Hans Adam II. Liechtenstein

“Of course, my father always hoped and believed that we would get our old property back from Czechoslovakia - and he also sent me there. I went to see what would have to be invested for us to move things to such an extent as to make the companies profitable again, what would have to be invested into historical buildings. I already had some experience, and I knew how much things cost. I saw agricultural and forest enterprises, I spoke with experts, but nothing became of it. But in the end I tell myself that it all went down peacefully, which is more important than if we should get something back, which we would have to invest a lot of money and time into. So I had the time and the means to invest into a banking empire all over the world.”

“And then I informed myself of what it would be like at Harvard and Princeton. I passed both German and Swiss final exams at the Swiss boarding school, and then there was also an English finals because it was an international school. Both at Harvard and at Princeton I was told that my completed education made me overqualified. They advised me to first earn a degree in Europe and then enroll in a postgraduate course at Princeton or Harvard. At both schools they told me that if I wanted to study law and economics, the best place to do so was Sankt Gallen. I reckoned: ‘Goodness, that’s on the other side of the Rhein, under my parents’ noses! I wanted to go out into the world, and there I was, being sent to Sankt Gallen!’ It was a terrible disappointment, but I never regretted it.”

“Of course we knew that the intelligence services of the Eastern Bloc were monitoring us in some way. That was a basic premise. But it didn’t bother us. We assumed that all our conversations were being recorded and tapped, that the phones were bugged. That’s just how it was. I first visited Czechoslovakia when I was engaged to my future wife. Then it was Prague Spring. We came as well. We looked around, saw how things were here. My wife met some old employees, and she was overjoyed that some of the family also came; we brought presents. Back then they behaved very cordially to us at the borders, they were very friendly to us. We always worked on the assumption that Communism would collapse one day - peacefully, we hoped. That these countries would regain their freedom. The question was when and how.”

“My family had a very close relation to Bohemia and Moravia. But for me and my siblings, it was something like history. The older generation spoke of it, of course. My father talked about how, when Communism would fall, we would get our property back and would have to rebuild it again. He tasked me with preparing for it. But it was something very distant to us, and we were not worried about it at all. The bigger question for us was how the Soviet empire would be dissolved. That was at the fore.”

“We were in the salon, awaiting the guests, when the door opened and they came in, and my future ‘everything’ entered. The moment I saw her I knew she would be my wife. She is five years older, she had a lot of admirers; she was glorious. Her siblings called my ‘the baby with a dummy’. I was still at grammar school, I hadn’t even started to grow a beard, and I didn’t even need to shave. But I said I would marry her, and I didn’t yield from that. I succeeded in the end. To convince both her and her and my parents. Then we married and created a happy marriage. I am very happy that in the end, after great effort, she acquiesced.”