Romania on Friday returned a medieval fortress known as “Dracula’s Castle” to its pre-World War Two owners, the former royal family of Habsburg who were chased out by the communist regime almost 60 years ago.
Perched among forests on the foothills of the Carpathian mountains, the Bran Castle is one of the first prominent pieces of real estate given back by the Bucharest government under Romania’s troubled property restitution law.
Its handover, following a five-year legal battle, raises hopes for many Romanians still waiting to win back the houses, factories and land they lost to wartime fascists or post-war communists who tried to dismantle capitalism.
“I can’t believe this is actually happening. I have goosebumps. This was my home and I haven’t been here since 1948,” Dominic von Habsburg, heir to 1920s rulers King Ferdinand and Queen Mary, told Reuters.
“It’s been a very long and slow road ... Everyone wants to go home eventually,” said the 69-year-old New York-based architect en route to the handover ceremony in Bran.
Now a museum and major tourist attraction in Romania, a poor Black Sea state which hopes to join the European Union next year, the fortress was built in the 14th century to guard the nearby city of Brasov from attacks by the Ottoman Turks.
Jagged towers and remote surroundings have earned the castle its famous name by giving it the resemblance of a typical horror film backdrop.
Weak tie to Vlad
But the fortress was never part of Bram Stoker’s novel ”Dracula,” although Romania’s notorious 15th century ruler Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler, whose life inspired the book, may have set foot there briefly.
“It’s a moment of justice and a moment of culture,” Romania’s culture minister, Adrian Iorgulescu, told Habsburg family members, reporters and onlookers.
Stallholders who sell Dracula’s wine, Vampire vodka and T-shirts imprinted with Vlad’s menacing grin to hundreds of tourists visiting Bran every day worry business may go down if the Habsburgs shut down the museum.
“It’s good the government is giving back the castle. But it depends whether the owner will let us live here,” said Maria Pedestru, 70, who sells traditional lace at the castle’s gate.
But for thousands of Romanians who struggle to cut through red tape and complicated legislation to get back their properties seized in the 1940s and 50s, the handover of Bran Castle is a good sign.
Reform headaches
Former owners complain about a slow restitution process in Romania, which started with chaotic land reform in 1991 that dismantled communist farming collectives and was followed by a series of laws attempting to give back other real estate.
Under current law, which was introduced by the 17-month-old centrist government, most former owners should win back their original properties, wherever possible.
Others will get shares in a fund to be listed on the Bucharest stock exchange and financed by privatization proceeds.
But owners complain many nationalized properties were sold for a pittance under some of the post-communist governments, forcing them to seek compensation through the Property Fund whose launch has so far been delayed.
Since the deadline for filing for restitution passed in 2003, less than 10 percent of claimants have had their property returned. Less than one percent received shares in the fund.
“In total fairness, more was done in the last year than in the last five years,” said Lia Doru-Trandafir, a lawyer who represents the Habsburgs.
“But Romania has two choices: give nothing or get serious. You cannot replace a crime in history with another crime.”