HAPSBURGS’ ORIGIN.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18832, 21 March 1931, Page 2

HAPSBURGS’ ORIGIN.

GERMAN INVESTIGATIONS. DEBATED IN MIDDLE AGES. j That the Tlapsburgs are of Jewish descent and that Emperor Francis Joseph was aware of the fact, is the contention of Mayer’s Konversationslexicon, in its. latest edition. The Konversationslexicon is a popular German encyclopedia which has a large circulation both in Germany and Austria. Francis Joseph is reported to have vetoed publication of the article dealing with the Semitic origin of the family in former issues of the encyclopedia. President Masar/k of CzechoSlovakia and the editor of a prominent German newspaper recently debated the question in the public prints. From this debate it became clear that the Hapsburgs, to say the least, had some connection with the prominent Jewish banking family of the Pierleonis, who flourished in Italy in the fourteenth century. Prior to this, the Pierleonis were known as pne of the mightiest patrician clans of Rome. A scion of this Pierleonis family, Benedict, was baptised under Pope Leo IX. From this moment dates the rise of the family in Roman politics and finance. A son of Benedict’s brother mounted the papal throne under the name of Anaclete 11. Pope Anaclete’s sister married Roger 11., the first King of Sicily. A daughter of this couple, Constance, married in 1186 with the later German Emperor Henry VL Not a Hundred Per Cent Teuton.

Frederick Barbarossa, the German Kaiser, who is till this day exalted by the racists in Germany as the highest and noblest expression of the Teutonic race and spirit, was therefore not a 100 per cent. German in the light of the Semitic Hapsburg theory. Two of the Pierleonis family wandered to Switzerland and founded the branch of the family from which the imperial family of Austria descends. Austrian nobles who have investigated the story of the Judaic origin of the Hapsburg family have stamped it as a malicious invention. They are, however, confronted with the difficulty of being unable to trace the origin of the imperial family in any other direction, so that their protestations lack conviction.

On the other hand, those who uphold the Semetic descent of Francis Joseph and his kinsfolk point to the fact that the matter was already under debate in the Middle Ages and that while other royal families of that day proudly displayed genealogical documents showing their descent from Julius Ceasar and some going back as far as Japhet, the son of Noah, the Hapsburgs never displayed any desire to enter these discussions. This is taken as evidence that they \yere well aware of the facts but preferred to have their descent from the Roman family off the Pierleonis kept as much a secret as possible. The Famous Hapsburg Jaw. In other circles the revival of the Hapsburg origin as having Semitic roots is repulsed as a piece of political propaganda on the part of the opponents to the restoration of the Hapsburg throne in Hungary. Otto, the eldest son of ex-Empress Zita and the late Emperor Charles, reaches his eighteenth birthday in November this year and indications are plentiful that the Empress will attempt to have the regency in Hungary declared terminated with her son reaching majority the monarchy restored. As the Magyar Nationalists are definitely anti-Semitic, the story of Otto having Jewish blood in his veins is thought to have been advanced by his opponents in an attempt to prejudice the Magyar nobility. Those responsible for the revival of the Jewish Hapsburg story go so far as to examine most minutely the facial characteristics and peculiar little mannerisms of the last Austrian Emperor. It has not been difficult to discover traits -which, although not particularly Jewish, yet are often taken as indications of Jewish origin. So it is said that many of the Emperors had a shrewd business instinct.

The Crown Prince Rudolph and the Empress Maria Theresa are held up as examples of brilliant Jewish minds and even King Alfonso of Spain, who is a Hapsburg-Bourbon, is said to possess _a real Jewish face.

; The famous Hapsburg jaw of Alfonso, which he has in common with his ancestors. Emperor Charles V. and King Philip II- of Spain, has suddenly become indicative genuine Semitic fiLesoeoa,