Habsburgs in the 21st Century

Habsburgs

in the 21st Century

Daniel A. Willis

Copyright © 2017, Daniel A. Willis

Published by:

Bygone Era Books, LLC

7665 E. Eastman Ave. #B101

Denver, CO 80231

This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

Book cover design and layout by

Bygone Era Books

Cover design features

© Ridolfi Niccolò, ©Andi Bruckner

and images from the author’s collection.

Produced in the United States of America

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Empress Maria Theresia (1717–1780)

artist: Gemaelde von Martin vanMeytens

author’s collection

Dedication

To the memory of the His Imperial and Royal Highness, the late Archduke Otto, Crown Prince of Austria, etc., a man who kept the imperial flame alive, even when working inside the mechanisms of modern-day republicanism.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to all of the Habsburgs, and their various relatives, who have patiently answered all of my questions over the years. Their numbers are far too great to list here, and if I tried, I would surely leave someone out inadvertently.

I also need to thank my Thursday night critique group for helping me not sound too dreadfully dull.

Introduction

The Habsburgs were the subject of my very first book, published in 1996, The House of Habsburg: A Genealogy. Being a first book, it was chock full of rookie mistakes. It was that fact which dictated that my second book would be The Descendants of Louis XIII (1999).

By publishing a larger genealogy that included all of the Habsburg, I felt I was making up for the poor showing I gave them the first time around. But I have always had it the back on my mind to someday write another book focusing solely on this fascinating family. That someday has arrived.

With information now readily available via the internet, large genealogies, such as those first few books of mine, are no longer practical in print form. Because life continues, or not, from one day to the next, any large genealogy coming down to the present day is outdated by the time it comes off the printer. There are always new births, marriages, and deaths that do not make it into the pages.

So now, I focus my efforts on more biographical works. My current 10-volume series on the descendants of Charles II will be the last of my genealogical works.

The Habsburg family has so many stories within its ranks, stories that are not told by basic dates and places of life events. The fastidious recording of dates of births and deaths just don’t do justice to the pageantry of empire, the soap opera of numerous archdukes with too much time and money on their hands, and the conquest—and loss—of territories and nations over the centuries.

At the height of its power, one could ride a horse from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea, and remain in Habsburg controlled territory, for all but a few miles of the trek. No family builds that kind of empire without a lot stories of war, love, and old-fashioned horse-trading.

But that story has already been told, often. How the Habsburgs came to power and maintained it is for the history books. The largely untold story is the latest chapters. Since the fall of Europe’s empires in 1918, what has become of this enormous family?

Today, there are well over one hundred living Archdukes of Austria, all doing what they can to get through life just like the ordinary people they live among. Some still have castles, but most live in townhomes or suburban neighborhoods. They are no longer the idly rich. They work for a living, just like you or I.

These stories, the lives of the Habsburg living now, in the first couple decades of the 21st century, are what this book wishes to focus on.

But why now? I am fond of commemorating great anniversaries. The greatest Habsburg anniversary which will occur during my lifetime is the 300th birthday of Empress Maria Theresia, which happens on May 13th, 2017.

Empress Maria Theresia was technically the last Habsburg. Her father had been the last male member of the ancient family. Through his Pragmatic Sanction, she inherited his territories. But she was left to start a new house, along with her husband, Francis Stephan of Lorraine, the House of Habsburg-Lorraine (Habsburg-Löthringen in German). Maria Theresia is the common ancestress of every Habsburg now living. I can think of no better time to commemorate her descendants than on the 300th anniversary of her birth.

This work is a culmination of 30 years of research, correspondence, and conversations with and about various members of this extended clan. Much of the information you will find in these pages is taken from letters written back and forth with Habsburg family members while researching my genealogies. Some comes from more recent interviews they have given the media. The same is true with the photographs included. Many were provided by the family members themselves, and a few were even taken by me during my travels to their homelands.

I hope the reader finds this work as enjoyable as I have found the long and winding route to producing it.

Daniel A. Willis

May, 2017

Chapter 1

The First House of Habsburg

I know this book has promised to focus on the current living members of the family, and we will get there. But, how can we discuss a family of numerous branches, who ruled in many lands, if we do not look first at the trunk that those branches sprout from and the roots that form its base?

The family can be traced to a time before they had traditional surnames. The earliest recorded ancestors were a family of counts living in what was then Klettgau, in the Duchy of Swabia (Schwaben in German). The present-day location of this territory is in the Canton of Aargau, Switzerland.

Count Radbot von Klettgau built a fortress and called it Schloss Habichtsburg (Castle of Hawk’s Mountain), in the 1020s. It was not long before this got shortened to Schloss Habsburg. His descendants would add to the original building over the next two centuries. These later additions are all that is still standing on the hill that overlooks the Aar River. However, the ruins of the original foundation do still exist nearby.

Radbot’s grandson, Otto II, was the first to take the title Count von Habsburg. Several generations later, Count Rudolf would be the first Habsburg to be elected King of the Germans, in 1273. This ended a twenty-year interregnum that had existed since the extinction of the Hohenstaufen family. German Kings often went on to be elected Holy Roman Emperors, but the Imperial crown eluded the Habsburgs until 1452.

During the reign of King Rudolf (1273–1291), the Duchy of Austria was separated from Bavaria, the King taking it as his personal fiefdom when the previous ruling family became extinct, and moved his family’s seat there from Habsburg Castle. This original duchy was roughly the current state of Lower Austria (Neideroesterreich), and didn’t extend much past present-day Vienna and its suburbs. From this kernel in the middle of Europe, the Habsburg family would build a vast Empire bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, and the North, Black, and Adriatic Seas, on the other three sides.

But, during the time of Rudolf, Vienna marked the eastern border of the Holy Roman Empire. Beyond that point there be dragons, or at least Hungarians. Many western Europeans thought they were the one and the same.

Because the Dukes of Austria were becoming synonymous with the elected title, King of the Germans, in 1358 they convinced Emperor Charles IV to place them ahead of all other dukes and grand dukes with the title Archduke. All members of the family now bear the title Archduke or Archduchess of Austria, and the ruler of Austria was from then until 1804 was The Archduke of Austria.

The first new territory gained by the Habsburgs was the Duchy of Tirol, just to Austria’s south. In the mid-1400s, these two duchies were ruled by different branches of the family, but were reunited by 1496 with the extinction of the Tirolean line.

The greatest expansion came during the life of Emperor Maximilian (1459–1519). He was the winner in one of European history’s greatest marital quests. All of the major powers had put forth candidates for the hand of Maria of Burgundy, heiress to the largest fortune of the day. With her hand came, along with the rest of her body, the Netherlands, which included the present-day country of that name as well as what is now Belgium and Luxembourg, and the swath of land stretching along the German-French border to the foot of the Pyrenees, generally known as Alsace-Lorraine.

In addition to these very wealthy duchies, Maximilian married his children to the heirs and heiresses of Hungary, Bohemia, and Spain. His children divided the family into two primary branches, the Austrian, and Spanish lines. Due to a lack of heirs from the original families, the Austrian rulers were able to pull Hungary and Bohemia into their personal control.

The Spanish line ruled what was finally a united Spain. When Archduke Philipp married Infanta Juana, Spain was divided into the Kingdoms of Castile, Leon, Aragon, and Navarre. These were united in practice by the marriage of Juana’s parents, Ferdinand and Isabella, but it would be her son, Emperor Charles V, who melded them into one country.

The Spanish line was the first to become extinct with the death of King Carlos II in 1700. His death prompted the War of Spanish Succession between Austria and France. Austria claimed Spain by right of being the next male heir, but France claimed it by right of a closer female-line succession, which had a long tradition in Spain. Through his mother, King Louis XIV of France was Carlos II’s first cousin.

France won the war, but the peace treaty, which was dictated by the other Great Powers of the day, forced the King to pass Spain off to his grandson, Philippe, Duke of Anjou, who became King Felipe V. The purpose was to not combine France and Spain under one crown.

The Austrian branch of Habsburg then also became extinct in the male line in 1740 with the death of Emperor Charles VI. Charles had foreseen the lack of male heirs as early as the 1710s, and formulated his Pragmatic Sanction of 1713. In it he dictated that, failing to have a surviving son, his personally inherited possessions (Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and several other duchies) would go to his eldest daughter, who was not even born yet at the time. He gained a treaty with all of the powers of the day to uphold his wishes when he died.

However, when his end did come in 1740, Bavaria, joined by France, Spain, Poland, and Prussia, reneged on the deal. The Elector of Bavaria claimed the Austrian possessions by right of his mother, who was a daughter of Charles VI’s elder brother. His reasoning was that if the land were to