Bohemian noble household redefines fashionable aristocracy by promoting NFTs to protect and share a 700-year-old legacy

PRAGUE — It is previous midnight on a Friday on the Lobkowicz Palace within the Prague Castle complicated. A 27-year-old Czech prince, William Rudolf Lobkowicz, is crawling on the arduous stone ground, taking care to not set off the alarms behind the guardrails that partition the fort’s daytime guests from the Sixteenth-century portraits hanging on the stone partitions.

He’s looking for an outlet so he can plug a 30-foot extension wire into the wall. The wire powers digital camera gear for use in a reside broadcast occurring round 1 a.m. which is able to function the story of his household on a CNBC primetime present in New York. Lobkowicz will probably be behind the digital camera for the shot, however that does not matter to him. He merely desires to share one of many world’s biggest personal collections of masterworks with the general public.

A younger prince in an historical fort stashed with priceless artwork appears like the start of a fairytale, however his life is much from a Disney adaptation.

The palace feels extra like a crypt. At the peak of Bohemian summer season, the humidity clings to our pores and skin, and it’s pitch black past the glow of the stark fluorescent lighting that runs alongside the excessive stone ceilings. Each time Lobkowicz involves a door, he reaches right down to a cumbersome keyring that appears prefer it belongs to a monk in a monastery and fumbles for the correct key to let him by way of — and there are dozens of doorways on every ground. Each door leads us deeper into the darkish stone labyrinth, deeper into the previous.

He and his household don’t reside on this or any of their different ancestral castles or palaces. Instead, they reside in private flats a ten-minute drive away. To keep previous 10 P.M. on a Friday night time, Lobkowicz has to get particular permission from the army guards who patrol the grounds.

William, his two sisters, and fogeys have devoted their life’s work to sustaining what’s left of their ancestral heritage: Three castles, one palace, 20,000 moveable artifacts, a library of roughly 65,000 uncommon books, 5,000 musical artifacts and compositions — together with an early copy of Beethoven’s fifth symphony — and 30,000 containers and folios, a few of which have by no means been opened. All of it was stolen, twice. First by the Nazis, then by the Communists.

“You know, most people see the beautiful artworks and castles and think that this all comes incredibly easy,” Lobkowicz says from the Habsburg Room, a portrait gallery on the second ground of the palace. “But in reality, behind the scenes, we’re working tirelessly day and night to preserve and protect these things. Nobody’s going to care about these things as much as we do.”

His voice is drained at this late hour, however his youthful enthusiasm nonetheless shines by way of.

To shield his household’s previous, Lobcowicz has embraced the long run. The world of cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens is intangible and summary, a set of mathematical formulation operating on computer systems unfold everywhere in the world. The younger prince has turned to those digital instruments to safeguard and restore the artifacts that maintain a lot nostalgic worth for the household — and, he hopes, for a few of the remainder of the world, as properly.

“It’s not just about selling NFTs to support cultural monuments, but it’s also looking at how do we preserve a record of our history?” explains William. “Blockchain technology provides an immutable record of our cultural heritage, which you can preserve on chain, and that’s something that’s never been done before.”

The palace is housed throughout the Hrad, the title given by locals to Prague Castle, which looms over the town. The sprawling complicated was as soon as the seat of Bohemian kings. Now, it is residence to Czech presidents — and The Lobkowicz Collections, a physique of labor courting again greater than 2,000 years.

The collections, which have been painstakingly re-assembled over 25 years by way of a course of often called restitution, function world-famous work by Bellotto, Bruegel, Canaletto, Cranach, Rubens, and Veronese, in addition to ceramics spanning 5 centuries, 1,200 items of arms and armor, and string and wind devices, together with trumpets gilded in gold and adorned with rubies. The assortment additionally consists of early manuscripts and scores, together with a number of Beethoven symphonies and his Opus 18 String Quartets, some marked with the composer’s authentic corrections.

The Lobkowiczes take none of this as a right. Their castles and artifacts have been stolen twice by two totally different authoritarian regimes.

In CNBC’s first dialog with William — an almost two-hour Zoom name from New York to Prague — he shared a translated quote from Jan Viktor Mládek, a member of Czechoslovakia’s post-communist authorities and a former International Monetary Fund official: “When a nation’s culture survives, so too does the nation.”

William has turned over that line in his head fairly a couple of instances within the final couple years since making this mission his life’s work. To him, the energy of a rustic rests on preserving the cultural roots which outline it.

After the autumn of the Soviet Union in 1991, the democratically elected president of the newly fashioned Czechoslovakia handed restitution legal guidelines enabling Czechs to say again property stolen below Communist rule. William Sr., then 29 years previous, heeded the decision and uprooted his life as an actual property dealer in Boston to return to Prague.

There’s no definitive “how to” guide on restoring stolen objects to their rightful proprietor. It’s a convoluted train that entails submitting 1000’s of separate claims and may take a long time. Some of the claims fail, or are by no means resolved.

“When we first came back to the Czech Republic and restitution began, it was the Wild West, and you really didn’t have any business plan whatsoever,” explains the youthful William of his father’s quest.

William Sr. traversed the nation in a small Škoda Favorit, carrying with him the meticulous lists saved by the Communists after they confiscated the household’s artifacts.

“Our objects were taken to over 100 locations, so we crisscrossed Czechoslovakia to recover tens of thousands of movable objects,” he mentioned. “We probably covered hundreds of thousands of miles.”

Once the property was reclaimed, the household had to determine the right way to pay to revive it. William’s grandfather, Martin, cashed in his pension and gave it to William Sr., telling him to “try not to lose it all” — and that was it when it comes to upfront capital commitments.

Covering the prices of restoration is the household’s enterprise, and makes up a full-time job for every member of the Lobkowicz family, full with weekly enterprise conferences on Tuesdays. (Sunday is reserved for private updates at household dinner.)

But maintaining the enterprise afloat has been a hustle, requiring more and more inventive monetary acrobatics.

Collections belonging to the Lobkowiczes have been declared Czech cultural monuments, to allow them to’t promote any items to assist pay to revive the remaining. Meanwhile, conventional philanthropy channels are operating dry as museum patronage continues to fall.

To make a nasty state of affairs worse, the state has strict guidelines governing restoration protocols which may sluggish the renovation course of and make it dearer. There can also be fierce competitors for a restricted variety of grants earmarked to fund cultural heritage tasks. Castle possession is not a lot of a novelty in Europe, and particularly not within the Czech Republic, which ranks amongst one of many continent’s prime locations for probably the most castles per sq. mile. In truth, some state governments and cities are auctioning off castles below their custodianship, as a result of they do not have the money to keep up them.

To hold all the things afloat, the Lobcowiczes have generated revenue from issues like fort excursions, the present store, and internet hosting occasions comparable to weddings and company retreats. It additionally means interesting to donors, making use of for grants from the federal government, and securing loans — typically at sky-high rates of interest.

“My father had to take out loans with 20% revolving interest, consistently asking the banks for extensions,” the youthful William mentioned of the early days, when his father first started restoring the household’s castles and artifacts.

Fortunately, William Sr. had a devoted accomplice within the quest.

A yr into his new life in Prague, the elder William’s girlfriend (now spouse of 30 years), Sandra Florescu, flew over to assist him. Coming to Prague meant leaving her function as a sixth grade trainer in Boston’s Back Bay, however she by no means stopped being an educator.

She has launched and run a number of instructional packages in reference to the collections, together with the junior curator program, which is now being modeled by faculties around the globe.

It helps that she hung out on the Sorbonne in Paris, finding out high-quality arts.

The couple appeared destined for one another, with intertwining household histories that return centuries.

In the early 1600s, their ancestors, who have been diplomats and advisors to their respective kings in Bohemia and Romania, met in Prague to strategize about the right way to defeat the Turks who have been threatening the Habsburg Empire. Fast ahead to the early Nineteen Twenties, when Sandra’s grandfather, Radu Florescu — who had two diplomatic postings in Prague — possible crossed paths with the elder William’s grandfather, Max, additionally a diplomat. They have been reunited in London throughout World War II, each serving their respective international locations’ combat in opposition to the Nazis.

Sandra and William, too, have been serendipitously linked as refugees and younger adults dwelling in Beacon Hill in Boston.

Sandra first noticed her now husband from the window of her condo, years earlier than they really met in individual. William Sr. was booming out the lyrics to “Chanson d’Amour” that was enjoying on his Walkman, making ready for live shows he carried out within the space with the hopes of turning into knowledgeable opera singer sooner or later.

Safeguarding these reminiscences and people of their ancestors — in addition to the cultural legacy they collectively fought to revive — is the place their son’s blockchain ambitions become visible.

“We’ve dealt with losing our collections twice and regaining them twice as a result of authoritarian regimes, but the way we got them back was actually through the receipts they kept,” defined the youthful William.

Both regimes tracked the method and the provenance historical past of those items, so William Sr. was in a position to hint possession and determine the place that they had been over time. Cryptocurrency blockchains — an immutable ledger tracing the provenance of digital artifacts — are an up to date model of these meticulous lists saved by authoritarian regimes.

Only this time, the ability to trace these artifacts is within the palms of the rightful house owners.

“What I’m doing right now, I don’t think is any different from any of my predecessors. Each prince did something completely different based upon the times they lived in,” William mentioned.

The Lobkowicz princes have a historical past of being rebels, every breaking custom in their very own approach.

Take the seventh prince, Franz Joseph Maximilian (1772-1816), who made a giant wager on Ludwig van Beethoven again when the composer was nonetheless a relative unknown. Beethoven famously integrated a further French horn into his orchestra for the Eroica symphony at a time when folks thought that sort of sound was blasphemous.

Joseph gave the renegade composer an annual stipend, in addition to musicians and live performance areas, almost bankrupting the House of Lobkowicz within the course of. While the prince was his patron, Beethoven was free to compose music that revolutionized the symphonic world. In return, Beethoven would dedicate a few of his biggest works to the Prince, together with his third (Eroica), fifth, and sixth (Pastoral) Symphonies.

Then there was William’s nice grandfather, Maximilian Lobkowicz (1888-1967), who realized that the world of his princely predecessors was turning into out of date. The finish of World War I introduced the autumn of the Austo-Hungarian Empire and the rise of impartial nation states, together with a democratic Republic of Czechoslovakia.  

Max, then a younger lawyer and Czech patriot, embraced and supported the democratic beliefs of this new republic. When hereditary titles have been abolished with the formation of the brand new state, he gladly forfeited his aristocratic label. It was a break from custom so profound that his personal father, Ferdinand Zdenko (1858-1938), refused to talk to Max for a decade.

In addition to his Bohemian princely pedigree on his father’s facet, William’s maternal line traces again to a primary minister in Bucharest and an historical and noble Romanian boyar household. He additionally has blood ties to the real-world noble upon whom Bram Stoker primarily based his legendary Count Dracula — the world’s most well-known fictional vampire.

Despite lineage linking him to noble households throughout Europe, Lobkowicz can also be very American. His paternal grandfather started his profession as a door-to-door salesman promoting Cutco knives after marrying a dentist’s daughter from Kentucky.

William dropped his British accent for an American one on the age of seven and fried mozzarella sticks at Harvard’s Eliot House Grille to earn pocket money in faculty.

Even although he made the Forbes “30 under 30” record final yr, the prince would not personal a automotive and takes a tram to work.

He offers fort excursions in free pockets of time through the day to financial institution money for the restoration fund, whereas concurrently operating the digital innovation initiatives for House of Lobkowicz.

Now he is making use of that humble renegade spirit to be taught all the things he can concerning the know-how he believes might help protect the household legacy.

Every summer season, the world’s prime blockchain builders and cryptographers descend on Paris to hack, code, and discuss store. The flagship occasion is a convention referred to as EthCC (quick for Ethereum Community Conference), however the primary attraction has given rise to dozens of ancillary gatherings specializing in matters operating the gamut from web3 and ethereum’s rival blockchains — to the metaverse.

The variety of programming and other people is why Lobkowicz headed to Paris once more this yr. He would not go to talk on panels or attend blowout events at venues like the enduring Moulin Rouge. Instead, he prefers to fly below the radar, sitting on the periphery of an viewers however at all times listening intently.

For him, unlocking the potential of blockchain know-how comes right down to talking with builders on the bottom to create technical options to the very real-world issues he faces each day.

“Crypto is a tool to continue working on the things we’re doing. It’s like a membership card to a whole world of history and culture,” he mentioned.

So far, the prince has tried out a pair other ways to include blockchain know-how into his work with The Lobkowicz Collections. Most profitable up to now has been promoting NFTs to assist particular conservation wants.

The household takes a portray that wants restoration and mints a picture of the portray as an NFT. The provenance of the donation and donor can also be included on chain. From there, they set the value of the NFT at the price of the restoration of the bodily work tied to the token. The one that buys the NFT then receives a second NFT on the finish of the restoration course of as a token of their patronage.

“We are trying to bring people on the journey of philanthropy and be completely transparent with them about where their money is going,” defined William.

Thus far, the House of Lobkowicz has efficiently financed greater than 50 artwork restoration tasks by way of this proof-of-patronage philanthropic mannequin — together with a Seventeenth century portray, “A Wild Boar in a Landscape,” which was featured in Wes Anderson’s movie “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

Collectively, the household has raised $300,000 by way of the sale of NFTs.

When requested whether or not he was frightened about the truth that the value of NFTs has fallen off a cliff in the previous couple of months, Lobkowicz mentioned that the growth and bust cycle of the market would not actually have an effect on their enterprise mannequin. If a restoration prices $4,000, that’s precisely what they cost for the piece — and it both sells or it would not.

He additionally sees NFTs as a option to unlock new methods of reaching a extra numerous viewers and making a group of patrons and supporters who’re fascinated with interacting with their collections in a extra progressive approach.

“It’s important for people to understand that this isn’t about just JPEGs attached to a digital receipt — we’re talking about different applications that can change the way we build communities of people who care about culture and see the potential of using web3 technology to preserve it,” defined Lobkowicz.

POAPs — or Proof of Attendance Protocol — are a subset of NFTs that function a form of attendance sheet for occasions, or particular experiences. The prince plans to check out POAPs through the subsequent installment of Non–Fungible Castle, an annual exhibition and convention (operating Nov. 4–5 in Prague) that bridges the largest names in conventional artwork to the world of web3 and crypto.

“We will create POAPs for experiences that you have there, whether you’re getting bread and salt (a traditional Czech invitation ritual) as you enter the birth house of the world-renowned Czech national composer Antonín Dvořák — or you’re listening to a string quartet,” he mentioned.

POAPs may additionally finally be used to improve ticketing and membership packages for museums.

Also on Lobkowicz’s to-do record for the following few months? Getting into quadratic funding, which is a option to crowd-raise a central crypto treasury that’s then used to fund public items tasks within the ethereum ecosystem — all with the assistance of an algorithm designed to optimize spending selections.

Most not too long ago, he is been testing out functions within the metaverse.

Lobkowicz labored with Somnium — a digital actuality world constructed on the ethereum blockchain — to place one of many rooms within the palace in Prague into the metaverse.

The household offered an NFT akin to the three-month restoration of this room, often called the Chinese Belvedere, for $79,000 to Oxb1, a well-known crypto influencer.

It’s a take a look at case that might show helpful because the household strikes to revive different properties in pressing want of restore.

Take Roudnice Castle, a 40 minute drive north of Prague. To restore the 200-room palace to its former grandeur would as we speak require tens of tens of millions of {dollars}.

It already prices a small fortune to warmth the fort within the winter simply sufficient to maintain the pipes from freezing and bursting open. In the summer season, leaks are commonplace, just like the one which cropped up on a Saturday morning throughout my keep in Prague. That can translate into main injury, mildew, and even collapsing ceilings.

The ongoing upkeep and renovations have additionally been sophisticated by modifications made through the 41-year Soviet occupation, together with retrofitting a live performance corridor with a basketball court docket.

Another execution, although nonetheless in its infancy, is popping Renaissance portraits of robes worn by women of the court docket into gaming skins – a market value $40 billion globally.

William can also be desirous about digitizing the household’s stockpile of historic weapons to promote as NFTs (full with the story of their provenance) for use in a gaming setting.

That would additionally assist with the $400,000 price ticket to revive and catalogue their stock – which is likely one of the most necessary personal arms collections in Europe.

It is every week later, on one other Friday night at nearly midnight in Prague, besides this time, I’m on the alternative facet of the Atlantic Ocean, and I’m talking with a distinct Lobkowicz — William’s youthful sister, Ileana. (Their youngest sister, Sophia, is a rising junior at Trinity College in Connecticut, however stays intently related to her household’s work.)

The 25-year-old princess embraces all the ethereal qualities one would possibly affiliate with aristocracy, effortlessly moving into her birthright and assuming the old-world obligations which accompany it.

“These titles are not something we use or introduce ourselves with to others in our day to day lives. It’s part of our history, but it doesn’t change the work we’re trying to do or the values we have,” she says.

The title that Ileana does embrace is Writer and Storyteller for House of Lobkowicz — a company which encompasses the non-profit initiatives of The Lobkowicz Collections, in addition to the occasions administration firm, vineyard, amongst different companies falling below the Lobkowicz umbrella.

The function fits her properly. While a philosophy main at Boston College, Ileana launched her writing profession with the net pupil journal ‘The Gavel,’ the place she wasn’t afraid to talk reality to energy and supply a platform to contrarian voices. Later, she shared hidden tales of Bohemia in a column referred to as “In Search of Prague,” and in her free time, she is at the moment creating a life-style weblog that launches later this yr and builds upon her expertise of custodianship by way of storytelling.

At work, Ileana has made it her private mission not solely to share her household’s story, however to convey ahead the narratives of her feminine ancestors who have been quietly saving the day whereas letting the limelight fall on their male relations.

Take Princess Polyxena Lobkowicz (1566-1642), a politically energetic and prolific determine throughout Bohemia. During the Defenestration of Prague — an incident which triggered the Thirty Years’ War, one of many bloodiest conflicts in European historical past that killed one-third of Europe’s inhabitants — an offended mob of members of the Protestant estates didn’t dare cross Polyxena’s path. The princess wielded no weapon, but her presence proved a strong power.

Or Gillian Somerville (1890-1982), the spouse of Maximilian, the noble who gladly dropped his title in tandem with the start of democracy in Bohemia. In 1939, she overheard German officers on a practice to London speaking concerning the upcoming invasion of Czechoslovakia. She shortly wired Max to warn him, and he managed to flee to England, leaving Czechoslovakia two days earlier than the Nazis invaded. 

Finally, in a narrative that appears ripe for Hollywood, The Lobkowicz Collections can also be residence to an alternate of letters written between Princess de Lamballe — the lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette, whose sister was married to the sixth Prince Lobkowicz — her cousin Karl Emanuel Hessen Rheinfels Rotenburg, and his spouse, Leopoldine Liechtenstein.

The alternate, which hasn’t been seen earlier than, supplies first–hand accounts of what it was like throughout Marie Antoinette’s last days throughout her jail keep within the Bastille, simply earlier than her beheading.

“I see my role and impact in our family’s work as being the voice through which stories — from the past, present, and future — can be shared, preserved, and celebrated. I feel it is the best and only way I can honor my ancestors — and for that matter, my descendants too,” Ileana says. “We can’t be stuck in the past, but we can’t forget it either.”

To that finish, she and William have launched a particular sequence of NFTs which capitalize upon supply materials that wasn’t given its simply due in its day.

Take “Forgotten Menuet” — an NFT of an animated piece of music composed by Anna Maria Wilhelmina Althann (1703-1754), unheard for over 250 years.

“In addition to bringing to life the music itself, it also pays homage to the unrecognized ancestor, because at the time, she didn’t receive any acknowledgement for her musical talent,” Ileana tells me as we stand adjoining the glass-encased show containing Anna Maria’s handwritten lute music.

That NFT has since been placed on exhibit in a digital museum within the metaverse.

“It’s crazy to think of conceptually, because this is a piece of music that hasn’t been played in 250 years, and also would have only been performed in very small private spaces. Now it has the ability to be all around the world for anyone to enjoy,” mentioned William.

Another NFT from this sequence animates X-ray and infrared photographs as a way to see by way of to the invisible layers of a canvas which were painted over. A 3rd incorporates a digital rendering of the degrading sgraffito from the Sixteenth-century façade of Nelahozeves Castle.

“We must take our history with us into the future by making it relevant today,” Ileana explains.