Leopold Wölfling

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Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria-Tuscany
Georg Decker : Archduke Leopold Ferdinand as a toddler (around 1870)

Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria-Tuscany , later Leopold Wölfling (* December 2, 1868 in Salzburg , † July 4, 1935 in Berlin ), was the eldest son of Grand Duke Ferdinand IV of Tuscany and his 2nd wife Alicia of Bourbon-Parma , Great-great-grandson of Emperor Leopold II from the House of Habsburg-Lothringen .

Origin and upbringing

Leopold Ferdinand Salvator Marie Joseph Johann Baptist Zenobius Rupprecht Ludwig Karl Jacob Vivian of Austria-Tuscany was born as the fourth child and second son of Ferdinand IV , Grand Duke of Tuscany. He was a great-great-grandson of Emperor Leopold II through his second son Ferdinand III. from Tuscany.

When the unification of Italy became apparent, Leopold Wölfling's father left Tuscany like all other relatives and settled in Salzburg , where he had found a suitable place to stay and, thanks to the generous support of Emperor Franz Joseph I , was able to lead a life like a ruling prince . In this way he was able to offer Leopold Ferdinand Salvator an excellent upbringing, in which great value was placed on learning languages ​​- and the son was just as interested in this as in mathematics.

Professional background

Like many other members of his family, he began his career as a midshipman in the kuk Kriegsmarine , where he was promoted to ensign of the liner in 1890 . His desired connection with Elvira Maria Teresa (1871–1929), the daughter of the Spanish pretender Don Carlos VII , was forbidden by the emperor for political reasons: Franz Joseph I did not want Austria-Hungary to be indirectly involved in the confused Spanish domestic politics.

Imperial monogram of Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria

Franz Ferdinand , then second in line to the throne, traveled around the world with a team of scientists on the ship “ SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth ” from 1892–1893 . Leopold was allowed to accompany the Archduke, who was five years his senior and who was much higher militarily and in the hierarchy at court, heir to the throne from 1896, but could not cope with the priority of his relative. There were unpleasant appearances between the two, in which Leopold is said to have dubbed the higher-ranking on board as a would-be emperor . Franz Ferdinand complained to the Emperor, who ordered Leopold to return home in Sydney and, after his return in Austria, assigned him to serve as captain of the kuk Infantry Regiment No. 8 in Brno .

However, Leopold took Wilhelmine Adamovic (z) there with him, whom he had met in the Augarten in Vienna , according to another report in Olomouc in Moravia , and with whom he had fallen in love (although in the meantime he had had an illegitimate child with another woman). He wanted to marry the daughter of a postal clerk who worked as a prostitute .

He was then transferred to the most distant part of the dual monarchy, to Przemyśl in Galicia . However, he took Wilhelmine with him as a housekeeper . However, it was important to him that the young lady adopted manners and trained herself further in word and writing. When the emperor heard this, he had the archduke taken to an institution for the mentally ill in Koblenz . The archduke gave in too late and asked for a new military post, hoping for the emperor's mercy. This categorically refused.

Break with the imperial family

Leopold traveled to Switzerland with Wilhelmine in 1902, probably supported by his sister Luise. On December 14, 1902, he wrote to the Kaiser from Zurich : I ask Your Majesty to give up my position and rank as Archduke and to be allowed to take the name Wölfling. The emperor complied with his request and arranged his financial support from the family pension fund of the House of Habsburg-Lothringen - under the condition within the family that Leopold lived abroad permanently. (The description that Leopold was expatriated and expelled from the country has no legal basis. Only the Habsburg Law of 1919 made an exception to the principle that Austrians may neither be expatriated nor expelled from Austria , and this only for Habsburgs who continue to claim power levied on the territory of the Republic of Austria.)

He and Wilhelmine, with whom he was married from 1903, received residence permits and citizenship from Switzerland. After four years, however, the couple divorced. The reason was that Wilhelmine joined the settlers on Monte Verità in Ascona, namely the brothers Karl and Gustav Gräser . Karl Gräser had been one of his officers in the Przemyśl garrison and had also won Leopold over to the ideals of life reform , but only for a short time. Soon after his divorce, on October 26, 1907, Leopold Wölfling married Maria Ritter, a young woman from Munich's red-light district. The two moved to Paris, where Maria fell ill with a nervous fever, so that this relationship also failed. Wölfling lived on without any tasks.

When the First World War broke out, he volunteered for service in the Austro-Hungarian Army, but was turned down by the emperor's decision.

Years without money

After the First World War , he got more and more into debt, because after the collapse of the monarchy the allowances from the family fund no longer flowed (the fund had been confiscated by the Republic of Austria in the Habsburg Law of 1919) and the krona as a currency was soon subject to enormous inflation . Since he was no longer supported by his family, Wölfling was no longer bound by the private agreement to live abroad.

With a contract dated January 2, 1922, the wolfling Aloisia, b. Starik, later widowed Faitlik and married Böhm or Ebner, when he was a child. Aloisia was called Luise by him, as a facsimile published in 2011 by the Austrian National Library from 1929 ( My dear daughter Luise from her faithful old father ) shows. She lived from 1917 to 1965 and it is widely believed that she was his daughter.

Wölfling did not find any suitable employment for him. From October 1926 he ran a grocery shop together with Luise, who at that time had the family name Böhm, in a Viennese community building in Kaisermühlen (then 2nd, now 22nd district of Vienna ) . The former archduke now cut sausages for the customers, mostly Danube sailors and coachmen . After the business was closed, only a mountain of debts remained.

The republic refused to grant him a “grace pension”.

The grave of Leopold Wölfling in Berlin-Kreuzberg

In 1928 Wölfling announced that he wanted to earn a living as a tourist guide - especially (sic!) In the Hofburg and the imperial palace in Schönbrunn . In order to get money he wrote articles in various newspapers, among others. a. in the hour .

In 1933 he moved to Berlin , where, as an enthusiastic supporter of the National Socialists, he more badly than right with his now third, much younger wife Klara Hedwig Pawlowski (1894–1978) eke out his life by doing odd jobs. He died in relatively poor conditions on July 4, 1935 at the age of 66 in Berlin, where he saw the new rulers as the guarantors of a better future while still on his deathbed.

He was buried in Cemetery III of the Jerusalem and New Church in Berlin-Kreuzberg . His grave monument, located near the entrance to the cemetery in Dept. 1/1, has the shape of a pedestal, wrought-iron, partially gilded cross with a corpus of Christ under a semicircular roof, which is completely unusual for a Berlin burial site, and points to the deceased's origins from strongly Catholic areas Climes. Both his real name and the discarded title are mentioned on the inscription: “Leopold Wölfling rests here awaiting the resurrection [...] Archduke v. Austria". A small inscription plaque on the grave field reminds of the third wife Klara Wölfling, also buried here.

Own works

  • Habsburgs among themselves. Frank notes from a former archduke . Goldschmidt-Gabrielli, Berlin-Wilmersdorf 1921, OBV .
  • My life story. From archduke to grocer . Hutchinson & Co, London 1930, OBV .
  • When I was Archduke . Publishing house Selle-Eysler, Berlin 1935, OBV . (French edition: G (ustave) Welter (transl.): Souvenirs de la Cour de Vienne . Payot, Paris 1937, OBV ).

estate

The Austrian National Library in 2011 acquired a significant part of the estate of the Archduke Leopold Ferdinand Salvator of Austria. This bequest from the estate of Leopold in 1922 adopted Aloisia Wölfling, born Starik, illuminated especially the years from 1929 to 1933, in which Leopold in Wall at Vienna (as wall since 1938 part of the 23rd district of Vienna ), Maurer Lange Gasse  lived 6 . The estate includes, among other personal documents, the letter of rejection for his application for benefit as well as a letter from the top Christian politician Ignaz Seipel (1876–1932), who was Federal Chancellor of the Republic of Austria twice in the interwar period .

literature

Web links

Commons : Leopold Ferdinand von Österreich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Baptismal Register - TFBXIV | Salzburg Cathedral Parish | Salzburg, rk. Diocese | Austria | Matricula Online. Retrieved November 1, 2017 .
  2. ↑ All sorts of things. Austria. The former Archduke Leopold Ferdinand visits Olomouc. In:  Badener Zeitung , No. 56/1927 (Volume XLVIII), July 13, 1927, p. 4, bottom right. (Online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / bzt
  3. ↑ a b Sigrid-Maria Großering : Report on the Archduke . In: Kronenzeitung , Vienna, May 25, 2008.
  4. ↑ a b New acquisitions. Historically unique documents from Archduke Leopold Ferdinand Salvator . In: Johanna Rachinger (Ed.): Austrian National Library. Newsletter . No. 1 (March) 2011, Vienna 2011, p. 7, online ( memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.5 MB). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.onb.ac.at
  5. ↑ a b All sorts. Austria. (...) The former Archduke Leopold of Tuscany as the owner of the farm shop. In:  Badener Zeitung , No. 87/1926 (XLVII. Year), October 30, 1926, p. 5, bottom center. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / bzt.
  6. ↑ All sorts of things. A former archduke as a tour guide in Viennese castles. In: Daily newspaper Badener Zeitung , Baden near Vienna, August 19, 1928, p. 5, center left
  7. ↑ For example, about his trip with Emperor Franz Joseph I to his father in the Langreith hunting lodge ; A Habsburg over the Habsburgs . Leopold Wölfling tells. In: The Hour , Vienna, July 17, 1932, p. 6. Digitized
  8. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 247. Jörg Sundermeier: 11 Berlin cemeteries that you have to see before you die . Bebra-Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-8148-0224-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Wölfling, Leopold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Archduke Leopold Ferdinand Salvator of Austria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Archduke of Austria
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Salzburg
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1935
Place of death Berlin