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Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia, chief of the Hohenzollern
Photo: Nestor Bachmann / picture alliance / dpa
Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia, head of the Hohenzollern family, has long been taking legal action against historians whom he accuses of stating false facts about him.
He was successful at the Berlin Regional Court, but the political damage to the land that the Kaiser descendant caused in this way was growing.
A fundamental discussion about freedom of expression and freedom of science has long since developed through his approach.
According to SPIEGEL information, Brandenburg's Minister of Science Manja Schüle (SPD) is now demanding that the Hohenzollern boss withdraw his lawsuits against historians.
Otherwise a continuation of the negotiations between him and the public sector is not possible.
And that involves huge sums of money.
Since 2014, the Prince of Prussia on the one hand and the federal government and the federal states of Brandenburg and Berlin on the other hand have been negotiating for a few thousand paintings, furniture, sculptures or books that once belonged to the Hohenzollern family and are now in public institutions.
Compensation for real estate that was expropriated by the Soviets in what would later become the GDR after 1945 is also part of the negotiation.
The total value of the claims of the former imperial family is probably in the three-digit million range.
Together with the Potsdam Ministry of Finance, Schüle's Ministry represents the state of Brandenburg at the negotiating table.
Intimidate scientists
When SPIEGEL and Tagesspiegel unveiled the Hohenzollern's demands in 2019, public outrage was great.
In the aftermath of the history policy of the Hohenzollern and the negotiations, several scholars also expressed their views and were prosecuted by the Prince of Prussia for spreading the untruth according to his account.
Minister Schüle criticizes this approach;
that would intimidate scientists.
Prince of Prussia denies this intention.
But Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) also expressed outrage internally (one participant: "pissed off") about the complaints.
more on the subject
Judgment in Berlin: Historians must refrain from making statements about Hohenzollern
Icon: Spiegel Plus The Hohenzollern case: The dispute over the millionaire inheritance becomes grotesque by Klaus Wiegrefe
Icon: Spiegel Plus Dispute over the legacy of Prussia: Hohenzollern threaten to withdraw art treasures from museums by Klaus Wiegrefe
The historians in question include Winfried Süß from the Center for Contemporary History Research in Potsdam and Stephan Malinowski, who wrote an expert opinion on the relationship between ex-Crown Prince Wilhelm and the Nazis for Brandenburg as part of the dispute over compensation.
Schüle's State Secretary Tobias Dünow now even supports Suss in his legal dispute with a letter.
According to this, Suss's assertion that the Prince of Prussia demanded a say in the historical representation of his family in some museums in the negotiations with the public sector is correct.
The Hohenzollern boss denies that;
he is concerned with the usual participation in loans that he makes available.
The district court provisionally approved the Prince of Prussia on Thursday.
Süß now hopes for a correction of the decision in the second instance.
He was confident, he told SPIEGEL, that the Berlin Superior Court "will assess the facts differently."
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