Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen

Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen

Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen ( Ulrich Ferdinand Gudmund Habsburg-Lothringen; born October 3, 1941 in Wolfsberg ) is an Austrian landowner , farmer and forester . Until the federal presidential election in Austria in 2010 , he was a regional politician for the Greens in Carinthia .

He received national and international attention when he brought an individual application to the Constitutional Court to abolish the so-called Habsburg paragraph in 2009 - with a view to the 2010 federal presidential election . As a member of a family of the former ruling House of Habsburg, he and the other members of the Habsburg-Lothringen families were constitutionally denied the right to stand for the presidency. His announcement that he wanted to run for the 2010 presidential election sparked a political debate on the issue and ultimately (after the election) the repeal of the relevant constitutional provision as part of an electoral reform.

Life

Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen was born in 1941 as the son of Heinrich Habsburg-Lothringen (1908–1968) and Helvig, born in Denmark. Schutte was born. His paternal grandfather was Heinrich Ferdinand of Austria-Tuscany . Ulrich Habsburg studied forestry at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences and obtained his doctorate in 1970 with a thesis on forestry. rer. nat. His profession is entered in the register of experts at the Klagenfurt Regional Court as civil engineer for forestry and woodworking .

Habsburg-Lothringen is the owner of an estate administration with forest and hunting areas on the Koralpe in the municipality of Sankt Georgen im Lavanttal , as well as agricultural areas near St. Andrä im Lavanttal . The estate emerged at the beginning of the 19th century from two large domains that were initially owned by the bishops of Bamberg. After they were bought for Austria by Empress Maria Theresa in 1759 , they later came into private ownership and then became the property of the Augustinian Canons in St. Andrä. After its dissolution in 1808, the large estate was transformed into the Austro-Hungarian Kameralherrschaft St. Andrä . When the Danish court hunter August Theodor Schütte, great-grandfather of the current owner Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen, bought the estate in 1859, it became the family property. In 2000, Habsburg-Lothringen acquired the fishing waters in the Lavant and its tributaries, some of which were owned by the Tilly Forestry Operations, a successor to the Bamberg possessions.

He acts as a sworn and court-certified expert in the fields of fishing, forestry and forestry, timber and logging.

In 2009, Habsburg-Lothringen was a councilor for the Greens in Wolfsberg . For the 2010 federal presidential election campaign, he resigned his municipal council mandate in order to run as a non-party candidate.

Initiatives

Abolition of the Habsburg paragraphs

He was widely known beyond Austria when he and his daughter, Gabriele Habsburg-Lothringen, ahead of the presidential election in 2010 , in September 2009 the Constitutional Court brought in individual requests for constitutional review of the two so-called "Habsburg-paragraph". Habsburg-Lothringen justified this with the fact that not being admitted to the federal presidential election as a member of a former ruling house would violate the constitutionally guaranteed right to equality before the law, the objectivity requirement, the requirement of certainty and the right to free and democratic elections. The Carinthian lawyer Rudolf Vouk acted as legal representative . With a resolution dated December 10, 2009, the two complaints were rejected in a summarized decision, since a contestation of electoral laws is only permissible in the context of an election contestation.

In December 2009, even before the Constitutional Court had decided on the individual motions of the two Habsburg-Lorraine residents, the former Green Party leader, Alexander Van der Bellen , announced that he would be introducing a parliamentary motion to repeal the discriminatory provisions of the constitution with regard to the federal presidential election December 11, 2009 also happened. The chairman of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Heinz-Christian Strache , announced that he would support this initiative. In January 2010, Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen announced that, following the decision of the Constitutional Court, he would challenge the result of the federal presidential election and also turn to the European Court of Human Rights.

At the beginning of February 2010 both the Federal Managing Director of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), Günther Kräuter , and Wilhelm Molterer , at that time the constitutional spokesman for the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), spoke out in favor of lifting the ban on standing as "no longer in keeping with the times ". While Molterer spoke out in favor of repeal before the election date on April 25, 2010, Kräuter stated that his party would only decide on it after the federal presidential election. In the course of an electoral reform, all parties represented in the National Council decided on June 16, 2011 to remove the ban.

Reintroduction of nobility titles

In 2012 he wrote a manuscript for a paper for the 21st  Braunau Contemporary History Days in Braunau am Inn on the status of nobility titles in Austria. He literally spoke out in favor of “ reintroducing the titles of nobility in Austria - as in Germany - as part of the name”. In his opinion, this would "alleviate the polarization between aristocrats and non-aristocrats." He sees the nobility as "an important part of history" and suggests that it would be time to celebrate the "100 years of the republic" in 2018 to change the constitution, which currently makes the use of noble titles a criminal offense with the Nobility Repeal Act of 1919.

He justified his claim u. a. With:

"An equality of the titles of nobility within the EU must come sooner or later anyway, because with internationally branched families it is not tenable if one part is allowed to use the title of nobility and the other part is not."

- Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen : Quoted from Kurier, September 24, 2012.

Habsburg-Lothringen is of the opinion that "the problem" has been partially solved in public anyway , because "both in newspapers and on ORF [...] the titles [are [anyway]]". If he prevails with his claim in Austria, he would be entitled to the title of Count - as a descendant of Empress Maria Theresa and the Tuscan line of the Habsburgs . According to his estimate, around 50,000 people would be affected by the reintroduction of the title of nobility in Austria, most of whom come from families of the former small and civil service nobility.

Private

Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen has been married to Friederike, née von Klinckowström , since 1964 and has three sons, Eugen, Clemens and Philipp.

He is the great-grandson of the last Grand Duke Ferdinand IV of Tuscany and at the same time the third nephew of Otto Habsburg-Lothringen .

Due to the inappropriate marriage of his grandfather Archduke Heinrich Ferdinand of Austria-Tuscany , Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen is not a member of the Imperial House of Habsburg-Lothringen and under nobility law not an “Archduke of Austria”, but a “Count of Habsburg”.

literature

Janko Ferk : Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen. Aristocrat, Democrat, Green. Carinthia , Klagenfurt 2011, ISBN 978-3-7012-0054-2 .

Web links

Commons : Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Internet presence of the estate management DI Dr. Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See the job title of Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen in the various municipal, regional and state electoral lists of the Greens in Carinthia.
2. ↑ Note: The wording was: “Rejection of the individual application for the repeal of the wording 'or such families who previously ruled' in Art 60, Paragraph 3 B-VG as well as the wording 'or such families who previously governed' in § 6 (2) Federal President Election Law 1971, each in the current version. "(Quoted from the legal sentence, see individual reference below.)
3. ↑ Unjustifiably excluded from the election of the Federal President? Habsburg is fighting for candidacy . In: Wiener Zeitung . September 16, 2009
4. ↑ VfGH G222 / 09 et al. (G222 / 09 and G223 / 09) of December 10, 2009 ( decision text and legal sentence in the legal information system of the Republic of Austria ).
5. ↑ ^{a b} Initiative proposal from the Greens of December 11, 2009 (PDF; 95 kB) as well as the Federal Constitutional Law, with which the Federal Constitutional Law and Federal Law, with which the Federal Presidential Election Law 1971 is changed (914 / A). Legislative process in the Austrian Parliament .
6. ↑ Greens and FPÖ want to enable Habsburg candidacy . In: The Standard . December 4, 2009. Retrieved September 25, 2012.
7. ↑ Otto Klambauer: Habsburg rebel wants to go to the Hofburg ( memento of March 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). In: Courier . January 6, 2010
8. ^ Opposition for the deletion of the Habsburg ban . In: The Standard . February 9, 2010
9. ^ ÖVP wants to abolish the Habsburg ban . In: The Standard . June 29, 2010
10. ↑ National Council repairs postal voting . In: The Standard . June 16, 2011
11. ↑ 21st Braunau Contemporary History Days “Nobility obliges” The responsibility of the nobility then and now. Braunau am Inn, Kultur im Gugg, 28. – 30. September 2012: program. ( Memento of the original from September 16, 2012 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. Retrieved September 25, 2012. 
12. ↑ ^{a b c} Habsburg wants to reintroduce titles of nobility. In: Courier . September 24, 2012. Retrieved September 25, 2012.
13. ^ Habsburg-Lothringen wants to reintroduce titles of nobility . In: The press . September 24, 2012
14. ↑ Biography on the occasion of Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen's 70th birthday: “In Austria everyone is allowed to become anything, including former National Socialists. Only I am denied the office of Federal President. ”See: Book review ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. on the publisher's website. Retrieved September 25, 2012.