The Lobkowicz family lost its castles to the Nazis in 1939 and the Communists in 1948, and a grandson spent 12 years recovering the Prague palace

Max Lobkowicz, born at Bílina in 1888, headed the Roudnice line of the family. He left for London before the German occupation of 15 March 1939 and from June 1942 was ambassador of the Czechoslovak government in exile to Britain. The Nazis confiscated his property. Roudnice Castle became an SS youth school, and Bruegel's "The Hay Harvest" was taken from it. The property came back in 1945. After the February 1948 coup the Communists confiscated it again without compensation, and Max left for the United States. The collections were divided among state institutions; the library and the best objects went to the National Museum. Roudnice became a military music school in 1959. Max died at Dover, Massachusetts, in 1967. The 1991 restitution law covered property taken between 25 February 1948 and 1 January 1990, so the 1948 seizure qualified. His grandson William, born in Boston in 1961, moved to Czechoslovakia and filed claims with his father Martin. Nelahozeves came back in 1993. The Lobkowicz Palace at Prague Castle came back in 2002, after a 12-year process, but the National Museum's exhibition stayed there until January 2006. The palace opened as the family's museum on 2 April 2007. The army school leased Roudnice until 2008. Jezeří and Vysoký Chlumec were sold or left to the state. In 2026 William runs four of the family's more than ten former seats, with the Bruegel and Beethoven manuscripts on show in Prague.