Charles I of Austria, the last Emperor of Austria, passed away on 1 April 1922.
He succeeded Franz Joseph I in November 1916, in the midst of the First World War. By that time, the survival of the Austrian Empire was already in doubt. The fatal moment came at the end of the war two years later, in November 1918. Charles’s subsequent attempts to preserve the monarchy failed. Considering the dynasty’s future prospects, however, he achieved that the monarchy was dissolved rather than that the monarch—namely himself—was forced to abdicate. In reality, this nuance made little difference, yet the devil lies in the details: who knows—one day, such a subtlety might carry legal weight.
Unlike some contemporary Habsburgs, Charles’s marriage to Zita of Bourbon-Parma met all noble and dynastic expectations. They married in 1911 and had eight children together, including Otto von Habsburg, the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary.
The former Imperial family, expelled by the newly proclaimed Republic of Austria, went into exile first in Switzerland, then on Madeira. There Charles caught a cold which developed into severe pneumonia. He died at the age of thirty-four, two months before the birth of his eighth child.
Access to the Metatext via placing an order for an augmented product. See Terms of Use
