Archduke Rudolph Passed Away

His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Rudolph of Austria passed away yesterday, 15 May 2010, aged 90.

He was born on 5 September 1919 in Villa Prangins, near Nyon, Switzerland, where his family was living in exile after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. He was the fifth son and sixth child of Emperor Karl I of Austria and Empress Zita. His father died when little Rudolph was 3.

During his youth he lived with his family in Spain and Belgium; at the outbreak of World War II, the former Austrian Imperial Family had to escape to America, being wanted by Gestapo; they settle firstly in Quebec, Canada, and then in the in Tuxedo Park, New York, USA.

Archduke Rudolph continued living there after the end of the war, working as Wall Street junior executive and then as a bank director, before moving to Belgium, where he lived till his death.

He married firstly in 1953 in Tuxedo Park to Countess Xenia Sergeievna Czernichev-Besobrasov; they had together 4 children: Maria Anna, Princess Peter Galitzine; Carl Peter, married to Princess Alexandra von Wrede; Simeon, married to Princess Maria Paloma of Bourbon; Johannes. Archduchess Xenia died in 1968 in a car crash in Casteau, Belgium; in the same accident also Archduke Rudolph was seriously injured. In 1975, their youngest son Johannes also died in a traffic accident in Bruxelles, aged 13.

Archduke Rudolph married in 1971 as his second wife to Princess Anna Gabriele von Wrede; they became parents of a daughter, Catharina-Maria, Countess Maximiliano Secco d’Aragona.

Archduke Rudolph died on 15 May 2010, in Switzerland, eight months after his 90^th birthday; he is survived by his wife, his children and 15 grandchildren, as well as by his two older brothers, Archduke Otto and Archduke Felix.

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Filed under Austria-Hungary
Tagged Archduke Rudolph of Austria, Biography, Death, House of Habsburg.

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