by Susan Flantzer
© Unofficial Royalty 2019

The last Crown Prince of Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and Croatia and later in his long life, a member of the European Parliament, Otto von Habsburg was the eldest and the longest surviving of the eight children of Karl I, the last Emperor of Austria and his wife Zita of Bourbon-Parma. Born on November 20, 1912, at Villa Wartholz in Reichenau an der Rax, Austria, he was given a long string of names, Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius. He was called Otto but was given the first names Franz Joseph with the hopes that he would reign as Franz Joseph II, Emperor of Austria in the future.

At the time of Otto’s birth, his great-great-uncle, Franz Joseph was Emperor of Austria and his father Archduke Karl was the heir to the throne. On January 30, 1889, at Mayerling, a hunting lodge in the Vienna Woods, Emperor Franz Joseph’s only son and heir Crown Prince Rudolf shot his 17-year-old mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera and then shot himself in an apparent suicide plot. Rudolf had no sons, so the succession would pass to Emperor Franz Joseph’s brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, and then to his eldest son, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In a matter of days, Archduke Karl Ludwig renounced his succession rights in favor of his son Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in 1914 sparked World War I. Upon Franz Ferdinand’s death, Archduke Karl, Otto’s father, became the heir to the throne. Karl’s father was Archduke Otto Franz, the second son of Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria, brother of Emperor Franz Joseph.

Otto had seven younger siblings:

• Archduchess Adelheid (1914 – 1971), unmarried
• Archduke Robert (1915 – 1996), married Margherita of Savoy-Aosta, had five children
• Archduke Felix (1916 – 2011), married Anna-Eugénie of Arenberg, seven children
• Archduke Karl Ludwig (1918 – 2007), married, Yolanda of Ligne, had four children
• Archduke Rudolf (1919 – 2010), married (1) Countess Xenia Tschernyschev-Besobrasoff, had four children; (2) Anna Gabriele of Wrede, had one child
• Archduchess Charlotte (1921 – 1989), married George, Duke of Mecklenburg, no issue
• Archduchess Elisabeth (1922 – 1993), married Prince Heinrich Karl Vincenz of Liechtenstein, had five children

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Otto and his siblings

When Emperor Franz Joseph died on November 21, 1916, in the middle of World War I, Otto’s father succeeded him as Emperor Karl I of Austria, and Otto became Crown Prince of Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and Croatia. Four-year-old Otto accompanied his parents in Franz Joseph’s funeral procession, and later that same year he attended his parents’ coronation in Budapest as they were crowned King and Queen of Hungary.

Karl only reigned for two years as the monarchy was abolished at the end of World War I. The World War I armistice required that the Austrian-Hungarian Empire allow for autonomy and self-determination of the government of its various ethnic populations. The various areas had proclaimed independence and by October 1918 there was not much left of the empire. On November 11, 1918, the same day as the armistice ending World War I, Karl issued a proclamation in which he recognized the rights of the Austrian people to determine their form of government and released his government officials from their loyalty to him. On November 13, 1918, Karl issued a similar proclamation for Hungary. Karl did not use the term “abdicate” in his proclamations and would never admit that he abdicated.

On March 23, 1919, Karl and his family left for Switzerland. On April 3, 1919, the Austrian Parliament passed the Habsburg Law, forbidding Karl or his wife Zita from returning to Austria. The law also prevented other Habsburgs from returning to Austria unless they renounced all intentions of claiming the throne and accepted the condition of living as ordinary citizens. On the same day, all royal and noble titles were abolished. In 1921, Karl returned to Hungary twice,  attempting to regain the throne of Hungary. After the second attempt, the Council of Allied Powers exiled Karl and his family to the Portuguese island of Madeira.

In March 1922, Karl caught a cold that developed into bronchitis, and further developed into pneumonia. After suffering two heart attacks and respiratory failure, Karl died on April 1, 1922, at the age of 34. Due to the Habsburg Law, Karl could not be buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna. He was buried at the Church of Our Lady of Monte on the island of Madeira in Portugal.

The years following Karl’s death were difficult financially and Zita and her family moved often. They lived in Spain, Belgium, the United States, and Canada. Two of Zita’s sons served in the US Army during World War II. In 1952, Zita moved back to Europe, living in Luxembourg and Switzerland. One of her daughters died in Austria in 1971 and Zita could not attend the funeral. The restrictions on the Habsburgs entering Austria had been rescinded, but only for those Habsburgs born after April 10, 1919. In 1982, the restrictions were eased and after 63 years Zita could return to Austria for visits. When Zita died in 1989, the government of Austria allowed the funeral to take place in Austria provided that the Habsburg family pay the cost. She was buried in the Imperial Crypt below the Capuchin Church in Vienna, the traditional burial place of the Habsburgs but her husband Karl remains buried on the island of Madeira in Portugal.

Otto’s mother made him learn the main languages of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – German, Hungarian and Croatian – in case the empire was ever restored. In addition, Otto also spoke English, Spanish, French, and Latin fluently. While living in Belgium, Otto attended the Catholic University of Leuven and in 1935, he received a doctorate in social and political sciences.

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Archduke Otto, center, with New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia at City Hall, with Otto’s younger brother Archduke Felix, on the left, in 1940

Before and during World War II, Otto von Habsburg was a strong opponent of Adolf Hitler and Nazism and was greatly concerned about the spread of Communism after the war. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Nazi regime sentenced Otto to death. For his safety, Otto left Europe for the United States where he lived from 1940 to 1944 in Washington, D.C. In 1941, Hitler personally revoked the citizenship of Otto, his mother, and his siblings, and the family found themselves stateless. At the end of the war, Otto returned to Europe and lived for some years in France and Spain.

After World War II, Otto was effectively stateless but was given a passport from the Principality of Monaco. As a Knight of Malta, he was issued a diplomatic passport, and later he was also issued a Spanish diplomatic passport. Although he was recognized as an Austrian citizen in 1956, he did not receive an Austrian passport until 1966. On October 31, 1966, Otto Habsburg-Lothringen, the name on his Austrian passport, visited his birth country for the first time in 48 years. Additionally, in 1978, Otto received German citizenship and a German passport bearing the name of Otto von Habsburg.

In 1949, Otto met Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen in a home for Hungarian refugees in Munich, where she worked for Caritas, a Roman Catholic charity. Regina was the daughter of Prince Georg of Saxe-Meiningen and Countess Klara Maria von Korff and also a second cousin of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and a great-great-granddaughter of Princess Feodora of Leiningen, half-sister of Queen Victoria. Although the House of Saxe-Meiningen was Protestant, Regina was raised in her mother’s Roman Catholic religion. Her father, a judge in Meiningen and Hildburghausen in Germany, died in the Soviet concentration camp at Tschernpowetz, Soviet Union in 1946. Regina and her mother fled to West Germany after World War II.

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Wedding of Otto and Regina

Otto and Regina were married on May 10, 1951, at the Church of Saint-François-des-Cordeliers in Nancy, France, with the blessing of Pope Pius XII. For their entire married life, the couple lived at Villa Austria in Pöcking on Lake Starnberg in Bavaria, Germany.

Otto and Regina had seven children:

• Andrea von Habsburg (born 1953), married Hereditary Count Karl Eugen von Neipperg, had five children
• Monika von Habsburg (born 1954, twin of Michaela), married Luis María Gonzaga de Casanova-Cárdenas y Barón, 5th Duke of Santangelo, had four children
• Michaela von Habsburg (born 1954, twin of Monika), married (1) Eric Alba Teran d’Antin, had three children, divorced (2) Count Hubertus von Kageneck, divorced
• Gabriela von Habsburg (born 1956), married Christian Meister, had three children, divorced
• Walburga von Habsburg (born 1958), married Count Archibald Douglas, had one child
• Karl von Habsburg (born 1961), married Baroness Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, had three children
• Georg von Habsburg (born 1964), married Duchess Eilika of Oldenburg, had three children

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Christening of Otto and Regina’s twin daughters

Otto was an early supporter of a unified Europe and was president of the International Pan-European Union from 1973 to 2004. He served from 1979 until 1999 as a Member of the European Parliament for the conservative party, Christian Social Union in Bavaria and eventually became the senior member of the European Parliament. Otto strongly supported the rights of European refugees, especially the ethnic Germans displaced from Bohemia which was once part of his family’s Austro-Hungarian Empire.

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Otto and Regina at their home Villa Austria

Otto’s wife Regina died at their home in Pöcking, Germany on February 3, 2010, at the age of 85. He survived her for only seventeen months, dying at his home on July 4, 2011, aged 98. Otto was given what was called “the last Emperor’s funeral.”Following a 13-day period of mourning in many countries that were once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a requiem mass was held at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, Austria. Otto was buried in Vienna at the Capuchin Church in the Crypt Chapel of the Imperial Crypt where his mother was also buried. At the time of his burial, Otto’s wife Regina was reburied nearby. 1,000 invited guests attended the funeral and over 100,000 people lined the streets of Vienna. The ceremonies caused large parts of central Vienna to be closed to traffic. The funeral was televised on Austrian television. Otto’s heart was buried at Pannonhalma Archabbey in Hungary on the day after his funeral.

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Funeral Procession through the streets of Vienna, Austria

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Works Cited

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