Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria
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Archduke Leopold Ferdinand | |
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Alice of Bourbon-Parma |
Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria (2 December 1868 – 4 July 1935) was the eldest son of
Early life
In 1892 and 1893 Leopold accompanied Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on a sea voyage through the Suez Canal and on to India and Australia. The relationship between the two archdukes was extremely bad and their permanent attempts to outdo and humiliate the other one led the Emperor Franz Joseph to order Leopold Ferdinand to return to Austria immediately. He left the ship in Sydney and went back to Europe.[1] He was dismissed from the Austro-Hungarian Navy and entered an infantry regiment at Brno. Eventually he was appointed colonel of the 81st Regiment FZM Baron von Waldstätten.[2]
Leopold fell in love with a
Renunciation of title
On 29 December 1902 it was announced that Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria had agreed to a request by Leopold to renounce his rank as an archduke.[3] On 3 April 1903 the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of the Imperial and Royal House and the Exterior notified him that the Emperor complied with Leopold's wish to renounce his title and to adopt instead the name Leopold Wölfling.[4] His name was removed from the roll of the Order of the Golden Fleece and from the army list. He took the name Leopold Wölfling after a peak in the Ore Mountains. He had used this pseudonym already in the 1890s when he had travelled incognito through Germany.[4] On the day of his departure from Austria he was notified that he was forbidden from returning to Austrian lands. He became a Swiss citizen. He was given a gift of 200,000 florins as well as a further 30,000 florins as income from his parents.
Life as Leopold Wölfling
After leaving Austria he fulfilled his earlier imperially denied wish and studied natural sciences and especially botanics at the
After
A telegram invited him to come to Berlin, Germany, to comment on the premiere of the German silent film
After that he lived in Berlin. Here he worked few menial jobs: He acted in a cabaret and wrote his memoirs. In late 1932 he wrote a series of articles on his life at the Hofburg, published in the Berliner Morgenpost. However, for his first article he chose a subject of highest topicality in then Germany. It appeared on 2 October under the headline "Es gibt keine Rassen-Reinheit. Mitteleuropa der große Schmelztiegel" (English: There is no racial purity. Central Europe the great melting pot), he confronted the spreading racism and the garbled ideas on racial purity.[8] With such daring theses in the Nazi poisoned public atmosphere before their takeover Wölfling had reduced his opportunities to publish under their reign.[9]
His third marriage in Niederschöneweide with the Berlin-born Klara Hedwig Pawlowski (1902–1978) was announced in the Berliner Morgenpost on 11 April 1933.[10] His wife tried to defray their livelihood also selling his silverware to a jeweller, who, seeing the monogram, however, informed the police for suspect of theft, only to figure out that Wölfling had consented.[9]
Wölfling died impoverished on 4 July 1935 in his third-floor flat in the rear wing of Belle-Alliance-Straße 53 (now renamed and renumbered
His last book appeared posthumously.Marriages
Wölfling married three times:
- Wilhelmine Adamovicz (, divorced in 1907). Her memoirs: Wilhelmine Wölfling-Adamović, Meine Memoiren, Josef Schall (ed.), Berlin: Hermann Walther Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1908. No issue.
- Maria Magdalena Ritter (Vienna 4 Mar 1876 / 1877 - 1924[13]) (married: 26 October 1907 in Zürich, left her in 1916 and later divorced her.). No issue.
- C/Klara Hedwig Pawlowski, née Groeger (Güldenboden (Bogaczewo), 6 October 1894 - Berlingen, 24 July 1978) (married: 3 July / 4 December 1933 in Berlin.). No issue.
Works
- Habsburger unter sich: Freimütige Aufzeichnungen eines ehemaligen Erzherzogs, Berlin-Wilmensdorf: Goldschmidt-Gabrielli, 1921.
- Czech translation: Habsburkové ve vlastním zrcadle: životní vzpomínky, Prague: Šolc a Šimáček, 1921 and Poslední Habsburkové: vzpomínky a úvahy, Prague, Fr. Borový, 1924.
- No known English translation.
- "Es gibt keine Rassen-Reinheit. Mitteleuropa der große Schmelztiegel" (i.e. There is no racial purity. Central Europe the great melting pot), in: Berliner Morgenpost, 2 October 1932.
- "Habsburger Kaiserinnen, die ich kannte" (i.e. Habsburg empresses, whom I knew), in: Berliner Morgenpost, 9 October 1932.
- "Bei der Kaiserin Elisabeth auf Korfu" (i.e. With Empress Elizabeth on Corfu), in: Berliner Morgenpost, 10 October 1932.
- "Das Heine-Denkmal" (i.e. The Heine monument; by Louis Hasselriis now in the Jardin d'acclimatation du Mourillon, Toulon), in: Berliner Morgenpost, 11 October 1932.
- "Kaiser Franz Joseph als Ehemann" (i.e. Emperor Francis Joseph as a husband), in: Berliner Morgenpost, 12 October 1932.
- "Frühling im Prater – Tante und Neffe – Kaiserliche Schaustellung" (i.e. Spring in the Prater – aunt and nephew – imperial ostentation), in: Berliner Morgenpost, 13 October 1932.
- "Begegnung in der Nacht" (i.e. Encounter in the night; with Francis Joseph), in: Berliner Morgenpost, 8 December 1932.
- Als ich Erzherzog war. Meine Erinnerungen (i.e. When I was an archduke. My memoirs), Berlin: Selle & Eysler, 1935, reedited: Lorenz Mikoletzky (ed.), Wien: Ueberreuter, 1988, ISBN 3-8000-3272-4.
- English translation: My Life Story: From Archduke to Grocer, London: Hutchinson, 1930. An American edition published in 1931 in New York by Dutton, reprinted in 2007 by ISBN 1-4325-9363-3.
- French translation: Souvenirs de la cour de Vienne, G. Welter (trl.), Paris: Payot, 1937.
- English translation: My Life Story: From Archduke to Grocer, London: Hutchinson, 1930. An American edition published in 1931 in New York by Dutton, reprinted in 2007 by
References
- ^ Nicholas Horthy, Memoirs (London: Hutchinson, 1956), 70-71.
- ^ Almanach de Gotha, 1902 (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1902), 10.
- ^ Wiener Zeitung (29 December 1902), page 1.
- ^ ISBN 3-7759-0205-8.
- ISBN 3-7759-0205-8.
- ^ ISBN 3-7759-0205-8.
- ^ "Unser Anton". Time. (9 December 1929).
- ^ ISBN 3-7759-0205-8.
- ^ ISBN 3-7759-0205-8.
- ISBN 3-7759-0205-8.
- ^ "Ex-Archduke's Death In Poverty", The Times (5 July 1935): 13.
- ^ Royalty Travel Guide, Berlin, Kirchhof vor dem Halleschen Tor Archived 2008-07-27 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ The Tuscany article of Paul Theroff's "Online Gotha" had previously indicated that she died on 21 July 1938 in Berlin. However, according to Wölfling's autobiography "From Archduke to Grocer," Maria Magdalena Ritter died in some type of institution during the mid-1920s.
External links
- Short biography
- Articles about Wölfling's life in Ascona, Fidus-Projekt (in German)
- Newspaper clippings about Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW