A German court has ruled against a claim by the great-great-grandson of the country’s last kaiser to the picturesque ruins of a 13th-century castle overlooking the Rhine valley. But in 1998, the town agreed to a 99-year leasehold with a four-star luxury hotel overlooking the ruin, with the option of an equally long extension. In his claim against the town, hotel, and the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Georg Friedrich argued that this amounted to a sale, thus voiding the town’s claim to ownership. He owns two-thirds of the family’s original seat, the Gothic Hohenzollern Castle in Swabia. Town and state are in talks over a multimillion-euro renovation of the castle ruins, work which had been postponed due to the legal battle.

Source: The Guardian June 25, 2019 11:51 UTC