This law has proved to be highly controversial as it is a piece of arbitrary "ad hominem " legislation. As such it contravenes the Czechoslovak Constitution of 1920, which was in force at the time, as well as the current Constitution of the Czech Republic. It also contravenes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. By the time "Lex Schwarzenberg" came into effect, however, Czechoslovakia was well on its way to becoming a communist system: Klement Gottwald, who would become the country's Stalinist dictator, had been Prime Minister since 1946. The Communist Party controlled many of the important ministries, while some of the non-communist members of the government, such as Zdeněk Fierlinger, were communists in all but name. The ministries of agriculture and the interior were jointly responsible for the decision concerning Adolph Schwarzenberg's appeal file under the provisions of decree No. 12/1945. The Czechoslovak authorities' behaviour towards him came as a distasteful surprise to Adolph Schwarzenberg, which is best illustrated by a conversation he had as early as January 1940. On a train to Switzerland, he met an acquaintance, the banker Holzer, director of Escompte Bank in Prague, who engaged him in conversation and wanted to know his motives for leaving the Reich. He explained that since the takeover of the Nazi regime life at home had become an opprobrium, and that he could only live in a free country. He went on to say that Germany would certainly lose the war, and "all that nonsense" of a "New Regime" would finally come to an end; only then would he return to his estates. Holzer promptly reported this conversation to the Sicherheitsdienst. While Schwarzenberg's predictions concerning the outcome of the war and the long-term prospects of the "Thousand Year Reich" were correct, post-war developments proved his optimism regarding his own return to his home country to be misguided. The communist takeover of February 1948 put an end to all hope for Schwarzenberg to return home or seek redress. He made his last home in Katsch, a small village in Austria, where he and Hilda once more lived in a hunting lodge, and occasionally spent time at his house in Bordighera, Italy, where he died on 27 February 1950.