2011年7月5日星期二

Otto von Hapsburg, a Would-Be Monarch, Dies at 98

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

He died “peacefully and without pain in his sleep,” said his spokeswoman, Eva Demmerle.

Otto was the eldest son of Charles I, the last emperor of Austria-Hungary, who ruled for just under two years, until the end of World War I also brought an end to his multiethnic empire in the heart of Europe and sent the family into exile.

Otto did not, however, fit the part of the exiled would-be monarch waiting for his throne to be restored. He remained deeply involved in the turbulent events of the last century, opposing the Nazi annexation of Austria and later serving two decades as a member of the European Parliament.

It was as president of the Pan-European League that he had perhaps his greatest impact on European events. Along with his Hungarian counterpart, Imre Pozsgay, Otto organized a peace protest called the Pan-European Picnic near St. Margarethen, Austria, and the town of Sopron in western Hungary.

The picnic took place on Aug. 19, 1989, and in the process of a symbolic opening of the border, nearly 700 East Germans managed to flee to the west. This momentary piercing of the Iron Curtain became one of the events that hastened the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of cold war Europe. Less than a month later, Hungary officially opened its western border for East Germans seeking to leave the Communist bloc.

Otto was born into one of the most storied noble families in European history on Nov. 20, 1912, in Reichenau, Lower Austria, during the 67-year reign of Emperor Franz Josef I, his father’s great-uncle. Otto was still a toddler when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot to death in Sarajevo in June 1914, making his father first in line for the throne, but also starting the war that would claim his empire as one of its victims.

Upon Franz Josef’s death and his father’s ascension to the throne, Otto became crown prince. His father gave up the throne in 1918 but refused to formally abdicate. Otto was not yet 10 when his father died in April 1922 and he became the official head of the Hapsburg family. He would not give up his own claim to his father’s throne until 1961.

He lived in exile in Switzerland and on the island of Madeira, and went to high school in Spain. In Belgium, he earned a doctorate in political and social sciences at the University in Louvain.

Otto tried to return to Austria in 1938 to fight the Anschluss. Because of his staunch opposition to Hitler, he spent most of World War II, from 1940 to 1944, in the United States. He returned to Europe and lived in France.

His family’s former empire fell on the line between East and West, behind the Iron Curtain and in Tito’s Yugoslavia. His great mission in the latter half of the 20th century was to try to bring the continent, if not the empire, back together. In 1954 he settled in P?cking and became a member of the conservative Christian Social Union of Bavaria, which he represented in the European Parliament.

Otto, who stopped appearing in public after the death of his wife, Regina, last year, is survived by his younger brother, Felix, as well as 7 children, 22 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.


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