For some, it was a “decisive struggle between democratic Germany and the resurgent powers from the past.” For others, it was about “the preservation of house and home, nation and empire.” What is undisputed is that the Communist-initiated referendum on the “expropriation of the princes” in 1926 was one of the defining controversies of the Weimar Republic.

The high nobility’s symbolic significance for the Weimar Republic can hardly be overestimated. For national conservatives and, to some extent, liberals, the upper ranks of the aristocracy stood for the “good old days.” The new republic, by contrast, was unstable, with outsized left-wing influence. A dispute over the old dynasties was thus also a struggle to shape the entire political and social order.

The substantial assets held by the deposed princes were also a political factor in their own right, which could be mobilized behind right-wing, anti-republican forces. Often, even state bodies like the judiciary and the administration intervened in the conflict, in the interests of the old order. In this sense, the referendum also shines a light on the wider problems of the Weimar Republic, still burdened with the consequences of the half-hearted revolution of 1918–20.