Czech Prince William Rudolf Lobkowicz has turned to cryptocurrency, NFTs, and the metaverse to regain the ownership of his family’s stolen past. The 27-year-old prince, his sisters, and his parents have dedicated their life’s work to taking care of what’s left of the ancestral heritage.
There are three castles and a palace, 20,000 moveable artifacts, a library of about 65,000 rare books, 5,000 musical artifacts, and compositions, including an early copy of Beethoven’s 5th symphony, and 30,000 boxes and folios. First, it was stolen by the Nazis and then by the Communists.
Lobkowicz says most people see the beautiful artworks and castles and think it all comes incredibly easy. He shared that in reality, they are working tirelessly day and night to preserve and protect these things. The prince believes that nobody is going to care about these things as much as his family does. To protect the heritage, he has embraced the future – world of cryptocurrency and NFTs. He says the crypto space is intangible and abstract. Its a collection of mathematical formulas running on computers spread across the world. Lobkowicz wants to use these digital tools to safeguard and repair the artifacts.
The prince shared that it’s just not about selling NFTs to support the cultural monuments. It’s about looking at how they preserve a record of their history. He believes blockchain technology provides an immutable record of their cultural heritage which one can preserve on chain. And this has never been done before. The Lobkowicz Collections has been selling NFTs to support specific conservative needs. The painting which needs to be restored is minted as an NFT – the provenance of the donation and the donor is included on-chain. The price of the NFT is set at the cost of the restoration of the physical work tied to the token. Whoever buys the NFT receives a second NFT at the end of the restoration process as a token of their patronage.
