Wilhelm Franz of Habsburg-Lothringen

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Archduke Wilhelm Franz Joseph Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen (born February 10, 1895 in Pola , today Croatia ; † August 18, 1948 in Kiev , today Ukraine ) was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army , a 'Ukrainian' colonel and an informal candidate for the Habsburg throne during the First World War for a Ukrainian satellite state . His life was determined by the struggle for Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union . He therefore fell victim to Stalinism .

Wilhelm von Habsburg-Lothringen in Ukrainian Wyschywanka

Youth and Ukrainian question

Wilhelm as an infant with parents and siblings in 1896

Wilhelm was the sixth child and youngest son of the Austro-Hungarian Admiral Archduke Karl Stephan and his wife Maria Theresia , born Archduchess of Austria and Princess of Tuscany . Wilhelm was named after the Habsburg Archduke Wilhelm , who had tried unsuccessfully to gain the Polish throne in 1385. At the same time, the choice of name was a gesture of loyalty to Kaiser Wilhelm , from whom Stephan later hoped to support his Polish ambitions. Wilhelm spent his first years on the island of Lussin , where the family lived in the castle-like villa Podjavori in order to be free from tuberculosis . The children were home schooled and raised under the strict guidance of their father. Wilhelm learned Polish from birth and, like his siblings, spoke Italian, German, French and English every day.

He briefly attended a secondary school in Vienna and then moved with his family to Żywiec in Galicia . He completed his military training from 1909 in the military high school in Mährisch-Weißkirchen . After leaving early, he moved to the Theresian Military Academy .

While all members of his immediate family assimilated as Poles , Wilhelm rebelled and developed a close bond with the most important political opponents of the Poles in Galicia, the Ruthenians , as the Ukrainians and Russians were called in the monarchy. Timothy Snyder sees the reason in the fact that Wilhelm saw himself in the possible succession to the Polish throne behind his brothers and his Polish brothers-in-law; - he had to find his own nation . According to Snyder, he raised his rank in the family with this Ukrainian view of things that the Polish princes despised. As a teenager he left a hunting party of his brother-in-law Olgierd Czartoryski and spent a week with Hutsuls in the Carpathian Mountains . He soon became fluent in Ukrainian and acquired extensive knowledge of Ukrainian culture.

Since it seemed politically opportune for the imperial family to have a Ukrainian officer available to represent the Habsburg family, Wilhelm continued to deal with the Ukrainian question at the emperor's request and continued his training in 1913 at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt .

“He was fascinated by the Ruthenian folklore and the myth of the Ukrainian Cossacks with their rebellion against Poland's nobility in the 17th century. Full of adolescent-romantic exuberance, he identified himself with the unsaved people of the Ukrainians - a people without a country, a people without a ruler. If his father wanted to become King of Poland, why shouldn't he be able to become King of the Ukrainians? "

- Ulrich Weinzierl

Candidate for the throne in World War I

Wilhelm in kuk uniform 1918
Wilhelm among his Ukrainian Sichev shooters (1918)

During the First World War, both his father and brother Karl Albrecht were contenders for the throne of Poland, which was ruled by the Central Powers . Wilhelm, on the other hand, was traded as an informal candidate for the Ukrainian throne. He was no longer the last candidate for a Polish mission, but the first for a Ukrainian one. However, he had no clear plans. Whether the Ukraine, united with East Galicia, should form a federation in the form of trialism together with Austria and Hungary or whether it should become a vassal state controlled by Vienna and Berlin , remained open. Specifically, he worked as a member of the imperial and royal mansion into which he had been admitted when he was of legal age in February 1915, with the Ukrainian MPs in the Chamber of Deputies of the Vienna Reichsrat and supported their demand for autonomy in Eastern Galicia, which was mainly Ukrainian-populated. Wilhelm developed a plan for the restructuring and expansion of the Habsburg monarchy, to which he apparently received his father's approval at the end of December 1916. After the victory over Russia, the empire was to consist of an Austrian, a Bohemian, Hungarian and a Polish kingdom, each headed by an archduke. The kingdom of Poland ruled by his father was to be joined by a principality of Ukraine under Wilhelm's reign.

Wilhelm and his brother Leo graduated from the military academy on March 15, 1915. By then, due to the heavy defeats against Russia, most of the officers had already fallen or were no longer available for combat duty. Wilhelm came to the 13th Uhlan Regiment as a sub-lieutenant on June 12, 1915 . After a convalescence leave because of tuberculosis, Wilhelm took over the command of a Ukrainian detachment, which also included the Imperial and Royal Ukrainian Legion , on April 5, 1917 as the Imperial and Royal Rittmeister .

Since that time Wilhelm Wasil Wyschywanij (Василь Виши́ваний, Wilhelm the Embroidered) was called , as he often wore an embroidered Ukrainian shirt - other spellings: Vasil Vyshyvaniy , Vasyl Vyshyvany , Vyshyvannyi , or Vyshivanni ), a name that he also used after the war preferred real ones.

Wilhelm refused to take action against Ukrainian farmers who refused to deliver their harvest. The term “Red Prince” did not spread in the Marxist sense, but because he kept it with the common people , with them in their language. At the same time he negotiated with the kuk Foreign Minister Ottokar Czernin about the autonomy of Eastern Galicia. In July and August 1917 Wilhelm accompanied his cousin Kaiser Karl on a trip through Eastern Galicia. Wilhelm was also commissioned by this emperor to take part in Ukrainian affairs. He met the metropolitan of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church , Andrzej Szeptyckyj , who had just been released from Russian captivity and who became his advisor and mentor.

In a secret additional protocol to the so-called " peace of bread " of Brest-Litowsk, Vienna, also at Wilhelm's instigation, granted autonomy to the Ukrainian East Galicia . A union with the new Ukrainian People's Republic to form a principality under his rule seemed possible. With the German occupation of Ukraine and the replacement of the government by the hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyj , Vienna ran the risk of falling behind again. As a result, Emperor Karl created the special unit "Archduke Wilhelm Battle Group" with around 4,000 soldiers. This included the Ukrainian Legion , which consisted of Galician Ukrainian recruits and, following the tradition of the Cossacks, was soon renamed Ukrainian Sitschow Riflemen ( Ukraïnski sichovi stril'tsi ). It operated in the south of the country during the occupation of Ukraine by the Central Powers in 1918. Wilhelm was also given great freedom of action politically.

The German Empire then also suspected the Habsburgs of seeking a candidacy for Archduke Wilhelm for the Ukrainian throne, possibly even with the merging of Ukraine with eastern Galicia and northern Bukovina . The supremacy of the Germans in Cisleithania and the internal conditions in the Ukraine made the Archduke's plans hardly promising, so that he gave up in May 1918. Because on May 25, Emperor Karl and his Foreign Minister Stephan Burián had telegraphed him that his candidacy would cause great difficulties for our relationship with Germany ( and for the solution of the Polish question - deleted in the concept), and they advised him from everyone to foresee further engagements .

Karl was happy about Archduke Wilhelm's withdrawal, whose activities most Austrian politicians and military officials were critical of, but wanted to leave options open for later. At the end of September 1918, the Ukrainian Legion was finally withdrawn from Ukraine, because Foreign Minister Burián was against a side policy towards the Hetman Skoropadskyj and Germany.

Independent Ukraine after the First World War

After the end of the war Wilhelm went back to Ukraine, the Ukrainian Sitschow Riflemen became part of the regular army of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic and Wilhelm became its colonel. On November 6, 1918, a small force under Wilhelm's orders occupied the capital of Bukovina, Chernivtsi . The troops had been summoned by Ukrainian officials in the country to support Romania . A few days later, however, Wilhelm had to withdraw from the advancing Romanian army.

On June 6, 1919, he was arrested by the Romanians who had moved to western Ukraine, brought to Bucharest and interrogated, but released three months later. He then joined the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic . He was responsible for foreign relations at the Ministry of Defense in Kiev , for all military attachés in the Ukrainian embassies abroad.

The ruler of the Ukrainian People's Republic, Symon Petljura , developed into a dictator under pressure from Poland, Romania and Soviet Russia , whose poorly organized units carried out severe pogroms on Jews. In April 1920 Wilhelm resigned from his offices in protest against Petljura's peace treaty with Poland and after the defeat against Soviet Russia went to Munich via Vienna .

exile

Wilhelm's network card for the Vienna public transport company with stamp for August 1947, which he carried with him when he was kidnapped
Wilhelm in Soviet captivity in 1948

In Munich he opened an agitation office that promoted Ukrainian independence and recruited volunteers for a liberation army among the Ukrainians in exile in Germany . However, his plans failed because of his unreliable partners from the environment of the German Freikorps . After the Treaty of Rapallo (1922) between the Soviet Union and the German Reich, Wilhelm's Ukrainian volunteer army was dissolved.

From 1925 to 1929 Wilhelm worked as a real estate agent in Spain , after which he went to Paris. There he quickly became part of the jet set , often appeared in the tabloids and had numerous public relations with show girls and men. In 1935, he was by his lover, an impostor , involved in a fraud scandal. He escaped prison sentence by fleeing to Vienna. The financial scandal may also have been staged by the Soviet or Czechoslovak defense service.

In Vienna he again championed the cause of Ukrainian independence and had contacts with Yevhen Konovalets and his organization of Ukrainian nationalists . Ideologically, he approached anti-Semitic and National Socialist positions. After the “Anschluss” of Austria in March 1938, the Habsburg was monitored by the Gestapo , also because he still had contact with Ukrainian nationalists.

Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop tried to instrumentalize him on the question of Carpathian Ukraine , but its annexation to Hungary contradicted Wilhelm's goal of an independent Ukraine. He was in contact with the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg because of his plan for an independent Ukraine. When Wilhelm realized in 1941 that this was not possible under German rule, he spied for Great Britain and France against Germany, and after the end of the war also against the Soviet Union.

Wilhelm spent the Second World War in Vienna, where he was kidnapped and abducted by the Soviet secret service during the occupation on August 26, 1947 in broad daylight in front of the Vienna Südbahnhof . He was interrogated for four months in Baden , brought to Kiev and sentenced there as an English and French spy in May 1948 to 25 years in prison. Wilhelm von Habsburg died in the hospital of Lukjaniwska Prison in Kiev on August 18, 1948, of untreated bilateral pulmonary tuberculosis, and was buried in an anonymous grave. His death was officially denied, so there are other information showing that it in 1949, 1950 or until 1955 Gulag of Volodymyr-Volynskyi died.

Today Wilhelm is venerated by Ukrainian nationalists as a fighter for Ukraine's independence against the Soviet Union. After Ukraine gained independence, several streets and squares in the country were named after him.

literature

  • Vasyl Rasevyč: A Habsburg King for Ukraine? Wilhelm von Habsburg and Kaiser Karl I. In: Andreas Gottsmann (Hrsg.): Karl I. (IV.), The First World War and the end of the Danube monarchy. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7001-3929-4 , pp. 223-230.
  • Timothy Snyder : The Red Prince. The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke. Bodley Head, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-224-08152-8 . German edition: The King of Ukraine. The secret life of Wilhelm von Habsburg. Translated from the English by Brigitte Hilzensauer, Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-552-05478-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. The secret life of Wilhelm von Habsburg. From the English by Brigitte Hilzensauer, Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-552-05478-3 , p. 57 ff.
  2. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. The secret life of Wilhelm von Habsburg. Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-552-05478-3 , p. 60 ff.
  3. ↑ a b Wassyl Rassewytsch: A Habsburg King for the Ukraine? Wilhelm von Habsburg and Karl I. P. 18f. ( Memento from November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 271 kB)
  4. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. The secret life of Wilhelm von Habsburg. Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-552-05478-3 , pp. 83-84.
  5. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. The secret life of Wilhelm von Habsburg. From the English by Brigitte Hilzensauer, Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-552-05478-3 , pp. 82 and 89.
  6. ↑ a b c Biography on ucrania.com ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. P. 91 f.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Ulrich Weinzierl : The secret life of the red prince. The world of September 18, 2009
  9. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. P. 93.
  10. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. P. 114.
  11. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. P. 107.
  12. ↑ Wolfdieter Bihl: Contributions to Austria-Hungary's Ukraine policy in 1918. In: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe NF 14 (1966), p. 51–62, here: p. 51 f.
  13. ↑ Günter Rosenfeld (ed.), Pavlo Skoropads'kyj: Memories 1917 to 1918. Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-515-07467-8 , p. 22.
  14. ^ A b c Archduke Wilhelm at Austrian Commanders
  15. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. P. 119 f.
  16. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. P. 123f.
  17. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. P. 128 f.
  18. ↑ Winfried Baumgart : Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918. From Brest-Litowsk to the end of the First World War . Vienna / Munich 1966, p. 123 f.
  19. ↑ Wolfdieter Bihl: Contributions to Austria-Hungary's Ukraine policy in 1918. In: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe NF 14 (1966), pp. 51–62, here: p. 52.
  20. ↑ Oleh S. Fedyshyn: Germany's Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution 1917-1918 . New Brunswick / New Jersey 1971, p. 227
  21. ↑ Wolfdieter Bihl: Contributions to Austria-Hungary's Ukraine policy in 1918. In: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe NF 14 (1966), pp. 51–62, here: pp. 54 ff.
  22. ^ Mariana Hausleitner : The Romanization of Bukovina. The enforcement of the nation-state claim of Greater Romania 1918–1944 . Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56585-0 , p. 98 f.
  23. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. P. 154.
  24. ^ Mariana Hausleitner: The Romanization of Bukovina. The enforcement of the nation-state claim of Greater Romania 1918–1944 . Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56585-0 , p. 109.
  25. ↑ When he dealt with women it was out of necessity, with men out of lust. From: Timothy Snyder: The clear sense of the eternal. In: weekly newspaper Die Zeit , Hamburg, No. 38 of September 10, 2009, Austria edition, p. 14.
  26. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The Red Prince. The Fall of a Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Europe. Badley Head, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-224-08152-8 , p. 173 ff. As well as Judith Luig: The Habsburg and the It Girl. In: the daily newspaper, 10./11. January 2009.
  27. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The Red Prince Die Presse, September 12, 2008.
  28. ↑ Timothy Snyder: The King of Ukraine. P. 298 f.

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personal data
SURNAME Habsburg-Lothringen, Wilhelm Franz von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vyshyvaniy, Vasily; Habsburg-Lothringen, Wilhelm Franz Joseph Karl von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian and Ukrainian officer and heir apparent
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Pola , Croatia
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1948
Place of death Kiev