FAMOUS JEWEL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 153, 31 May 1937, Page 8

FAMOUS JEWEL.

STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE. AUSTRIAN SOLDIER’S CRIME. 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 jewel, the so-called Hortens© diadem. The trial was a sensation in Vienna, not only because the jewel itself was of great historical interest and of great value, but because the people involved were famous. Tlie owner of the jewel was the lato 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 Bosel, while the chief witness was the Archduchess Blanca, widow of the Archduke Leopold Salvator, whose diary, written in French, was produced in Court. , . , From the evidence of the Archduchess Blanca, it appeared that, her family never intended to sell the jewel. The diadem was a present from Napoleon I to bis stepdaughter, Hortcnse Beauharnais, the daughter of Josephine Beauharnais (Napoleon’s first wife), who later married Louis Bonaparte, King of the Netherlands. Her third son was Napoloen 111, Emperor of France. From Queen Hortense’s possession;-the jewel passed into the hands of the Tuscany branch of the Hapsburgs. The evidence of witnesses showed that when the Austrian revolution broke out, the Archduchess Blanca became frightened, because she had read „ book about' the French Revolution, and had come to the conclusion that “if there is a revolution, u© must fly the country.” The family therefore, tried to send the jewel, cut of the country if possible, to Spam. In 1920, Captain Korwin volunteered to take it, and the Archduke gave him a letter, on the basis of which Ins trusted man in Vienna, who kept the diadem in hiding, banded over the jewel . , In his diary, the Archduke said that he merely a\kecl Korwin to smuggle the jewel inti) Spain, while Konvin said that he.was told to dispose of it. He therefore, pawned it in a shop at Dorotheuin. lt then disappeared.