diplo-matic enquiries after the collapse ofCommunism, but got nowhere. Then,in 2000, the princess’s mother en-trusted her with the battle. In De-cember, Princess von Hohenberg fi-nally filed a lawsuit at a court in Be-nesov, the town nearest the castle,hoping to successfully challenge thelaw.

“What I’m trying to do is attackthis law which is unjust and wrong,”said Princess von Hohenberg, 46,dressed in a gray flannel huntingcoat over faded blue jeans, her au-burn hair pulled back and securedwith a black velvet-covered elastichair tie. “If I win my case, they haveto give back what they confiscated,logically, but my first wish is tomake this article of law disappear.”

She recalled her first visit to thecastle after the Velvet Revolution,which brought about the fall of theCommunist government. She was ac-

companied by her husband, Jean-Louis de Potesta, who has a grayingbeard and twirled moustache in thestyle of Czar Nicolas II.

“I was very, very moved,” shesaid. “ I suddenly knew where I be-longed, which I never felt before. Isuddenly knew where my rootswere.”

On her second visit, she identifiedherself and refused to pay the $9 ad-mission.

Konopiste Castle is one of the mostbeautiful of the 90-odd castles ownedby the Czech Republic, and is cer-tainly the most elaborate in its fur-nishings. The walls of the castle’spublic halls are mounted with someof the roughly 300,000 animals thatFranz Ferdinand shot during his life-time.

It is a phantasmagoric display ofbison heads and dear antlers andboar tusks and wood grouse tailfeathers, each mounted on a woodenplaque inscribed with the date andplace where they were shot.

The collection is interspersed withFranz Ferdinand’s extensive collec-tion of 15th-century polychromewooden religious statues. Severalrooms are devoted to a collection ofmedieval and Renaissance armor,much of which he inherited from hisuncle.

Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or SS, tookover the castle during World War IIand sent much of its contents to Aus-

tria, where they were discovered af-ter the war, stored in a salt mine.

Almost everything was recoveredexcept for objects made of gold,which were melted down by the Na-zis. The children’s toys are also miss-ing, distributed to kindergartens dur-ing the Communist era when the cas-tle was used by the Czech Ministry ofAgriculture.

Princess von Hohenberg’s interestin recovering the building has senttremors through the small communi-ty that depends upon it for a living.

“We’ve bet our existence on this,”said Helena Nohejlova, 34, the cas-tle’s deputy caretaker. She has livedat Konopiste since she was 18. Herhusband is the castle gardener andher two teenage daughters havegrown up there. “Our children con-sider this their home,” she said.

But Princess von Hohenberg saysshe is not interested in closing thecastle to the public.

“I could not live in Konopiste likemy great-grandfather did,” saidPrincess von Hohenberg. “But thisplace belongs to my family and Ihave a moral responsibility towardthe past members of my family aswell as towards the ones still tocome, to fight for what is ours.”

There have been several royal res-titutions in Europe since the fall ofCommunism. The Czech Republic it-self has returned a lot of propertyseized by the Communists after 1948.

But the courts in countries in this his-torically turbulent part of the worldhave been reluctant to address prop-erty claims before then.

Crossing that line could open theway to others seeking to right thewrongs that followed regimechanges of the past — not the least ofwhich was the expulsion of Germansand the confiscation of their propertyafter World War II.

“One has to ask how far back togo,” said Vaclav Pavlicek, a constitu-tional-law expert who heads the con-stitutional-law department atCharles University in Prague.

The Ministry of Culture spendsmore than $800,000 a year to main-tain the castle, about the same as theproperty earns from ticket sales andrental fees for occasional functions.The castle’s chapel is popular forweddings.

It is classed as a national culturalhistoric monument, which meansthat were Princess von Hohenberg torecover the castle, she would noteven be able to move the furniturewithout approval from the statelandmark authorities.

“A number of such castles havebeen returned to the families of theirformer owners,” said Pavel Jerie,head of the institute that administersthe property for the state. “But it’s aburden for them. If they were com-pletely rational, they would neverwant the property back.”

Princess and Heir of Franz Ferdinand Fights to Repeal a Law and Gain a Castle

Saskia Bergerova/Czech News Agency

The Konopiste Castle in the Czech Republic, which was taken over by the state after the end of World War I.

Jock Fistick for The New York Times

Her Serene Highness Princess Sophie von Hohenberg, the great-grand-daughter of Franz Ferdinand, who was assassinated 93 years ago.

Using bloodlines as

an argument against

property seizure.

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