Grandson of the Emperor of Austria: The family has not become extinct... but we are without powers or positions

Andreas Salvador Habsburg-Loringen, a descendant of the Habsburg imperial dynasty.

From the source

Andreas Salvador Habsburg Loringen, a descendant of the imperial family of Habsburg, said that "the number of members of the family does not exceed 250 now, distributed without any powers, positions or royal titles in Austria, Hungary, Germany and Spain."

He stated that the Habsburg dynasty, which ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire for four centuries, did not become extinct, and that they were now ordinary citizens living in their own ancestral estates.

Andreas spoke in a rare interview with the "Iris Media" agency in a castle he inherited from his father in the city of "Gmund" on the Austrian-Czech border. The castle is surrounded by trees with history and statues that tell stories and streams of water flowing between the borders of the two countries, separated by a wooden wall no more than Its height is per meter.

Inside his apartment hang portraits of the founding Emperor Joseph, emperors, princesses and princes, all original oil paintings by Renaissance artists, valued at tens of millions of dollars today.

Andreas owns in his apartment, which also includes a chapel decorated with original paintings and statues, so many decorations, decorations, royal memorabilia, letters exchanged between the kings of the family, gifts, carpets, and valuable antiques, that I thought I was wandering in a historical museum and not in an apartment.

In the garden of the castle, in the center of which are statues of the empress, his grandmother, and another statue of his mother dating back more than 500 years, and he donated it to the interest of the state, to become a public park frequented by people for hiking, with a lake surrounded by flowers from all sides.

Andreas recounts the negotiations in 1919 between the elected Republic of Austria and the imperial family and the monarchy. He was greatly influenced by the reasons for the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its disintegration in Germany after World War I. He says: “One of the goals of the war is the dismantling of the empire, which was the most powerful in Europe, and the establishment of republican regimes. Elected parliamentarians in the countries that won the war.”

Andreas says: "The world war did not pass peacefully on this ancient family."

In 1914 Franz Ferdinand, Crown Prince of the Austrian Empire, and his wife Sophie were assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip.

This incident, which occurred on the Latin bridge in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, was the direct cause of the outbreak of the Great War and the entry of the world into a new era.

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