PRINCE OF HAPSBURG?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 773, 20 September 1929, Page 9

PRINCE OF HAPSBURG?

MYSTERIOUS STRANGER DISAPPEARS “MY CROWNED ANCESTORS” ! Australian and N.Z. Press Association) (United Service) I Reed. 10.40 a.m. BERLIN, Thurs. The police are investigating the disappearance of a mysterious stranger, who is rumoured to be a prince of the House of Hapsburg. The man hired a boat on Lake Koenigsee, in Schwarzburg-Rudol-stadt, and vanished. He left an unsigned letter, stating that he had unkowingly financed bomb-throwers, and that he preferred death to dishonour. He requested that if liis body was found, it would not be placed in the family vault, as his crowned ancestors would turn in their graves if they were lying next to a Socialist. He asked to be buried on the shores of his beloved Koenigsee.

The ancient House of Hapsburg took its name in the 11th century from the family seat, a castle near the confluence of the Aar and the Rhine. Members of the family were German monarchs from 1273, when Rudolph of Hapsburg was chosen king, and later were Holy Roman emperors from 1438 to ISO 6, and kings of Spain from 1516 to 1700. The Hapsburgs who ruled over the recent empire of AustriaHungary were descended from Maria Theresa, the daughter of Charles VII. of France, and her husband, Francis of Lorraine —lienee the family was sometimes known as Ilapsburg-Lorraine. A grandson. Francis 11., was the last Holy Roman emperor and the first to call himself Emperor of Austria, while a succession of younger members of tho family ruled over Tuscany. About this time the family increased rapidly in numbers, and in the 19tli century there was a bewildering number of archdukes. It was the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 which set the world at war. Francis Joseph, in spite of several humiliations, was still Emperor and King of Austria-Hungary when he died in 1916. His grand-nephew, however, lost his all in 1918, and the various Hapsburgs became private personages.