LIECHTENSTEIN:CROWN PRINCE Hans-Adam of Liechtenstein has caused uproar in Germany by referring to his northern neighbour as the "Fourth Reich".
His remark marks a new low in relations between the tiny principality and its northern neighbour, already strained by a German tax evasion inquiry sparked by information stolen from a bank owned by Liechtenstein's royal family.
Prince Hans-Adam, Europe's last absolute monarch, made his remarks in a letter to Berlin's Jewish Museum. It had requested a painting from the prince's extensive collection for its new exhibition, Looting and Restitution: Jewish-owned Cultural Artefacts.
The prince said he would be unable to supply the work requested, a 17th-century work by Frans Hals, because he was in dispute with German authorities about another painting in a German museum. He said the work was confiscated without compensation after the second World War by the Czech communists.
"As Germany is not inclined to orient itself along the principles of international law, we have decided not to allow any loans from our collection into Germany. We don't want to put our works at risk of a selective application of the rule of law," he wrote.
The prince went on to sketch the "highs and lows " of 200 years of relations between the states. Technically, Liechtenstein was still at war with the Second Reich, he said, because the German kaiser abdicated before agreeing a truce. The Third Reich, he said, had vanished before it had a chance to make good on its threat to annex Liechtenstein.
"As far as German-Liechtenstein relations go, we will wait for better times. I am optimistic: after all, in the last 200 years we have survived three German reichs," he said, "and I hope we will survive a fourth."
To describe postwar Germany as the "Fourth Reich" is to break a strict taboo because it incorrectly suggests that the current federal republic is the legal successor to the Nazi state.
The Jewish Museum attacked the comparison as "intolerable". "He plays down the Nazi crimes by putting the federal republic in the same lines as the Third Reich," said Salomon Korn, vice-president of the Council of Jews in Germany.
The prince's office said in a statement that the prince did not intend to compare the Third Reich and modern Germany. Germany's foreign ministry also played down the spat yesterday, saying relations with Liechtenstein were "close and neighbourly".