Bouzov will remain with the state, the Constitutional Court rejected the complaint of the German Order

Brno - The Constitutional Court rejected the complaint of the German Order, which demanded the return of Bouzov Castle in the Olomouc region. The court left the monument in the ownership of the state. The constitutional judges received the complaint in July and rejected it in mid-September, as reported by ČTK from judicial databases. The ruling indicates that the Order did not seek the return of the castle, which was seized by the Nazis, in the prescribed legal manner after World War II.

Since the Order lost ownership before February 1948, the National Heritage Institute refused to return the monument in church restitution in May 2014. The subsequent lawsuit was rejected by the district court and then by the Olomouc branch of the regional court.

According to the lawyers of the National Heritage Institute, the evidence gathering was very challenging; the file consisted of over 4,000 pages, and it was necessary to go through a number of archival records. According to the Heritage Institute, it is evident that the Order lost the castle before February 25, 1948, which is the beginning of the crucial period according to the law on property settlement with churches.

The Supreme Court rejected the Order's appeal in May. The Order then raised a contentious issue, for instance, whether a restitution claim was applied after World War II according to the then regulations and whether the final confiscation occurred before or after February 1948. However, according to the Supreme Court, the Order failed to challenge the essential conclusion that after World War II, the ownership rights of the German knights were not restored.

"If it claims that the takeover of the requested real estate occurred only on March 22, 1949, it ignores that on that day a record of the handover of the castle was drawn up according to the factual findings of the lower courts; however, the date of transition was stated as May 1, 1947," states the resolution of the Supreme Court.

The Order considers Bouzov to be the historical property of its legal predecessor. They previously announced that they would exhaust all options, including a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The Czech Province of the Order of the Brothers of the House of the Virgin Mary in Jerusalem is also seeking the return of other real estate in northern Moravia and Silesia, where the Order had previously been active and today is involved in spiritual service as well as activities in education and healthcare.

Bouzov is one of the most visited monuments in Moravia. The German Order acquired it at the end of the 17th century. At the beginning of World War II, the Nazis confiscated the castle, and during the occupation, it was the headquarters of an SS assault unit. After the war, it came into state ownership.