Otto von Habsburg

1912 – 2011 · Generation XXIII · Head of the House of Habsburg · Habsburg-Lorraine

Otto (1912 – 2011). Head of the House of Habsburg. Married Regina in 1951. Eldest son of Charles I; head of the house 1922–2007; long-serving MEP; died 2011. Born at Villa Wartholz and named so that he might one day reign as Franz Joseph II, he became crown prince at four and an exile at six. His father’s death on Madeira in 1922 left him, at nine, the family’s claimant; he grew up largely in Spain and took a doctorate at Louvain in 1935. A fierce opponent of Nazism, he urged Austria to resist the Anschluss, was sentenced to death by the Nazis, and helped some 15,000 Austrians flee; from 1940 he lobbied Roosevelt’s government from Washington. His renunciation of the throne in 1961 opened a legal path home, but his return set off the “Habsburg Crisis,” and not until 1966 could he visit Austria again. President of the International Paneuropean Union from 1973 to 2004, he helped organise the Pan-European Picnic of 1989. He lies in the Imperial Crypt; his heart rests at Pannonhalma in Hungary.

Place in the family

Otto von Habsburg was a great-great-nephew of Franz Joseph I of Austria.

One of 24 people of Habsburg-Lorraine (from 1736) in this archive. Maria Theresa’s marriage carried the inheritance into a new name, which its heirs still bear.

Parents

Charles I of Austria (1887 – 1922)
Zita of Bourbon-Parma (1892 – 1989)

Partners

Married Regina von Habsburg (1925 – 2010) in 1951 — one child together

Children

K. H. (1960 – )

Life

1912 — Born
1951 — Married Regina
2011 — Died