Cemetery chapels, family residences, vineyards. These lands for five billion were forfeited to the state

For decades, more than 16,000 hectares of land lay fallow in the Czech Republic without a traceable owner. But that’s over. Since the New Year, almost five billion worth of property has been forfeited to the state. Aktuálně.cz has prepared a gallery of selected places that have belonged to the Czech Republic since the New Year. Among them are dilapidated country estates or family houses, but also cemeteries, chapels or greenhouses.

An impressive but dilapidated farm building in the village of Vidnava on the border with Poland. A half-ruined family residence in Lučany nad Nisou. A neglected house in the immediate vicinity of a Renaissance castle in Křivsoudov in Central Bohemia.

This is just a small list of plots of land that do not have an owner in the Czech Republic, and the Office for Representation of the State in Property Matters was unable to find a rightful heir. These places have been deteriorating for decades, and in some places they even block the development of municipalities.

But that can change. Since the New Year, most of them have been forfeited to the state by law. “It can be said with a high degree of certainty that all property forfeited to the state exceeds the value of five billion crowns,” said Jan Antonín Kolář from the Česká země project, which processed data on land and searched for the rightful owners.

Most of the items on the list are undeveloped land. The state has newly acquired ten thousand hectares of arable land, a thousand hectares of forests or a hundred hectares of vineyards.

Built-up areas make up roughly 56 hectares. And it’s not just dilapidated country estates. For example, over a hectare of land is made up of cemeteries. For example, the state now owns land in the listed Laudon cemetery, where the relatives of the famous Austrian general Ernst Gideon von Laudon lie. Other plots of land are today a highway, a landfill or a greenhouse.

The office will first offer forfeited plots and houses to other state institutions. “A number of properties will be transferred, for example, to the Forests of the Czech Republic, the State Land Office, state enterprises, watersheds and the like,” said Michaela Tesařová, spokeswoman for the Office for State Representation in Property Matters, in November. Only if these institutions do not show interest in houses and land, the state will look for a new owner among ordinary citizens.

The daily Aktuálně.cz has reported on the process of finding land owners several times in the past. The owners of some plots of land were found at the last minute. For example, through the Czech country project.

For example, it is a boarded-up house in Válcovní street in Ostrava. It last belonged to the Reichenbaum Jewish family from Ostrava. Last year, it was possible to track down their relatives living in Hamburg, and inheritance proceedings are currently underway.

A year before, it was discovered that the abandoned house in a village in the Pilsen Region belonged to the wife of General František Moravec, the mastermind of Operation Anthropoid. Even in this case, negotiations with the heirs could then begin.

The real owner could often not be traced due to errors in the records from 1948 to 1989. After the Second World War, there were a large number of new and often incomplete or incorrect entries in the land registers. In the 1950s, the obligation to record property ownership in the public register was completely abolished for a certain period. Manual transliteration of names or honoring German names also caused errors.