TWO THRONES ARE CLAIMED

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20926, 4 January 1938, Page 14

TWO THRONES ARE CLAIMED

OBSCURE ART DEALER

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY’ Robert Pachmann, obscure fifty-four-year-old Vienna art dealer, is the new challenger to the claims of Archduke Otto of Hapsburg to the thrones of Austria and Hungary “I demand recognition as head of the house of Hapsburg. 1 ’ he declares in an interview’ with Reuter, in which he says that, after gathering evidence for six years, he is now ready to prove he is a legitimate son of the Crown Prince Rudolf and a grandson of the late Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. The romantic story which Pachmann has built up during years of hope and despair, goes back more than fifty years when the Emperor Francis Joseph ruled in splendour in Vienna. On a grey, drizzling morning at the end of January 1880. says Pachmann, Crown Prince Rudolf was secretly married to Princess Marie Antionette of Toscara at the Votiukirche. Vienna's military church. The princess, a victim

of tuberculosis, was forced to live in the south of France, and three years later a son was born j her at Cannes. Pachmann claims he was that. son. The princess's supposed marriage was never recognised, and the child, whose birth had also been kept a secret, was taken to Vienna, and placed with the Pachmann family by Count Albert d'Enno. an old friend of the princess's family. Begin a Search Prince Rudolf meanwhile had been obliged to marry Princess Stephanie of Belgium. In 1889 the Crown Prince was found dead in mysterious circumstances at Mayerling. In 1931 Frau Pachmann died, and a document was found in which, says Robert Pachmann. she revealed his descent, but gave the real mother’s name only as “Princess A.” He began a determined search to find the identity of his mother, and in 1933 found in the Austrian war archives a document which he alleges gives unequivocal evidence of the marriage. After four more years of collecting documentary material. Herr Pachmann says that he is now ready to “claim his rights."