The Archduke’s Secret Family
by Daniel A. Willis
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Daniel A. Willis
Smashwords Edition, License Notes:
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Archduke Ernst and the Habsburgs
Chapter 2: Laura Skublics de Velike et Bessenyő
Chapter 3: The Relationship of Ernst and Laura
Chapter 4: The Children of Ernst of Laura
Chapter 5: The Mystery Unravels
Chapter 6: It All Goes Public
Chapter 7: The Skublics/Wallburg Descendants Today
Preface
In 1996, I published my first book, The House of Habsburg: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Empress Maria Theresia. The subtitle really says it all about the book. In addition to the newbie mistakes I made with this book, I also went ahead and published without tracking down every living descendant. I had worked on the book for 10 years and finally decided that there were going to be lines not completely updated. It really is the nature of the beast with a genealogy of tens of thousands of descendants.
One of the mysteries that was left for another day was the curious case of Archduke Ernst (1824 - 1899). Being from a junior branch which has since become extinct, he was well into the depths of the “lesser known” archdukes. The mystery surrounded his relationship with Laura Skublics, the mother of his four children, and whether they married.
In pre-World War I Austria, the story of the Archduke’s children had become something of a press sensation. But after two World War losses, followed by communism consuming Hungary - the location of the story after World War I - the public lost interest and the story was filed away in musty archives.
In the 1970s, Burke’s Peerage took on the mammoth task of publishing a detailed genealogy of all of the world’s royal families, both currently and formerly reigning. The result was the invaluable series, Burke’s Royal Families of the World. Volume one of this set covered Europe and the Americas. In it, the article on Austria included information about Ernst’s children by Laura Skublics. This information was far from complete, but it was enough to spark a renewal of interest among royal genealogists, myself included.
Getting to the bottom of this story has been the stereotypical “labor of love” with the focus being on the labor. When I started, the Internet was new and used primarily as a means of communication and marketing. Furthermore, Hungary had been long isolated from the West and only recently had begun the trek toward integration with the rest of Europe.
The Hungarian language posed an additional obstacle. While I have tried to learn it over the past two decades, simple conversation still escapes me to this day. Add to this that Hungarians typically did not learn Western languages until very recently, and I faced a fairly large language barrier.
But time and persistence has paid off. After four trips to Budapest, use of both translators and “linguistic charades,” and countless letters and emails to archives all over the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, I believe I have all of the facts related to this situation recorded in one volume, this book.
As is always the case with genealogy, there will be some pieces that continue to elude me. I am now confident, though, that these missing details are limited to the descendants of Ernst and Laura, but that this couple’s story is now complete.
Daniel A. Willis
August 2011
Denver
Chapter 1
Archduke Ernst and the Habsburgs
By the time Archduke Ernst Karl Felix Maria Rainer Gottfried Cyriak was born into the Austrian Imperial family on August 8th, 1824, the birth of a new Archduke had become almost commonplace. After all, he was the second son and fourth child of Archduke Rainer, himself a tenth son of Emperor Leopold II. The birth was duly noted in the European media, but the fanfare was limited to the obligatory 21-gun salute to herald the arrival of all baby boys into the Imperial Family.
This large body of male members was a complete about-face for the Imperial Family from a mere eighty-four years ago, when the last male Habsburg died in 1740. Emperor Charles VI was the last true male of this august house. Through his “Pragmatic Sanction,” he managed to pass his possessions and titles to his daughter, Maria Theresia and her husband, François, Duke of Lorraine. The Imperial House from that point on became the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, or Habsburg-Lothringen in German.
Under the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction, Maria Theresia would inherit all of her father’s considerable hereditary titles, while her husband would be elected the next Holy Roman Emperor. This was not an easy transition, as Lorraine had to be forfeited to Poland, with a succession that eventually gave it to France, to buy the Louis XV’s support for the imperial election. Then, the Elector of Bavaria challenged the whole thing once Charles was dead, claiming the Thrones of Bohemia and Hungary by right of being the next male relation, albeit through a female line. The brief War of Austrian Succession was fought, with Maria Theresia being victorious. Thereafter, the Habsburg lands remained within the family until 1918 when all of the central monarchies were forced into abdication in favor of republics.
In the period from 1740 to 1918, the extent of the Habsburg dominions was quite impressive: Austria, Bohemia and Moravia (both in present day Czech Republic), Hungary (which then included a large portion of present day Romania and Slovakia), large portions of Poland and Lithuania, then northwestern Balkans, and several Italian parcels including Tuscany, Lombardy, Venice and Modena, the last being acquired by the family only in 1803. One very important dignity that was lost during this period was that of Holy Roman Emperor.
During the Napoleonic Wars of the very early 1800s, France conquered and controlled large portions of the Holy Roman Empire, ultimately causing Emperor Francis II, Maria Theresia’s grandson, to dissolve the Empire in 1806, slightly more than a millennium after its founding by Charlemagne in 800 A.D.
But Francis took precautions for himself and his family by declaring Austria, which had been an archduchy since medieval times, to be an empire including Hungary and Bohemia, etc., in 1804. This way, Francis, now Emperor Franz I of Austria, and his successors retained their Imperial dignity, reserving their place above the other European monarchs. It was into this newly formed Empire that Ernst was born as an imperial Archduke of Austria, and a royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia.