Prince Hans Adam II gave an interview to Italian weekly magazine "Il Venerdì di Repubblica" (n. 1237, of 2 December 2011), talking about his family's art collection.
The Prince explains that only about 10% of his art collection - which is the world largest privately owned art collection - is showed to the public, in the Liecthenstein Museum in Vienna; several other items are displayed inside Vaduz Castle, but the largest part of the collection (about 80% of it) is kept in storage areas.
Prince Hans Adam said that he doesn't like modern art, because he thinks it "reflects the horrors of 20th century, one of the most dramatic centuries of the history of mankind". He said that he's trying to get back, by buying them, those art items that once were in possession of his family, but that have been dispersed in the last century, and if he can't buy them again he buys similar works; he thinks this is one of his duties towards his family. For this purpose, each year he allocates some funds for buying art items.
About the vicissitudes of the art collection, he told that part of it had been seized during World War II by the Nazis and stored in a saltmine; then in the last months of the war his father, Prince Franz Joseph II, managed to retrieve it with the help of some Austrian dissidents and to bring it to Liechtenstein. Unfortunately, the Prince couldn't do anything for saving the family possessions, castles, lands and art items in Czechoslovakia, which have all been confiscated by the communist government at the end of the war. This seizing has been a blow to Prince Franz Josef (and the whole Princely Family), because in that way he lost a large part of his incomes, which he needed in order to maintain his own family, several relatives and to pay the costs of the Monarchy (as crown expenses in Liecthenstein are all paid by the Princely Family, and not by taxpayers). These financial problems and a very large amount of debts forced in 1967, with great sorrow, the Prince to sell the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci (by Leonardo da Vinci) to the National Gallery of Art in Washington; Prince Hans Adam recalls how on that time newspapers speculated that the painting had been sold to pay off the expenses of his marriage to Countess Marie Kinsky von Wchnitz und Tettau, but the truth was that they were deep in debt.
Two years later, Prince Franz Josef for the same reason had to sell one more painting, this time one by Frans Hals, and again newspapers started with silly speculations; right then - as he recalled in the interview - Hans Adam, soon after his graduation in Economics at the University of St. Gallen, suggested to his father a recovery plan in the family finances, forcing Prince Franz Josef to accept the plan under the threat that, otherwise, he would have left Liechtenstein. Franz Josef then accepted and the recovery plan turned out to be a success.
About his education, the Prince said that he studied Economics because he was forced by his father, and that - had he been free to choose - he would have studied Archaeology or Physics, but now he acknowledges that following his father's wishes on the matter has been the right choice.
