Sport about the Bouzov State Castle is heading to the Supreme Court due to an appeal

Brno - The dispute over the state castle Bouzov in the Olomouc region is heading to the Supreme Court. The German Order is striving to have it returned; so far, they have not succeeded, and the castle remains in the care of the National Heritage Institute. The district court in Olomouc received the appeal in July, as reported by ČTK from a record in the judicial database. It is now the task of the district court to forward the appeal along with the file to the highest instance in Brno.

The National Heritage Institute rejected the return of the castle in May 2014 as part of church restitution. The subsequent lawsuit was dismissed by the district court last August. In March of this year, the Olomouc branch of the regional court made a similar decision regarding the Order's appeal.

"The district court carried out all necessary evidence, correctly interpreted the law on property settlements, and applied precedents from previous disputes," stated regional court judge Ivana Pikalová in March.

The Heritage Institute welcomed the verdict. According to the institute's lawyers, the evidence gathering was very demanding; the file contains over 4000 pages, and it was necessary to go through numerous archival records.

The Order has been seeking the castle since 1998, considering it to be its historical property. "We will exhaust all possibilities. So even the Constitutional Court and definitely Strasbourg," recently quoted the server iDnes.cz the vicar of the Grand Master of the Order, Metoděj Hofman.

Bouzov is one of the most visited monuments in Moravia, attracting about 100,000 people annually. The Order of German Knights acquired it at the end of the 17th century. In 1938, the Nazis confiscated the castle, and during the occupation, it served as the headquarters of an SS assault unit. Since 1945, it has been state property. According to the institute, it is clear that the Order lost the castle even before February 25, 1948, which marks the beginning of the crucial period according to the law on property settlement with churches.