Synopsis:
The Austro-Hungarian Empire dominated central Europe until 1918, when the last Habsburg Emperor, Karl, fled into exile. Karl's death in 1921 made his nine-year-old son Otto head of the Habsburg family, a position he has now held for over eighty years. Born heir presumptive to an empire that stretched from the Tyrol to Transylvania, and from Poland to Sarajevo, Otto von Habsburg's life has both affected and been reflected in some of the most dramatic and historic events of the twentieth century. As a four year old in 1916 he walked in the funeral procession of the Emperor Franz Josef. Otto von Habsburg later became the focus of royalist loyalty, a Habsburg restoration attracting considerable political support until the Second World War. Refusing any contact with Hitler (whose code name for the Anschluss was Operation Otto), he fled first to France then America, where he formed a friendship with F.D. Roosevelt. Never living in the past, he later became a highly respected Member of the European Parliament.
From the Author:
The life of Otto von Habsburg has encompassed all the dramas of twentieth-century European History. At its beginning was the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which his family had reigned over for more than six hundred years and of which he was the last Crown Prince. The old continental order disintegrated around him, a process that he witnessed as a perceptive young child. Then, after the peacemakers of Versailles had cobbled together composite states of the eleven nations of the former Habsburg Monarchy, these fragile structures were swept away into two new empires, both of tyranny: first that of Hitler, followed by that of Stalin. At last, towards the end of the century, came the implosion of Soviet Communism - and the emergence of new democracies through out Central Europe and the gradual fusion within the European Union. The Danube lined East and West again, as it had done in his childhood.
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