Är Huset Hohenzollerns restitutionskrav rimliga?

David Motadel frågar sig i New York Review of Books om Huset Hohenzollerns restitutionskrav gentemot den (återförenade) tyska staten är rimliga eller ej mot bakgrund av den gamla preussiska och tyska kunga- och kejsardynastins högerextrema och nazistiska förflutna och likt drottning Silvia har då Huset Hohenzollern också beställt och finansierat egna utredningar och rapporter som ska visa att fr a Hohenzollern-prinsarna inte var särskilt nazistiska innan och under kriget (vilket de då var).
 
Andra världskrigets slut, Axelmakternas nederlag, Tredje rikets undergång, ockupationen och delningen av Tyskland, Kalla krigets början och etableringen av det kommunistiska Central- och Östeuropa liksom befrielsen och demokratiseringen av Västeuropa innebar i mångt och mycket den slutgiltiga dödsstöten och dödssucken för de gamla europeiska furstehusen och den gamla europeiska aristokratin och särskilt gällde detta de tysktalande furstehusen och adelsätterna.
 
En studie som har försökt att kvantifiera hur den tyska aristokratin åderläts kraftigt på fr a män (d v s deras blåblodiga manskroppar upphörde helt enkelt att fungera av en mängd olika anledningar) har t ex visat att av 9000 undersökta tyska adelsmän (det fanns då år 1933 omkring 70 000 furstliga och adliga personer av alla kön i det dåvarande Tyskland) så:
 
– dödades 6500 under kriget varav 5000 i direkt strid (d v s de stupade för A.H. vid de olika fronterna, d v s de tyska furstarna och aristokraterna föll ”som käglor” och gick åt som ”smör i solsken”)
 
– 500 begick självmord i samband med eller omedelbart efter den tyska kapitulationen
 
– 500 avrättades av de allierade eller avled av sjukdomar, svält, umbäranden och nog även av förtvivlan och sorg (p g a vanheder och ångest, p g a att deras ätter hade utplånats och var på väg att dö ut, p g a att de hade förlorat allt de ägde o s v) i de allierades fängelser och fång- och koncentrationsläger
 
– ytterligare 100-tals dödades av fr a hämndlystna ryska slavarbetare och likaledes hämndlystna allierade krigsfångar som arbetade på deras slott, i deras palats och i deras våningar (d v s de dödades i sina sängar, i sina gemak och salar, i sina våningar, i sina skogar och på sina ägor av sina tjänare, hushållerskor, butlers och jordbruksarbetare i samband med den tyska kapitulationen
 
– åtskilliga av de resterande som överlevde flydde eller flyttade till Latinamerika, Mellanöstern, Iberiska halvön, USA, Sverige, Kanada eller Australien då de hade förlorat och blivit av med allt i både Öst- och Västtyskland för att inte tala om alla gods och all mark som befann sig utanför Tyskland och då många också hade skäl att fly då de misstänktes för krigsbrott och då de fruktade att människor skulle hämnas på dem
 
”The Hohenzollern controversy is not only about the long shadows cast by the Nazi period, but also about the place of the monarchical heritage in today’s democratic Germany.”
 
 
“In the early hours of November 10, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German emperor of the Hohenzollern dynasty, fled by train into exile in the Netherlands. The armistice ending World War I was signed the next day. Under the Weimar Constitution of 1919, Germany’s monarchy was abolished; its aristocracy lost its privileges but was allowed to keep much of its property.
 
After World War II, however, the Soviet authorities expropriated the possessions of the former noble families—palaces, manor houses, lands—in their occupation zone of eastern Germany, which was soon to become the German Democratic Republic. Following German reunification in 1990, some of those families sought to reclaim what they had lost. A law passed in 1994 allowed for restitution or compensation claims, though only on condition that the claimants or their ancestors had not “given substantial support” to the National Socialist or East German Communist regimes.
 
The Hohenzollerns were among those who demanded compensation, as well as the return of tens of thousands of priceless artworks, antiquities, rare books, and furniture now in public museums, galleries, and palaces. Among their requests is the right to reside in one of the Potsdam palaces, preferably the grand 176-room Cecilienhof, which today is a museum.
 
Despite years of negotiations between the German state and the family, their claims remain unresolved. Last summer, as more and more details about the negotiations in the case were leaked to the German press, a bitter public controversy erupted over Germany’s monarchical past. The critical question is whether the Hohenzollerns had “given substantial support” to the Nazi regime.
 
In 1919, in a letter to one of his former generals, the exiled emperor, whose anti-Semitism grew more and more virulent during the interwar years, blamed the Jews above all for the fall of the monarchy:
 
The deepest, most disgusting shame ever perpetrated by a people in history, the Germans have done onto themselves. Egged on and misled by the tribe of Juda whom they hated, who were guests among them! That was their thanks! Let no German ever forget this, nor rest until these parasites have been destroyed and exterminated from German soil! This poisonous mushroom on the German oak-tree!
 
“Jews and mosquitoes,” he wrote in the summer of 1927, were “a nuisance that humanity must get rid of in some way or other,” adding: “I believe the best would be gas!”
 
(…)
 
“More relevant to a resolution of the family’s claims are the actions of the emperor’s eldest son, the self-proclaimed “crown prince” Wilhelm, who was the most senior member of the dynasty in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and the owner of the Hohenzollern properties at the time of the Soviet expropriation.
 
The facts, known to historians for decades, seem clear: Wilhelm, who was determined to destroy the hated Weimar Republic, backed its right-wing enemies, believing that this would pave the way for the restoration of the monarchy. And he came out in support of Hitler early. In the second round of the presidential elections in the spring of 1932—after having abandoned the idea of running himself—he endorsed Hitler rather than his opponent, the elderly president and former imperial field marshal Paul von Hindenburg, thereby legitimizing the Nazi movement among conservative and royalist segments of German society.
 
Hitler, reportedly “with a smile,” told the British Daily Express, “I value the ex–Crown Prince’s action highly. It was an absolutely spontaneous action on his part, and by it he has publicly placed himself in line with the main body of patriotic German nationalists.”
 
Wilhelm also helped the Nazis on other occasions. In 1932, for example, he tried to convince Defense Minister Wilhelm Groener to lift the ban on the Nazi paramilitary groups, the SA and SS. And after Hitler was appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933, Wilhelm wasted no time ingratiating himself with Germany’s new leader.
 
In a stream of letters to Hitler, he professed his unconditional loyalty to the regime. In 1934, for the international press, he proudly posed in front of a mirror at Cecilienhof wearing a swastika armband. Most of the other Hohenzollerns, although far less prominent, behaved similarly. Wilhelm’s younger brother August Wilhelm (“Auwi”), a high-ranking SA leader, was a committed Nazi.
 
One of Wilhelm’s most important services to the regime was his participation in the Day of Potsdam on March 21, 1933, a spectacle staged by the Nazis to present themselves as the heirs to a glorious Prussian past. Representing the Hohenzollern dynasty, Wilhelm, along with three of his brothers, took part in the carefully choreographed proceedings at Potsdam’s Garrison Church.
 
The highlight of the event was a handshake between President von Hindenburg and Hitler. The Day of Potsdam symbolized the pact between the Nazi movement and the old elites, reassuring the sizable conservative parts of the population. It was the regime’s first major propaganda triumph, and it was enabled by the former royal family and its aristocratic allies.
 
The Hohenzollerns were by no means unrepresentative. Crucial to Hitler’s ascent to power was a coalition between the Nazis and Germany’s old conservative elites, who hoped they could use and control him for their own ends. It was they who arranged Hitler’s appointment as Reich chancellor, plotted in the backrooms of gentlemen’s clubs, in officers’ messes, and at dinners and shooting parties on grand estates.”