Otto von Habsburg, who has died aged 98, bore the oldest and
most eminent dynastic name in European history and could,
according to genealogists, trace his ancestry back to the
sixth century. The pretender to the defunct thrones of Austria,
Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic),
he pursued a democratic postwar career as a member of the
European parliament and a fervent advocate of European
union.
Spending time in German diplomatic and political circles, as I
once did as a correspondent, you meet men who introduce
themselves in the formal German manner – a brief bow from
the shoulders followed by an unadorned name straight out of
Germanic history. But I never quite got used to shaking hands
with a stranger who flatly introduced himself as
"Bismarck" (diplomat), "Hannover" (banker)
or "Rommel" (mayor of Stuttgart). Or indeed
"Habsburg", whom I met briefly at a party conference
in Munich.
Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus
Xavier Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius von Habsburg
was born at Reichenau an der Rax, Lower Austria. His father,
Charles, would become Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary.
Otto's mother was Zita of Bourbon-Parma. His great-uncle,
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in 1914 would
trigger the first world war, stood in for Otto's ancient
godfather, the Emperor Franz Joseph, at his christening.
Otto's father succeeded Franz Joseph in 1916, whereupon Otto
became crown prince.
Otto von Bismarck had excluded Austria-Hungary from his united
Germany
of 1871 because of its large and diffuse non-German
population. After 1918, it duly broke up into independent
states including Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The rump of
ethnically German Austria became a republic too. Charles went
into exile with his family that year, and they later moved to
the Basque country, Belgium and France. In 1919 Austria
finally dispossessed the Habsburgs, although they kept their
private fortune. Charles died in Madeira in 1922, whereupon
Otto became head of the house of Habsburg, the titular Duke of
Lorraine and pretender to four thrones, at the age of nine.
Noble titles confer no status or privilege in the four
republics of which Habsburg held citizenship, but while
Germany – where he spent most of his later life –
tolerates their use, in Austria they are banned by law. So in
the country of his birth, the eldest son of the last emperor
of Austria was officially styled Otto Habsburg-Lothringen
(Lorraine) – even the simple aristocratic prefix
"von" was outlawed. Habsburg, always a loyal
Catholic working for better understanding among Christians,
Jews and Muslims, went to the Catholic University of Leuven,
in Belgium, to read politics and social studies. He graduated
in 1935.
Still believing in his right to the throne, Habsburg as an
Austrian patriot opposed the country's absorption by Hitler
into the Third Reich in 1938, and was sentenced to death by
the Nazis. He fled France with his mother to neutral Portugal
and then Washington DC in 1940, just before the Germans took
Paris. After the war, Habsburg spent several years in France
and Spain.
In May 1961, he formally renounced his claim to the Austrian
throne and announced that he was a loyal citizen of the
republic. As a result, two years later, an Austrian court
lifted the ban on his visiting the land of his birth – a
decision that proved unpopular in some quarters, precipitating
the "Habsburg crisis" in Austrian politics. He was
allowed to cross the border in 1966. Towards the end of his
life, he admitted that his heart had not been in the
renunciation, which he made out of sheer pragmatism.
Taking up residence in Germany, whose citizenship Habsburg
also held, he joined the Christian Social Union (CSU), the
rightwing Bavarian sister party of the Christian Democratic
Union party (CDU), active in the rest of Germany. He was
elected to the European parliament for the CSU and sat for 20
years from 1979 as MEP for Bavaria, becoming the equivalent of
"father of the house" as the oldest member. He was
already president of the international Pan-Europa Union from
1973, retiring only in 2004, strongly favouring political
union and the eastward expansion of the EU to countries once
ruled by his ancestors. In 1988, Habsburg clashed with the Rev
Ian
Paisley, then an MEP, after Paisley called the visiting
Pope John Paul II the antichrist. A year later Habsburg helped
to organise the "pan-European picnic" on the
Austrian-Hungarian border in the summer of 1989, one of the
events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
collapse of Soviet communism.
He married the German Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen in
1951; she died in 2010. They lived near Lake Starnberg in
Bavaria and had five daughters and two sons, who survive him.
The eldest son, Karl, becomes head of the house of Habsburg.
•
Otto von
Habsburg, politician, born 20 November 1912; died 4 July 2011
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