Perched on a steep hilltop in southern Germany, the striking turrets of Hohenzollern Castle rise in contrast to the rolling countryside that surrounds them. The fortress is the ancestral seat of Germany's last imperial family. If the country still had a monarchy today, the castle's owners would be its royal family, led by Georg Friedrich, whose ceremonial title is also his legal surname: Prince of Prussia.

Inside, the would-be Kaiser Prince Georg cranes his neck towards an ornate family tree painted on the wall behind him. He proudly describes his lineage, which traces back through centuries of kings and queens who ruled over Prussia (a once-vast area that included parts of modern-day Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Russia and Denmark) through German monarchs like his great-great-grandfather, the Kaiser who led the country into World War I.

But, along with the castle and the wealth, Prince Georg has also inherited a very public and, at times, ugly legal battle with authorities to reclaim a family fortune confiscated after the fall of the Nazis. According to Prince Georg, the vast collection of more than 10,000 items includes everything from priceless artworks to the opulent heirlooms of German history's most powerful and important family.

The case was first filed decades ago, but it has recently provoked ire and outrage among the German public, many of whom believe he's entitled to nothing at all. And some historians are skeptical of his claims.

"I see it as my duty," he tells CNN, in his first ever TV interview on the subject. "I think my family would fully agree to pursue these claims, whether the judges will eventually judge in our favor or not."

Watch now: Germany's ex-royals want their riches back

Standing between Prince Georg's family and a cache of untold monetary and cultural value is a broadly worded German law that disqualifies those who helped the Nazis into power from restitution or compensation for lost property. To understand today's legal wrangling, you have to go back more than a century into a grim chapter of German history.

In 1918, following defeat in World War I, the country ditched its royal family to become a republic and a democracy. The then-Kaiser and his family gave up their power but got to keep a substantial part of the fortune they'd amassed over the centuries: castles, land, artworks, crowns, swords and jewels. The ex-royals then went into exile in the Netherlands.

After World War II, Germany was divided into west and east, with the communist Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic taking control of the latter and seizing the property of ordinary citizens and ex-royals alike. The vast majority of the then-privately-owned German royal fortune fell on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. It would take almost half a century for the Berlin Wall to come down.

Shortly after, in the 1990s, a reunified Germany passed a law allowing anyone whose property was expropriated to reclaim it. Millions of ordinary families that had fled East Germany used the legislation to reclaim their homes.

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