ARCHDUKE'S ROMANCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19767, 15 February 1927, Page 8

ARCHDUKE'S ROMANCE

SEVERANCE FROM HAPSBURGS NOW AN INSURANCE AGENT HUMBLE LIFE IN VIENNA. In a remote suburb of Vienna beyond the Danube one of the new houses erected by the Municipality of Vienna is occupied by Leopold Wolfting, formerly Archduke Leopold Salvator of Austria, who 24 years ago voluntarily surrendered his connections with the Imperial house to live his own life in his own way. If one visits the old man in his leisure hours, says a Vienna correspondent, he may generally be found poring over some mathematical problem. He was lately engaged on a new theory of prime numbers. On weekdays he industriously plies his calling of insurance agent, and may be seen toiling up ami down stairs, making his calls. “My job is laborious,’’ he says. “One makes a hundred calls, finds about 20 people at homo and, perhaps, concludes one proposal.” Nevertheless, Leopold Wolfling is satisfied with his life. He has often been much worse off. A few years ago he was earning his bread for a time 'as a porter at a Berlin railway station. He has been an advertising agent, a cinema employee, a cabaret artist, a teacher of languages, a foreign correspondent, and publisher of a small financial paper. Now he feels comparatively settled. His adopted daughter, Louise, who nurse*! him through a serious illness, married a prosperous grocer, and he lives with her and her husband, sometimes even giving a hand behind the counter. In the course of conversation he said:—

Reasons for Retirement. “It is a common error that I severed my connection with the Austrian Royal House owing to my marriage with Wilhelmine Adamovich. There were more important reasons. I was always so much inclined to the Left in my political outlook that I did not see eye to eye with the other H’apsburgs. The severance was carried out quite quietly. I was serving as a major in the army at Iglau, and when I informed the Emperor Francis Joseph of my intention to live in future as a private citizen I was at first sent on leave and then pensioned. “By order of the Emperor I had to undertake to give up the Order of the Golden Fleece, to surrender my State allowance, and to promise to refrain from re-entering Austrian territory. I owe it lo the intervention of my father however, that I continued to receive payment of my allowance, which was made from the family resources. As most of the Hapsburg estates were situated in portions of the Empire that fell to other States after the war and were sequestrated there is no longer a family fund in the former sense of the word, and no allowance Is, of course, now paid. Most of the former Archdukes have private fortunes. I am entirely without means. In Switzerland I married my friend Wilhelmine Adamovich. The union, however, turned out unhappily, and we were divorced. My second marriage also proved unhappy and was dissolved. After my withdrawal from the burg family I naturally did not attach much importance to maintaining relations with, the other members of the Imperial House. I remained, however, in touch with my mother, and brothers and sisters. ...

Business of the Kaiser. The German Kaiser, Wilhelm 11. whom I had met in 1902 at the funeral of King Albert of Saxony in Dresden, 1 disliked intensely owing to his theatrical behaviour and the' vulgar, unmannerly way in which ho treated everybody. His boisterous behaviour destroyed all respect, and when he' tried to restore it he could only try to do it by rudeness. In Paris, Switzerland, and Munich I have spent many years in mathematical and astronomical studies. At the' outbreak of the war I deemed it my duty to share Iho general burdens, and I petitioned the Emperor Francis Joseph to allow me to enter the Austrian army as an infantryman. But the Emperor exclaimed, ‘I want nothing to do with that fellow.’ All this is in the past. The Monarchy is no more', and I am quite happy living under the Republic.”