Greece’s last monarch, Constantine II, had to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, but received a compensation for the property seized when he was ousted from power
Thiago Cordeiro
When a monarchy falls, who gets to keep the possessions it used? The estates, palaces, vehicles, do they belong to the nation or to the royal family? Brazil still has not reached a conclusion, at least when it comes to who is the true owner of Guanabara Palace, seat of Rio de Janeiro’s state government, which was the former residence of Princess Isabel. In Greece, the European Court of Human Rights had to intervene, in the year 2000, so that the country’s last monarch, Constantine II, became entitled to a compensation for the estate taken away by the government that deposed him.
He received 12 million euro, much less than the 270 million he requested, in exchange for three of his family’s properties – the Tatoi Palace, the Polydendri Palace, and his residence in the island of Corfu. But his victory in the Courts had a large symbolic value, in the sense that he had recognized his family’s possession over those properties.
It was a long battle. Local courts did not recognize his possession, and the Legislative branch sought to approve laws which would solve the issue once and for all, without paying any compensations. The trajectory of the Greek monarchy helps to explain the difficulty in establishing a consensus on the subject in this specific Mediterranean archipelago.
After obtaining independence from the Ottoman Empire, and being recognized as an independent country, in the 19th century, the country was ruled by Ioannis Kapodistrias, a former minister of Russia. From then on, between 1833 to 1924, Greece was ruled by a monarchy, and then became a Republic. It became a monarchy once again in 1935, after a military coup. The king fell in 1967 and, after a period of military dictatorship, the Republic was formally reinstalled in 1974.
During this period, the Greek had seven monarchs, who proclaimed themselves “kings of the Hellenes”: Otto (who reigned as an absolutist monarch, but ended up deposed in 1862), George I (who was murdered in 1913), Contantine I (who ruled for two separate periods, and was exiled after both, eventually dying in Italy), Alexander (who lost his throne and his life in 1920, after being bitten by a monkey), George II (who took the throne from 1922 to 1924, and retook it between 1935 and 1947, with an interval in which he was exiled during the Second World War), Paul (who ruled from 1947 to his death, in 1964, and had no less than 15 prime-ministers) and, lastly, Constantine II.
All of them (except Otto) belong to the House of Glücksburg, originally from present-day Germany, and which ruled, in different periods, Denmark, Norway, Greece, and several nation-states in Northern Germany. Denmark’s current queen, Margrethe II, belongs to this dynasty and Is Constantine II’s sister-in-law; Constantine is also the brother of Spain’s Queen Sophia, and Prince Charles, his second cousin, chose him to be Prince William’s godfather. In his 60 year birthday, the last Greek monarch held a ball who was attended by Queen Elizabeth II.
Constantino II was born in Athens, 77 years ago. With Germany’s invasion of Italy and Greece, he lived in exile, in Egypt and South Africa, from one to five years of age. A skillful boater, he won a gold medal in the 1960 Olympic Games – he would eventually become a member of the International Olympic Committee. Son of King Paul, in the same year he assumed the throne, at 23 years of age, he got married to Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, with whom he had five children. He only reigned from 1964 to 1967, and after an unsuccessful countercoup, he had to flee the country with his pregnant wife (she would eventually lose this child do to the events).
Constantine II tried to use his contacts with other monarchies. He began in England, where he settled down to live and began plotting a return to power. He did not succeed in that intent, however – and lived in London until 2013. During these four and a half decades, he returned few times to his native country. In 1981, for instance, he was in Greece for a few hours to attend the funeral of his mother, Queen Frederica, who wished to be buried in Greek soil. The legal dispute over the properties taken over by the Greek state only began during the 1990s.
In 1992, the king obtained an initial agreement: he would cede most of the ancient royal estates, and in exchange would keep the family’s palace in Tatoi. In 1994 the agreement was declared void, and the former king lost right to all properties. At the time, the government also withdrew his Greek citizenship. That is when the former king decided to appeal to the European Court.
Constantine II won, but received much less money than he had initially asked. He did not manage to regain his citizenship, however, at the time. The government demanded that, in order to become once again a citizen of Greece, he would have to take a last name. His whole dynasty, as many other royal houses, does not take last names, merely identifying themselves as part of the House of Glücksburg. When, in 2013, he finally obtained the authorization to carry in his passport the identification “Former King Constantine II”, he returned home. Since then he has been living a discreet life. His biggest recent public manifestation lately was the publication of a three-volume autobiography.
The Greek monarch is not the only subjectless king who refuses to lose his majesty. Mohammed el-Senussi, great-grandson of Libya’s last king, Idris, also lives in London; theoretically he would inherit the throne, if it still existed. Another royal heir who was born in the British capital is Prince Alexander, son of Yugoslavia’s last king, Peter II, deposed in 1947. Since 2000 he has been living in Serbia, where he earned the right to use the former royal palaces. Zera Yacob Amha, great-grandson of Ethiopia’s emperor Haile Selassie, spends him time between the country he would like to rule once again and England as well.
Many nations abandoned the monarchical regime in the last decades. What happened specifically in Greece? “Greek monarchy fell, and, to this day, is unpopular in the country, because their monarchs, throughout the 20th century, did not uphold their promise to respect the country’s democratic constitution”, says, in a study, George Tridimas, professor of Political Economy at Ulster University, who studies Greece’s recent history from an economic and political point of view.
Indeed, a referendum held in 1974 chose the republican government – the monarchy obtained only 31% of the votes. More recent polls indicate than only 11% of the Greek population would like to have a monarch once again.
Does Constantine II”s return to Greece in 2013 indicate he still wants to return to power? “I don’t believe so”, says George Tridimas. “He probably just wanted to live once again in his land, surrounded by his admirers, all of them very elderly.
The Independent november 2002:
A resident of Hampstead with no surname was awarded £8m in damages by the European Court of Human Rights yesterday, ending a bitter eight-year legal dispute with the Greek government.
Constantine, former King of the Hellenes, has been pursuing compensation for properties seized by the state after he fled Greece because of a military coup in 1967.
The award in Strasbourg was much less than the king's ransom of €470m (£310m) the court had been expected to order, leaving Athens to declare a victory for its refusal to settle the matter out of court. The panel of 17 judges appears to have taken Constantine's insistence that he did not want to inflict a heavy tax burden on the Greek public at face value, awarding only a fraction of the value of the seized properties. The court said in a statement that the "compensation did not need necessarily to reflect the full value of the properties".
Costas Simitis, the Greek Prime Minister, was a minister in a socialist government that legally sanctioned in 1994 the seizure of royal property during the 1967-74 junta. He greeted news of the unexpectedly low settlement as an "ethical and legal closure" of the issue.
The descendant of the blue-blooded Danish royal house of Holstein and Glucksberg professes no desire to reverse the republican move, but remains bitter at his enforced exile.
"If the Greek people decide that they want a republic, they are entitled to have that and should be left in peace to enjoy it," he said in a recent interview. "I do not particularly enjoy the idea that because I was head of state of a different kind of administration I have to be penalised 30 years later and lose my house and my land."
But Constantine's relationship with his former subjects never recovered from his agreement to take part in the televised swearing-in of the colonels' regime that followed the military coup.
The ex-King's compensation claims have drawn fierce criticism across the Greek political spectrum, with some commentators raising the spectre of Bulgaria, where the former monarch returned to become the elected leader of the country. For the generation of politicians who grew up during the anti-junta demonstrations, discussion of the exiled King's rights has led to a furious debate. In a memo leaked in April, the Finance Minister, Nikos Christodoulakis, accused him of trying to damage the Greek economy and insisted that "not a single euro" should be paid.
The three estates at the heart of the tug-of-war – Mon Repo on Corfu, Monodendri in central Greece and Tatoi, north of Athens – are showing the effects of decades of legal limbo. The sprawling, semi-derelict summer palace at Tatoi, home to the family cemetery, is now a favourite spot for dog walkers and mountain bikers, watched over by bored policemen supposedly stationed to prevent trespassers.
The closest Constantine is likely to come to reclaiming his family seat is a visit in 2004 to the nearby Athletes' Village under construction for the return of the Olympics. The yachtsman who won Greece's first gold medal in 50 years at the 1960 Olympics is now an honorary member of the IOC and will be allowed to return to the country when Athens hosts the Games.
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