Germany and Last Kaiser’s Heirs Agree to Keep Treasures on Display

German State Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer attends a press conference following a meeting with EU Culture Ministers and cultural figures in Ministry of Culture in Paris, France, 11 June 2025. (EPA)
German State Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer attends a press conference following a meeting with EU Culture Ministers and cultural figures in Ministry of Culture in Paris, France, 11 June 2025. (EPA)
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Germany and Last Kaiser’s Heirs Agree to Keep Treasures on Display

German State Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer attends a press conference following a meeting with EU Culture Ministers and cultural figures in Ministry of Culture in Paris, France, 11 June 2025. (EPA)
German State Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer attends a press conference following a meeting with EU Culture Ministers and cultural figures in Ministry of Culture in Paris, France, 11 June 2025. (EPA)

The heirs of the former Prussian monarchy and Germany's state-run cultural foundations on Friday announced a deal that will allow thousands of the family's treasures and artefacts to remain on public display.

The agreement ends a century-old dispute between the state and the Hohenzollern family, descendants of the last German emperor and king of Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who abdicated after World War I.

"After 100 years, we have amicably resolved a dispute dating back to the transition from the monarchy to the republic," said Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer, hailing the "historic success".

The collection reportedly covers 27,000 objects including paintings, sculptures, coins, books and furniture.

"Countless works of art that are of great importance to the history of Brandenburg, Prussia, and thus Germany will now be permanently accessible to the public and continue to form the centerpieces of our museums and palaces," said Weimer.

Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia said in a statement that "it has always been my goal to permanently preserve our shared cultural heritage for art-loving citizens and to make it publicly accessible".

"The solution now found provides an excellent basis for a new partnership between the state cultural foundations and my family."

Under the agreement, previously disputed objects will be transferred to a non-profit Hohenzollern Art Heritage Foundation, with two thirds of the board made up of public sector representatives, and one third by the aristocratic family.

The ancient House of Hohenzollern ruled the German Empire from its establishment in 1871 until Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate in 1918, going into exile after Germany's defeat in World War I.

The Prussian royals were initially to be stripped of their properties, but a deal was later worked out under a 1926 law.

The imperial family received millions of Deutschmarks and kept dozens of castles, villas and other properties, mainly in and around Berlin but also as far away as today's Namibia.

However, after Nazi Germany's World War II defeat, Soviet occupation of eastern Germany and communist rule led to additional expropriations.

The riches lost behind the Iron Curtain only came back into reach for the Hohenzollern family with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.

Under a 1994 law, people whose property was expropriated by the Soviets have a right to claim compensation, but only if they did not "lend considerable support" to the Nazi regime.

The family fought for years to recover the treasures but dropped the bid in 2023 when a family representative acknowledged that Kaiser Wilhelm II "sympathized with the Nazis at times".

The deal announced on Friday was sealed after the German Historical Museum Foundation gave its approval, following the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Prussian Castles and Gardens Foundation in Berlin-Brandenburg.



Cambodian Sites of Khmer Rouge Brutality Added to UNESCO Heritage List

FILE - Tourists take their tour at the grave side in the former Pol Pot ‘s notorious S-21 prison, known Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sunday, July 19, 2009. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith, File)
FILE - Tourists take their tour at the grave side in the former Pol Pot ‘s notorious S-21 prison, known Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sunday, July 19, 2009. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith, File)
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Cambodian Sites of Khmer Rouge Brutality Added to UNESCO Heritage List

FILE - Tourists take their tour at the grave side in the former Pol Pot ‘s notorious S-21 prison, known Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sunday, July 19, 2009. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith, File)
FILE - Tourists take their tour at the grave side in the former Pol Pot ‘s notorious S-21 prison, known Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sunday, July 19, 2009. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith, File)

Three locations used by Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime as torture and execution sites 50 years ago have been added by UNESCO to its World Heritage List.
The three locations were inscribed to the list by the United Nations cultural agency Friday during the 47th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris, reported The Associated Press .
The inscription coincided with the 50th anniversary of the rise to power by the communist Khmer Rouge government, which caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians through starvation, torture and mass executions during a four-year reign from 1975 to 1979.
UNESCO’s World Heritage List lists sites considered important to humanity and includes the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India and Cambodia's Angkor archaeological complex.
The three sites listed Friday include two notorious prisons and an execution site immortalized in a Hollywood film.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, located in the capital Phnom Penh, is the site of a former high school used by the Khmer Rouge as a notorious prison. Better known as S-21, about 15,000 people were imprisoned and tortured there.
The M-13 prison, located in rural Kampong Chhnang province in central Cambodia, also was regarded as one of the main prisons of the early Khmer Rouge.
Choeung Ek, located about 15 kilometers (10 miles) south of the capital, was used as an execution site and mass grave. The story of the atrocities committed there are the focus of the 1984 film “The Killing Fields,” based on the experiences of New York Times photojournalist Dith Pran and correspondent Sydney Schanberg.
The Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, and immediately herded almost all the city’s residents into the countryside, where they were forced to toil in harsh conditions until 1979, when the regime was driven from power by an invasion from neighboring Vietnam.
In September 2022, the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, better known as the Khmer Rouge tribunal, concluded its work compiling cases against Khmer Rouge leaders. The tribunal cost $337 million over 16 years but convicted just three men.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet issued a message Friday directing people to beat drums simultaneously across the country Sunday morning to mark the UNESCO listing.
“May this inscription serve as a lasting reminder that peace must always be defended,” Hun Manet said in a video message posted online. “From the darkest chapters of history, we can draw strength to build a better future for humanity.”
Youk Chhang, executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, said the country is “still grappling with the painful legacies of genocide, torture, and mass atrocity.” But naming the three sites to the UNESCO list will play a role in educating younger generations of Cambodians and others worldwide.
“Though they were the landscape of violence, they too will and can contribute to heal the wounds inflicted during that era that have yet to heal,” he said.
The UNESCO inscription was Cambodia’s first nomination for a modern and non-classical archaeological site and is among the first in the world to be submitted as a site associated with recent conflict, Cambodia's Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said in a statement Friday.
Four Cambodian archaeological sites were previously inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites including Angkor, Preah Vihear, Sambo Prei Kuk and Koh Ker, the ministry said.