Elemér Lónyay

Elemér Ödön Lónyay was born on 24 August 1863 in his family’s castle in Bodrogolaszi. He came from the Hungarian noble Lónyay family, which had held the baronial title since the seventeenth century and had owned Bodrogolaszi in Zemplén County since 1808. The family also possessed substantial estates in Bereg County. His father, Ödön Lónyay, was a large landowner, while his mother, Vilma Pázmándy, came from another influential family. Elemér had an older brother, Gábor, and two sisters, Sarolta and Vilma. In the 1860s, the family had a Romantic-style castle built in Bodrogolaszi, which became an important center of their life. Elemér attended secondary school in Sárospatak. He and his older brother then studied political science and law in Graz and Budapest. While Gábor later took over the management of the family estates, Elemér chose a diplomatic career. In 1885 he entered the foreign service of Austria-Hungary. The following year he was appointed an embassy attaché and served first in Bucharest and Saint Petersburg, and later in Brussels. In 1889 he became an embassy councillor, and in 1890 he was appointed an imperial and royal chamberlain. In 1892 Lónyay was promoted to embassy secretary. He initially worked at the Austro-Hungarian embassy in Saint Petersburg, then in Paris, and from 1894 until March 1895 in London. He was subsequently transferred to Stuttgart. During a year of leave, he travelled in Africa and around the Mediterranean. In 1895, accompanied by Archduke Ludwig Viktor, he attended the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II in Saint Petersburg. Among other honors, he received the Romanian Order of the Crown, the Knight’s Cross of the Belgian Order of Leopold, and the Commander’s Cross of the Italian Order of the Crown. In the summer of 1896, Lónyay worked at the Austro-Hungarian embassy in Rome. On 29 November of that year, the king confirmed the Hungarian comital title of Elemér and his brother Gábor; both were also appointed hereditary members of the Upper House. In 1897 Elemér received the title of embassy councillor, but left the diplomatic service later that same year and largely withdrew from public life. A decisive change in his life came through his marriage to Stéphanie of Belgium. She was a princess of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and the widow of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary. Rudolf had died in 1889 at Mayerling, together with his mistress Mary Vetsera, under circumstances that remain disputed. After his death, Stéphanie held only the title of widowed crown princess and was marginalized within the imperial family. She was also subjected to accusations. On 22 March 1900, Elemér Lónyay and Stéphanie married in the chapel of Miramare Castle near Trieste. Because of their different social ranks, the marriage was regarded as unequal. Stéphanie therefore had to give up her rank as an Austrian archduchess and broke permanently with her father-in-law, the Austrian emperor, as well as with her father, King Leopold II of Belgium. The couple moved to the Lónyay Castle in Oroszvár, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary. They often received the new Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie of Hohenberg. They continued to spend their summers at the castle in Bodrogolaszi. Through the marriage, Lónyay officially became the stepfather of Stéphanie’s only daughter from her first marriage, Archduchess Elisabeth Marie. The girl was not allowed to live with her mother and Elemér, however, but was raised at court on the orders of her imperial grandfather. This separation placed a strain on Elisabeth Marie. In 1902 she married the lower-ranking Prince Otto von Windisch-Grätz; the marriage ended in divorce in 1914. Stéphanie herself was unable to have any more children because an earlier infection had left her infertile. During the First World War, the couple had the castle at Oroszvár converted into a facility for caring for wounded soldiers. On 9 February 1917, King Charles IV elevated Elemér Lónyay from the rank of count to that of prince. Stéphanie henceforth bore the title Princess Lónyay. The marriage thereby also acquired a formally elevated position within the Hungarian nobility. At the end of the Second World War, the princely couple had to flee from the advancing Soviet Red Army. Elemér and Stéphanie found shelter, together with other refugees, at the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma. The archabbot, Kelemen Krizosztom, took them in. The couple left their estates and art treasures to the abbey. Stéphanie died in Pannonhalma on 23 August 1945. Elemér followed her on 29 July 1946. Although Budapest is occasionally given as his place of death, he also died in Pannonhalma. Both were buried in the crypt of the abbey church, the Basilica of Saint Martin. The castle in Bodrogolaszi now houses a community center operated by the Chemin Neuf Community. The castle in Oroszvár was affected by the political changes that reshaped the region after the war. The locality became part of Czechoslovakia in 1947, and its properties were confiscated under a law based on the Beneš decrees. Since Elemér and Stéphanie had already died by then, the estates had technically passed to their rightful heir, the Archabbey of Pannonhalma. In 2003, the abbey initiated proceedings in the successor state, Slovakia, seeking the restitution of the confiscated church property.