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Dr. Otto von Habsburg was born in Reichenau, Austria on 20 November 1912 as the eldest son of Archduke Karl and Princess Zita von Bourbon-Parma, from 1916 the Emperor and Empress of Austria, King and Queen of Hungary. The Archduke and Crown Prince Otto of Austria (he is known as Dr. Otto von Habsburg in his political life) resided in Austria until the abdication of his father in 1919. Swiss exile followed until 1921. After his father's death in exile on Madeira in 1922, he attended schools and University in Spain and Belgium and received his doctorate in political and social sciences from the University of Louvain, Belgium in 1935. As a staunch advocate of a central European Union against the threat of nationalism and totalitarianism, and as an outspoken opponent of Nazi Germany's intent to annex Austria, he was officially targeted for arrest by Hitler. He attempted to bring Austria's plight to the world in his dealings with the anti-Nazi Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, and helped over ten thousand people escape Nazism at the outbreak of the Second World War. |
| A member of Koudenhove-Kalergi's
Paneuropa Union since 1936, Dr. Otto von Habsburg represented the organization
in Washington D.C. beginning in 1940. In close collaboration with his brothers,
the Archdukes Rudolf, Robert and Karl
Ludwig, he convinced President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill to regard Austria as a victim state of Nazi aggression. Based on this recognition, Archduke Robert and Winston Churchill, who favored a postwar reconstitution of a Danube confederation forged the Moscow Declaration of 1943, which prepared for Austria's independence at the conclusion of the war. Dr. Otto von Habsburg also promoted future Hungarian and Czechoslovak independence, worked to increase Allied response to the Holocaust, and obtained assurances that ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia would not be driven from the Sudetenland after the war. Dr. von Habsburg spent only a brief time in Austria after 1945. The Soviet occupation forces demanded his departure and much of his progressive Roosevelt / Churchill-backed plan on postwar Austria and Central Europe (including a solution to the South Tyrol dispute) were negated by Soviet-compromised renegotiations launched by interim-Chancellor Dr. Karl Renner. In 1951, Dr. Otto von Habsburg wed Princess Regina von Sachsen-Meiningen, with whom he has had seven children. He settled in Pocking, West Germany as a German citizen in 1954 and in 1973 became President of the International Pan Europa Union. Although he has been allowed to reenter Austria since the mid-1960s, the Republic nevertheless continues to uphold part of its 1919 anti-Habsburg law in violation of United Nations and EU human rights doctrines. Dr. von Habsburg has served as the longest Member of the European Parliament representing the CSU Party of Germany since his direct election in 1979. He also serves as Chairman of the European People's Party in the EU Committee for foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy, Vice-President of the Hungarian Delegation to the European Parliament, and is active on the EU Committee for Law and Citizens' Rights. He is widely regarded as a major influence in the fall of the Iron Curtain, not only through his decades of tireless work and copious writings on the subject of a free Europe (i.e. his insistence that the Soviet Union evacuate the Baltic States on the basis of the United Nations declarations on decolonization) but as the host of the August 1989 Pan Europa Union picnic at the Austrian-Hungarian border, which precipitated the first crossings in defiance of the Soviet-backed border forces. Dr. Otto von Habsburg is the author of over 35 books on politics, history and biography published in several languages, and contributes regular columns to international publications on the subject of European socio politics and union. He holds an honorary professorship from the University of Bogota and is a member of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politique, Institut de France, Paris; Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Politicas, Madrid; Academia da Cultura Portuguesa, Lisbon; etc. Dr. von Habsburg is the recipient of numerous honors and medals from various countries and organizations. His eldest son, Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen is President of the Pan Europa Union in Austria and currently serves as the elected OVP Party representative of Austria to the European Parliament. His son Georg von Habsburg is a Hungarian diplomat to the EU and his daughter, Countess Walburga Douglas, is a Pan Europa representative, politician and author. See more (bio and historical notes in German, as well as rare photos) on Otto von Habsburg and Karl von Habsburg' site maintained by Thomas Wilhelm Schwarzer. Contribution: Dr. Robert von Dassanowsky, University of Colorado. |
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