The life of Archduke Rudolf, the son of the last reigning Austro-Hungarian Emperor, lacked the brilliance of his ancestors’ careers. It was spent for the most part in exile or in a New York office. Only for a brief moment was he caught up in a wartime plot hatched by his brother, Archduke Otto, to restore the dynasty to Hungary and Austria’s vacant thrones.
Rudolf Syringus Peter Karl Franz Joseph Robert Otto Antonius Maria Pius Benedikt Ignatius Laurentius Justiniani Marcus d’Aviano of Austria was born in 1919 at the Villa Prangins on Lake Geneva. He was the son of the Emperor Charles and his wife Zita of Bourbon-Parma. The Habsburgs had moved into the villa in western Switzerland a few months before his birth, the government only permitting the Habsburgs and their large entourage to settle in the country on the condition that they stay as far as possible from the Austrian border.
Archduke Rudolf was the first of the Emperor Charles’s children to be born after the Austrian Revolution in November 1918. Charles had attempted to sit it out in his mansion at Eckartsau, north of the Danube, until it was made clear that he was no longer welcome in Austria. Not long after Rudolf was born, his father attempted to come to power as King of Hungary but was thwarted by his “regent”, Admiral Horthy.
After Charles’s thrust at the throne the Habsburgs had to move farther from Austria and settled in a damp villa in the middle of Madeira. From there, they moved to Belgium, and Rudolf studied at French-speaking schools and the University of Louvain.
The outbreak of war meant flight: Otto’s political activities had put him on a Nazi blacklist. They went first to Portugal then to the US and Canada, settling in Quebec, before moving to Washington, where their cause was taken up by President Roosevelt.
The Habsburgs under Otto’s leadership and with Zita’s encouragement had been struggling to regain their throne. The five brothers were therefore hoping that the vacuum caused by the elimination of the Fascist governments of central Europe would offer them the chance they were looking for. Archduke Robert was left in England to put pressure on the British Government but Anthony Eden was notably cold to the archduke’s advances, defining Austria as “five Habsburgs and a hundred Jews”.
After they finished their studies in Canada, Felix, Karl Ludwig and Rudolf joined the US Army. On 18 November 1942, with Roosevelt’s backing, Otto announced the formation of an Austrian battalion within the US forces. The veteran Austrian socialist Julius Deutsch smelled a rat, and pressure from Austrian republicans forced Roosevelt to withdraw his support.
The Moscow Declaration of October 30, 1943 offered a stick and a carrot to the Austrian people: suggesting that the Austrians might be forgiven for greeting Hitler with such enthusiasm in March 1938 if they rose up against him. The idea gave a further fillip to the Habsburg brothers. In 1942, again with Roosevelt’s backing, Karl Ludwig had gone to Lisbon to make contact with the Hungarians to make them switch sides. He was encouraged by the Hungarian Prime Minister, Miklos Kallay.
In 1944 Horthy began negotiating terms with the Soviets to end the war. Hitler was incensed when he learnt of the attempt to conclude a deal and the regent was forced to resign after his son was kidnapped. The Habsburg plan was scotched when Hitler’s men replaced Horthy with the leader of the Fascist Arrow-Cross movement.
Still under an assumed name in the US Army, Rudolf undertook a dangerous mission to the Austrian Tyrol at the beginning of 1945. He had promised the Americans that he would whip up opposition to the Nazis, but resistance amounted to little more than grumbling. A belated rebellion in Vienna led to a handful of public hangings.
When the war ended, Rudolf’s four brothers joined him. They were fêted by the Tyroleans and formed a monarchist party with a view to forcing a plebiscite to decide the form of Austria’s next government. The Soviet High Commissioner reacted by banning the party, and on May 1, 1945, the old Habsburg Law was revived, banishing the family from the country. It was not enacted in the French Zone, however, and the brothers were even able to work from the French Sector in Vienna. Only when the West recognised the coalition government in November were the brothers forced to quit their safe haven in January 1946.
After the war, Rudolf made his way to New York, where he worked on Wall Street, later becoming the director of a bank.
He is survived by three of the four children of his first marriage and by the daughter from his second.
Archduke Rudolf of Austria was born on September 5, 1919. He died on May 15, 2010, aged 90
