Magazine Escapes Wrath of Princess of Monaco

(CN) - Princess Caroline von Hannover had no grounds to stop a German magazine from publishing pictures of her at a holiday home on a Kenyan island, a human rights court ruled.

In 2002, the German magazine 7 Tage published several photographs of von Hannover and her husband in an article about wealthy celebrities letting out their holiday homes.

The European Court of Human Rights noted that the article "went on to describe the von Hannover family's villa, giving details of the furnishings, the daily rental cost and different holiday pastimes. A small box inserted in the text contained two sentences in bold type, which read: 'The rich and beautiful are also thrifty ('sparsam'). Many of them let out their villas to paying guests.'"

The princess unsuccessfully fought for an injunction against the magazine in German courts between 2004 and 2009, and then took her fight to the Strasbourg, France-based human rights court a year later.

A seven-judge panel concluded Thursday that Germany's judiciary made the right call.

Though the full ruling is published only in French, an English-language press release states that the subject matter of the article contributed to a "debate of general interest."

The panel found that the princess and her husband had to be regarded as "public figures who could not claim protection of their private lives in the same way as individuals unknown to the public.'

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