Archduke Leopold of Austria, Prince of Tuscany
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Archduke Leopold Maria of Austria, Prince of Tuscany (full name: Leopold Maria Alfons Blanka Karl Anton Beatrix Michael Joseph Peter Ignatz von Habsburg-Lothringen) (born in Zagreb 30 January 1897 - died Willimantic, Connecticut 14 March 1958) was the second son of Archduke Leopold Salvator, Prince of Tuscany and Infanta Bianca of Spain. At the age of 19, he was the last person appointed to the Order of the Golden Fleece by his great uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.
His actions as an officer at the Battle of Medeazza, near Trieste in Italy, (25 May 1917) were favourably noted.
Through his mother, after the death in 1931 of his cousin Jaime, Duke of Madrid, Leopold was an heir to the Carlist claims to the throne of Spain, but having given up his aristocratic status upon his morganatic marriage in 1919, he renounced the claims in favour his youngest brother, Archduke Karl Pius of Austria (b. Vienna 4 December 1909 - d. Barcelona 24 December 1953), but took them up again after his brother's death. Through his grandmother Princess Maria Immaculata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies he was in the line of succession to the British Throne, ranking around 300th in line at his birth, and descending to approximately 1000th in line at the time of his death.
Known after his morganatic marriage as "Mr. Leopold H(absburg) Lorraine," in 1927 he emigrated from Austria to the United States where he sought a career in Hollywood and had several minor roles.
In 1930 he was cleared of a grand larceny charge in connection with the sale of a necklace that had been in the possession of his father's sister, Archduchess Maria Theresia Antoinette of Austria (b. Alt-Bunzlau 18 September 1862 - d. Saybusch 10 May 1933). The necklace, valued at $400,000, had been a gift to an earlier Habsburg, Marie Louise, from her husband Napoléon Bonaparte.
He moved to Willimantic, Connecticut where he settled into a small house with his second wife and spent the rest of his life as a factory worker.
He became an American citizen in 1953.
His ashes are in tomb 91 of the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.
[edit] Family and children
Archduke Leopold married
- Baroness Dagmar Nicolis Podrinska (Zagreb 15 July 1898 - Lausanne 15 November 1967), morganatically, on 12 April 1919 in Vienna, but they were divorced in 1931.
- Alicia Gibson Coburn (New York 20 January 1898 - New York City 25 August 1960), also morganatically in 1932, also ended in divorce.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Paul Theroff's Online Gotha Comprehensive Genealogical data.
