Hubertus Czernin

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Hubertus Czernin (more fully, Hubertus Alexander Felix Franz Maria Czernin von und zu Chudenitz) (17 January 1956 - 10 June 2006) was an Austrian investigative journalist.

Born in Vienna to Felix Theobald Paul Anton Maria Czernin von und zu Chudenitz (1902-1968) and his wife Franziska née von Mayer-Gunthof (1926-1987), he helped expose the Nazi past of former United Nations Secretary-General and Austrian President Kurt Waldheim.

He wrote initially for the news weekly Wochenpresse. In 1984 he was hired by the Viennese magazine Profil, eventually becoming its editor.

Czernin's investigation of Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer revealed that he had had sex with up to 2,000 seminarians and monks, starting in the 1950s and ending in the 1990s.

Czernin was the first journalist to gain access to records at the Austrian Gallery in Vienna and, in 1998, published a series of articles about the ownership of five famous paintings from artist Gustav Klimt, proving that claims they had been donated to the gallery were false. The articles led to the passage of Austria's Art Restitution Law, which allowed the family of Maria Altmann to pursue claims to artwork that had been looted from them during World War II. A United States Supreme Court ruling allowed Altmann to sue the Austrian government for ownership of the multimillion dollar Klimt paintings. Hundreds of families had looted art restored to them, or restitution made, under the new law.

Altmann's attorney Randol Schoenberg stated "Hubertus Czernin was a hero to me. He committed his life to exposing unspoken truths about Austria and its Nazi past."

Czernin was married twice, first to Cristina Teresa Szapáry de Muraszombath Széchysziget et Szapár in 1979, ending in divorce in 1981. By his second marriage, to Valerie von Baratta-Dragona, in 1984, he became the father of three daughters.

He died in Vienna of mastocytosis.