AUSTRIAN THRONE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 242, 12 October 1937, Page 7

AUSTRIAN THRONE

ANOTHER CLAIMANT CHALLENGER TO OTTO (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) VIENNA, Oct. 10. A slim grey-haired man, with features resembling the Hapsburgs, but hitherto unknown, claims that he is Prince Karl Rudolf, son of Crown Prince Rudolf, who was murdered at Mayerling in 1889, and that he is consequently heir to the thrones oi Austria and Hungary, thereby challenging Archduke Otto as the pretender to those thrones. He tells a romantic story of how In 1880 Rudolf was married secretly to Princess Marie Antoinette of Toscana. Marie Antoinette died in 1883, but gave birth to a son who was christened Karl Rudolf, whose birth was kept a secret. The child was placed among eleven children of a wealthy Viennese family named Pachmann. Baron Wiesner, leader of the Austrian Legitimists, doubts the statement. He says: “What I know about the mother, whose real name in Princess Maria Antonia, Archduchess of Austria, does not permit the assumption .that she was secretly married.”