page_title: Otto von Habsburg
section_title: Years in exile
hierarchical_section_title: Otto von Habsburg / Years in exile
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Otto von Habsburg als Student in Berlin! Otto von Habsburg, der älteste Sohn des letzten Kaisers von Österreich Karl von Habsburg, der Thronanwärter auf die Ungarische-Königskrone, weilt als Student an der Berliner Universität (links). Rechts sein Betreuer Graf von Degenfeld
context_page_description: Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius von Habsburg, also known by his traditional royal title of Archduke Otto of Austria, was the last crown prince of Austria-Hungary from 1916 until the dissolution of the empire in 1919, a realm which comprised modern-day Austria, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and parts of Italy, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. He became the pretender to the former thrones, head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, and sovereign of the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1922, upon the death of his father. He resigned as Sovereign of the Golden Fleece in 2000 and as head of the Imperial House in 2007.
  The eldest son of Charles I and IV, the last emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, and his wife, Zita of Bourbon-Parma, Otto was born as third in line to the thrones, as Archduke Otto of Austria, Royal Prince of Hungary, Bohemia, and Croatia. With his father's accession to the thrones in 1916, he was likely to become emperor and king.
context_section_description: Otto's family spent the subsequent years in Switzerland, and on the Portuguese island of Madeira, where 34-year-old Charles died in 1922, leaving the nine-year-old Otto pretender to the throne. On his father's deathbed, his mother, Empress Dowager Zita, told Otto, "your father is now sleeping the eternal sleep—you are now Emperor and King". The family eventually relocated to the Basque town of Lekeitio, where forty Spanish grandees bought them a villa.
  Meanwhile, the Austrian parliament had officially expelled the Habsburg dynasty and confiscated all the official property via the Habsburg Law of 3 April 1919. Charles was banned from ever returning to Austria again, while Otto and other male members could only return if they renounced all claims to the throne and accepted the status of private citizens.
  In 1935, he graduated with a PhD degree in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Louvain in Belgium. His thesis was on "the right, born of usage and of the peasant law of inheritance, of the indivisibility of rural land ownership in Austria". In 1937 he wrote,
  I know very well that the overwhelming majority of the Austrian population would like me to assume the heritage of the peace emperor, my beloved father, rather earlier than later .... The [Austrian] people have never cast a vote in favor of the republic. They have remained silent as long as they were exhausted from the long fight, and taken by surprise by the audacity of the revolutionaries of 1918 and 1919. They shook off their resignation when they realized that the revolution had raped their right to life and freedom. … Such trust places a heavy burden on me. I accept it readily. God willing, the hour of reunion between the Duke and the people will arrive soon.
  He continued to enjoy considerable public support in Austria; from 1931 to 1938, 1,603 Austrian municipalities named Otto an honorary citizen. John Gunther believed that Zita was less popular among Austrians, however, writing in 1936 that "restoration would be a good deal closer if Otto's return would not mean also the return of his mother—to say nothing of hundreds of assorted and impoverished Habsburg cousins and aunts, who would flock to Vienna like ants to a keg of syrup". A greater obstacle, he wrote, was the opposition of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, which feared that their people might want to rejoin a recreated monarchy.
caption: Otto von Habsburg (left) and Count von Degenfeld in 1933.
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