Leopold Wölfling

Leopold Wölfling, born Leopold Ferdinand of Austria-Tuscany, was born in Salzburg on December 2, 1868. He was an Austrian archduke who later renounced his title and family name and led an eventful life outside the imperial household. His father was Ferdinand IV, the last Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his mother was Ferdinand’s second wife, Alicia of Bourbon-Parma. Through his father, Leopold descended from Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and was therefore a great-great-grandson of Emperor Leopold II of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. Leopold grew up in Salzburg, where his father had settled amid the political upheavals and the approaching unification of Italy. With the support of Emperor Franz Joseph I, Ferdinand IV was still able to maintain a princely household there and provide his children with an extensive education. Particular emphasis was placed on languages in Leopold’s education. He was as interested in them as he was in mathematics, two subjects that remained important to him throughout his life. Like many male members of his family, Leopold began his professional career in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. In 1890, he was promoted to naval ensign of the line. Emperor Franz Joseph rejected a marriage Leopold wished to enter into with Elvira Maria Teresa, the daughter of the Spanish pretender Don Carlos VII, for political reasons. Austria-Hungary was not to become involved, even indirectly, in Spain’s complicated domestic politics. A decisive turn in Leopold’s life came during the around-the-world voyage undertaken by the future heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, from 1892 to 1893 with a team of scientists aboard the ship Kaiserin Elisabeth. Leopold was allowed to accompany his cousin, who was five years older, but he could not accept Franz Ferdinand’s precedence at court or on board. Tensions and public confrontations developed between the two. Leopold is even said to have called Franz Ferdinand a “would-be emperor.” After Franz Ferdinand complained to the emperor, Leopold received orders to return home while the ship was in Sydney. He was subsequently assigned as a captain to the Austro-Hungarian Infantry Regiment No. 8 in Brno. Leopold took Wilhelmine Adamovic with him, having fallen in love with her. She worked as a prostitute and was the daughter of a postal employee. Leopold wanted to marry her, but the imperial household opposed the relationship. After he was transferred to distant Przemyśl in Galicia, he took Wilhelmine with him as his housekeeper. At the same time, he tried to teach her social manners as well as reading and writing. When the emperor learned of this, he had Leopold taken to a mental hospital in Koblenz. Leopold’s subsequent submission and request for a new military posting were unsuccessful; Franz Joseph rejected them categorically. In 1902, Leopold traveled to Switzerland with Wilhelmine. On December 14 of that year, he wrote to the emperor asking permission to renounce his position and rank as an archduke and to adopt the name Wölfling. Franz Joseph agreed and initially arranged his financial support through the family fund of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. The family condition was that Leopold live abroad permanently. However, he was not formally stripped of his citizenship or expelled from the country. Switzerland granted Leopold and Wilhelmine, who had been married since 1903, permission to reside there and later citizenship. The marriage lasted only four years. Wilhelmine joined the community of settlers on Monte Verità near Ascona, including the brothers Karl and Gustav Gräser. Karl Gräser had once been one of Leopold’s officers in Przemyśl and had temporarily introduced him to the ideals of the life-reform movement. Shortly after the divorce, on October 26, 1907, Leopold married Maria Ritter, a young woman from Munich’s red-light district. The couple moved to Paris, but Maria fell ill with nervous fever, and this relationship also broke down. Leopold thereafter lived largely without any fixed occupation. When the First World War broke out, he wanted to serve again in the Austro-Hungarian Army, but the emperor decided against accepting him. After the end of the war, his financial situation deteriorated dramatically. With the collapse of the monarchy, payments from the family fund ceased, while inflation rapidly reduced the value of money. Since his family no longer supported him, Wölfling no longer felt bound by the agreement to live abroad. In 1922, he adopted Aloisia Starik, who later lived under several different family names. He called her Luise, and it was widely assumed that she was in fact his daughter. Wölfling found no lasting employment. For a time, he is said to have worked as a dance partner at Berlin’s Hotel Adlon. He was also possibly the model for the popular song “Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo.” From October 1926, he ran a small grocery shop with Luise in a municipal housing complex in Kaisermühlen, Vienna. The former archduke mainly sold sausage there to Danube sailors and coachmen. When the business closed, it left substantial debts behind. The pension he hoped the republic would grant him as an act of grace was refused. In 1928, Wölfling announced that he intended to earn his living as a tour guide, especially at Vienna’s Hofburg and Schönbrunn Palace. He also wrote personal recollections and reports for various newspapers. In 1933, he moved to Berlin. There, he lived under difficult financial circumstances with his third and considerably younger wife, Klara Hedwig Pawlowski, supporting himself through casual work. Despite his precarious situation, he remained an enthusiastic supporter of the National Socialists and, even on his deathbed, regarded the new rulers as guarantors of a better future. Leopold Wölfling died in Berlin on July 4, 1935, at the age of 66. He was buried in Cemetery III of the Jerusalem and New Church in Berlin-Kreuzberg. His grave is marked by an unusual wrought-iron cross, partly gilded. The inscription gives both his civil name and the title he had renounced, “Archduke of Austria.” An additional plaque in the grave field commemorates his third wife, Klara. Wölfling published several autobiographical works, including “Habsburgs Among Themselves,” “My Life Story: From Archduke to Grocer,” and “When I Was an Archduke.” A substantial part of his estate entered the holdings of the Austrian National Library in 2011. The documents shed particular light on his years from 1929 to 1933 and include private papers as well as the letter rejecting his application for financial support.