Historický Časopis (Sep 2023)
‟Who owns the land, owns the country...” (Prince Hohenlohe and his activities in the Tatras region, 1879–1926)
Abstract
Prince Christian Kraft von Hohenlohe bought his first properties in the High Tatras area in 1879 and gradually bought more (about 19,000 ha in total). Several of his buying activities caused great emotions of nationalism in the Kingdom of Hungary. As a German from the Reich, he came into conflict with the opinion that the High Tatras should remain in domestic hands. Even here, however, no one was clear whether it wasmeant to be Hungarians, Zips Germans, Slovaks or Poles. In addition, the Hungarian state entered the nationalist discourse, which had ambitions to buy property into state hands, which was supposed to be an expression of a positive attitude towards the country and opposition to the most beautiful areas falling into the hands of foreigners. Hohenlohe programmatically demonstrated a positive relationship to the state and its politics. On the other hand, he came into conflict with domestic tourists on his properties, and with his contradictory conservation activities, he justified closing the properties to tourists, which again caused only resistance and resentment from the public. In the Hungarian-Polish border dispute at the beginning of the 20th century, he took the Hungarian side and after 1918 pragmatically defended Czechoslovak interests against Polish territorial claims, because it both suited him and enabled him to avoid the intentions of the later Czechoslovak land reform. The state was also accommodating to the heirs of the estates and dealt with them very generously, as it did not desire a conflict with the Reich Germans in the 1930s. The fates of the Hohenlohe properties thus remained rather exceptional in the Hungarian and Czechoslovak state context.
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