The Problem of Nationality in the Presidential Decree 12/1945 on an Example of Prince Joseph Windischgrätz
Abstract
The time after the liberation of Czechoslovakia in May 1945 was the time when many presidential decrees were issued, including the Decree 12 from June 21st 1945. This decree defined German as a person who in some census after the year 1929 claimed that he is of a German nationality.
But what to do with a person who did not live in Czechoslovakia when the census occurred? That was the problem of prince Joseph Windischgrätz, born in 1895 in Austria-Hungary in a town which after 1918 belonged to Czechoslovakia, raised in Austria and worked in Hamburg in Germany and from 1944 an inhabitant of a small village in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia where he ran a farm which (along with a castle) he inherited a few years before. Windischgrätz never participated in any Czechoslovakian census, therefore, the authorities had to choose another factor to decide whether Windischgrätz is of a German nationality or not.
Windischgrätz's language decided - Windischgrätz spoke primarily German, therefore, he was considered as a German and he was supposed to be transferred to Germany in 1945 with Sudeten Germans. Windischgrätz showed the officials documents that proved that he is an Austrian and so he could stay in Czechoslovakia.
Nonetheless, he was not able to stop the confiscation of his property, therefore, he filed a lawsuit at the Supreme Administrative Court against Land National Committee concerning the confiscation. At its first meeting in 1947, The Supreme Administrative Court accepted plaintiff's argumentation and decided that it is necessary to reexamine the Windischgrätz case.
The final court verdict was pronounced in 1949 (it means after the 1948 coup d'état) and this verdict was completely different from the first meeting of the judges - the Court accepted the argumentation of the defendant and denied the plaintiff's arguments. Joseph Windischgrätz lived in Klatovy in West Bohemia until 1950 when he was forced to move to Austria.
He died in 1970 near Vienna.