Have a Beer? Hapsburgs Want the Brewery

Four elderly members of the aristocratic Hapsburg family, which for more than six centuries ruled Austria and then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, would like some beer--lots of it.

More precisely, they’re demanding their brewery back, which they say was stolen by an illegal Communist government in 1944. The Zywiec brewery, once one of Europe’s biggest, was sold off by the Polish state in the mid-1990s, mainly to Heineken, the Dutch brewing giant. The Hapsburg siblings say that if they can’t get back the brewery, they at least want compensation.

Now winding through Polish courts, two Hapsburg lawsuits are among the highest-profile cases of many filed by former owners of property nationalized in Poland during or after World War II.

One of the Hapsburg lawsuits demands return of the property, valued at more than $175 million. The other aims to force Zywiec, one of Poland’s most popular brands of beer, to stop using the Hapsburg crown and the brewery’s founding date of 1856 on its bottles, and to stop linking the beer to Hapsburg tradition in any way in its advertising.

The case has particular importance because it threatens to overturn a 1944 decree by self-declared Communist authorities that nationalized vast tracts of countryside in parts of Poland then controlled by the Soviet army.

An out-of-court settlement with the Hapsburgs is out of the question unless the Polish state treasury agrees, and that won’t happen easily, said Wieslaw Szczepinski, an attorney for Zywiec.

The state treasury is involved, he said, because when Heineken and other investors bought Zywiec, the Polish state promised to compensate for any losses caused by claims from former owners.

“The state treasury is in a trap,” he said. “Even if they would like to pay something, it would cause an unpredictable number of claims. It is a question of the state budget and a question of precedent.

“When they pay any single zloty [about 25 cents], it means that the [1944] decree is invalid. Immediately . . . maybe 100,000 other former owners who lost their properties on the basis of the decree say, ‘If you pay the Hapsburg family, because they are Hapsburgs, why don’t you pay me? Because I am Kowalski?’ ”

In March, President Aleksander Kwasniewski vetoed broad legislation that would have returned to original owners or heirs half the value of property seized by Nazis or Communists, saying that health care, education, economic restructuring and social programs were higher spending priorities.

With no prospect in sight for enactment of a revised law, the issue of property restitution now lies firmly in Polish courts. Judges have tended to rule in favor of former owners if the ex-proprietors can prove that at the time their property was nationalized, authorities failed to abide by the constitution and laws then in effect. That is what the Hapsburgs hope to do in this case.

Jozef Forystek, attorney for the Hapsburgs, stressed that after the 1989 collapse of communism here Poland has become “a country of law.”

“If we respect law and ownership, we must confirm that if something is stolen, now it should be returned to the owner,” Forystek said. “We know it is impossible for the state treasury to pay full compensation to everybody. Therefore the Hapsburg family is ready to settle the case. They are ready to give up part of their claim.”

The lawsuit was filed by four children of Alicia Hapsburg, who was the widow and heir of Charles Olbracht Hapsburg. The plaintiffs are Marie Christine Hapsburg, a resident of Switzerland; Charles Stephan Hapsburg, a resident of Sweden; Renate Hapsburg-Lorena de Zulueta, a resident of Spain; and their half-brother Kazimierz Badeni, a Dominican monk living in Poland.

All four are viewed here as ethnically Polish. Charles Olbracht Hapsburg is viewed as a famous Polish patriot who refused to collaborate with Nazi occupiers during World War II.

The lawsuits allege that nationalization of the brewery was illegal for two reasons: The 1944 decree applied only to farmland, and the provisional Communist government that issued the decree was itself an unconstitutional body.

The plaintiffs also argue in the trademark case, Forystek said, that the brewery became a new company after it was illegally nationalized and that therefore Zywiec has no right to link itself with Hapsburg traditions. A lower court verdict on the trademark issue is due June 5.

Szczepinski, the Zywiec attorney, acknowledged that the Communist provisional government was “not constitutional” but added that the international community has never charged that “Poland from 1944 to 1990 was not a country governed by legal bodies.”

It is a matter of interpretation, he said, whether the 1944 nationalization decree applied only to agricultural land or to all rural properties, which would include the brewery built on the family’s countryside estate.

As for Zywiec’s use of the crown and the date 1856, “this trademark doesn’t belong to the Hapsburg family because it was part of the company,” he said. “It really is very difficult to imagine a situation where you nationalize a company without the trademark. Can you imagine I nationalize Chrysler without the logo?”