JEWEL MYSTERY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 130, 3 June 1937, Page 16

JEWEL MYSTERY.

j FAMOUS AUSTRIAN GEMS. [ " VIENNA. | A former captain of the Austrian Imperial Army, J. von Korwin, has been sentenced to a year's imprisonment in connection with the mysterious disappearance of a famous 'and historical jewel, the so-called Hortense Diadem. The trial was a sensation in Vienna. not only because the jewel was of great historical interest and of great value. but because the people involved were famous. The owner of the jewel was the late Archduke Leopold Salvator, who left Austria after the 1918 collapse, and settled in Spain. One of the people who tried to buy it was the once famous banker, Sigismund Boael. whiln the chief witness was the Archduchess Blanca. the widow of the late Archduke Leopold Salvator, whose diary, written in French, was produced in court. From the evidence of the Archduchess Blanca, it appeared that her familv never intended to sell the jewel. The diadem was a present of Napoleon I. to his stepdaughter, Hortense Beauharnais (the daughter of Josephine Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife), who later on married Louis Bonaparte, King of the Netherlands. Her third son was Napoleon lIT., Emperor of France. From Queen Hortense's possession the jewel passed into the hands of the Tuscany branch of the Hapsburgs. The evidence of the witnesses showed that when the Austrian Revolution broke out, the Archduchess Blanca became frightened, because she had read a book about the French Revolution and had come to the conclusion that "if there is a revolution, we must fly the country.'' The family therefore tried to send the jewel out of the country, if possible, to Spain. In 1920 Captain Korwin volunteered to do so, and the Archduke gave him a letter, on the basis of which his trusted man in Vienna, who kept the diadem in hiding, handed over the jewel. In his diary the Archduke said that he merely asked Korwin to smuggle the jewel into Spain, while Korwin said that he was told to dispose of it. He therefore pawned it in a shop at Dorotheum. It then disappeared.