The court awarded the castle in Koloděje to the restituté Kumper

Prague - The Baroque castle in Koloděje, used by the Czech government, is set to be returned to the restitutor Vítězslav Kumper. This was decided today by the District Court for Prague 9. Although the Land Office already decided last year to return the Baroque castle along with adjacent buildings and the game preserve to the heirs of the original owner, the government has been trying to regain the property through court action. Today's verdict is not final and can be appealed.
The state confiscated the castle in 1948 under the so-called Beneš decrees. Its heir convinced the authorities that the post-war expropriation was unlawful. The Land Office issued a decision on the return of the property at the beginning of last year. State lawyers achieved a "freeze" on the issued property with a preliminary lawsuit last March.
According to Kumper's representative Tomáš Chlost, during the expropriation of the castle, the presidential decree was abused to take property from a person who became inconvenient to the communist regime. "A completely crucial document has been obtained from the archives, which is a record from a secret meeting of the ministers of justice, finance, and the national administrator from December 17, 1948. They concluded that the conditions for confiscation were not met, yet confiscation needed to be carried out," Kumper's lawyer previously stated.
The last owner of the castle, located on the eastern outskirts of Prague, was engineer Antonín Kumpera, who served as the director of Waltrovka during the First Republic. Kumperá purchased Koloděje before the war. In 1947, the Ministry of the Interior took over the property and established a school for the National Security Corps there. In the 1950s, there was also a prison for the communist StB in the castle's basement. Since 1955, the government has used the castle for ceremonial purposes and important meetings.
The industrialist left Czechoslovakia and lived in Brazil until his death. After November 1989, his grandson claimed rights to the buildings. Kumpera is also suing for buildings in Prague 5 in Smíchov, reportedly already having acquired some properties in the city center.