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Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

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Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#51

Post by rbg246 »

colechristensen wrote: post #47
rbg246 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flippant - you summarised a whole series of complicated issues in two small paragraphs which demonstrated flippancy conflating very different issues. Disrespectful - these complicated issues involve people who have been and continue to be disadvantaged by these issues, your flippancy is disrespectful.

Mostly what you have to say there is that I'm flippant and disrespectful because I was being flippant and disrespectful. The only explanation there is that I'm talking about "issues involve people who have been and continue to be disadvantaged" Those rich folks have been "disadvantaged" by being deprived of things they have claims on. Obviously they are already quite advantaged, but you can't deny they have less adva…

It is a tad ironic, that I have been "flippant" and "disrespectful" to your argument (not you, mind you, unless you are your argument) you wrote out in 1 minute with minimal thought.

Yet at the same time, you can't see how you have been "flippant" and "disrespectful" to the complicated issues (with real people who are affected by this) you pulled together in your 2 paragraph comment.

Ignoring all detail when there have been 10000s of academic books written trying to explain and understand these issues from all viewpoints.

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#52

Post by zokier »

Litmus2336 wrote: post #38

I'm not exactly super sympathetic to monarchs though. I don't think it's unreasonable that, after the fall of the monarchy, they lose most of their assets.

The monarchy aspect is a red herring here. The properties in question were granted to the family long after the abdication. The soviet confiscation had little to do with the fall of monarcy in this case

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#53

Post by colechristensen »

rbg246 wrote: post #51
colechristensen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly what you have to say there is that I'm flippant and disrespectful because I was being flippant and disrespectful. The only explanation there is that I'm talking about "issues involve people who have been and continue to be disadvantaged" Those rich folks have been "disadvantaged" by being deprived of things they have claims on. Obviously they are already quite advantaged, but you can't deny they have less adva…

It is a tad ironic, that I have been "flippant" and "disrespectful" to your argument (not you, mind you, unless you are your argument) you wrote out in 1 minute with minimal thought. Yet at the same time, you can't see how you have been "flippant" and "disrespectful" to the complicated issues (with real people who are affected by this) you pulled together in your 2 paragraph comment. Ignoring all detail when there ha…

You don't really seem to have anything of substance to say so I'll just wish you a good day.

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#54

Post by codesushi42 »

ummonk wrote: post #8
gwbas1c wrote: post #6

> Under a 1994 law, people whose property was expropriated by the Soviet Union have a right to claim compensation -- but only if they did not "lend considerable support" to the Nazi regime. > In a newspaper in 1932, the crown prince called for people to vote for Adolf Hitler in the presidential election, he added. Seems rather straightforward to me.

That doesn't seem quite so straightforward actually. The Nazi regime wasn't a thing yet, as the Nazis had yet to seize power. How obvious was it at the time to Germans that the Nazis would turn out to be so horrible?

Have you even heard about the Beer Hall Putsch?

It was pretty clear from that incident that Hitler was campaigning for violence long before the first election the Nazis ran in.

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#55

Post by hydrox24 »

colechristensen wrote: post #49
henrikschroder wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is hard to come up with a consistent moral and legal philosophy to deal with these kinds of things. It is impossible , because you quickly run into contrafactual history. Let's say the descendants of Scandinavian vikings owe repairs to descendants of people living in Normandy, because the vikings raped and pillaged. Except, they also settled. And became Normans. And invaded England. Changed the English language…

Exactly. It was, let's say 1000 years ago and most people affected descended from both perpetrators and victims. You could go as far as saying this kind of violence was important and necessary for the development of civilization; if every human respected property rights for the last 10,000 years we would live in a very different world. So a 1,000 year old crime is wiped out in the present. When does that stop? How so…

Look into the argument between Robert Nozick and Jeremy Waldron over historical justice.

Waldron tries to solve the problem that you and your parent comment are laying out by changing the basis of property rights from the Lockean idea (we mix our labour with something to make it our property) to a new idea, that property is based on the organisation of a person's life around a particular object. Intuitively, this gives credence to the idea that the nice fountain pen I found on the ground four years ago is now nearly totally mine, and that the person who lost it has much less claim over it, particularly if they only bought it a few months before losing it.

It also makes sense of our intuition that I ought to give it back if it has been in their family for three generations. Four years of my life organised around the thing does not stand up to his deeper attachment and ownership of the object.

Obviously, there are traps inherent to the subjectivity of these judgements here, but it does provide a nice philosophical answer to the historical issues.

Sites that continue to be sacred probably ought to be handed back because they continue to play a central role in the lives of indiginous people. But the CBD of Sydney, for instance, has a far stronger claim by those who own the land and have built several hundred thousand lives around the property. Generic indiginous claims to the land there don't hold water any more.

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#56

Post by boomboomsubban »

colechristensen wrote: post #28
markdown wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In your example of Palestinians... the "occupiers" were born here, this is their home now, the original conquering generation is very much gone Nothing could be further from the truth. https://www.amnestyusa.org/lets-be-clear-israels-long-runnin...

Much of that conflict is about things that were done generations ago. True, recent and current actions also fit the bill, but it is disingenuous to claim that the settlement activity is the primary mover of the situation. One thing that link throws around is the word "illegal". There are customs and treaties, but there is not a world government to enforce the rule of law for these treaties. Many of the definitions li…

>One thing that link throws around is the word "illegal". There are customs and treaties, but there is not a world government to enforce the rule of law for these treaties

The inability to enforce a law does not make a crime legal. The occupied territories are a violation of international law, even if they are never punished for them.

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#57

Post by rbg246 »

colechristensen wrote: post #53
rbg246 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a tad ironic, that I have been "flippant" and "disrespectful" to your argument (not you, mind you, unless you are your argument) you wrote out in 1 minute with minimal thought. Yet at the same time, you can't see how you have been "flippant" and "disrespectful" to the complicated issues (with real people who are affected by this) you pulled together in your 2 paragraph comment. Ignoring all detail when there ha…

You don't really seem to have anything of substance to say so I'll just wish you a good day.

I understand that it is hard to digest criticism. Have a good day.

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#58

Post by thaumasiotes »

colechristensen wrote: post #20

The same claims are made around the world by people who no resources or prestige, sometimes they win things, sometimes they don't. Examples include Palestinians, descendants of slaves in the US, Native Americans, indigenous peoples around the world. Just about everybody has a history of their ancestors taking things in ways which weren't "legal" AND having things taken from them. It is hard to come up with a consiste…

> It's super difficult to determine these things, especially when the people who have had things taken from them are dead and maybe several generations back.

Doesn't seem to apply here. The comment above yours points out:

> It is easy to brush these away as long past history, but for example these properties were confiscated from the hands of the current prince's father.

Re: Last German kaiser's heirs fight for riches lost behind Iron Curtain

#60

Post by [deleted] »

zokier wrote: post #24

Post-communist reparations is one big mess in central Europe. I think the case of Lichtenstein is one of the most stark: > Through the prince of Liechtenstein and his family, this country on the Alpine Rhine was still closely linked to the distant Czech lands in the first half of the 20th century, and after 1918 the prince and other family members had an influential role in Czechoslovakia as late-Medieval propertied…

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