Archduke Leopold of Austria, Prince of Tuscany

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His actions as an officer at the Battle of Medeazza, near Trieste in Italy, (25 May 1917) were favourably noted.

Through his mother, after the death in 1931 of his cousin Jaime, Duke of Madrid, Leopold was an heir to the Carlist claims to the throne of Spain, but having given up his aristocratic status upon his morganatic marriage in 1919, he renounced the claims in favour his youngest brother, Archduke Karl Pius of Austria (b. Vienna 4 December 1909 - d. Barcelona 24 December 1953), but took them up again after his brother's death. Through his grandmother Princess Maria Immaculata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies he was in the line of succession to the British Throne, ranking around 300th in line at his birth, and descending to approximately 1000th in line at the time of his death.

Known after his morganatic marriage as "Mr. Leopold H(absburg) Lorraine," in 1927 he emigrated from Austria to the United States where he sought a career in Hollywood and had several minor roles.

In 1930 he was cleared of a grand larceny charge in connection with the sale of a necklace that had been in the possession of his father's sister, Archduchess Maria Theresia Antoinette of Austria (b. Altbunzlau (Brandýs nad Labem-Stará Boleslav) 18 September 1862 - d. Castle of Saybusch (Żywiec) 10 May 1933). The necklace, valued at $400,000, had been a gift to an earlier Habsburg, Marie Louise, from her husband Napoléon Bonaparte.

He moved to Willimantic, Connecticut where he settled into a small house with his second wife and spent the rest of his life as a factory worker.

He became an American citizen in 1953.

His ashes are in tomb 91 of the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.

Family and children

Archduke Leopold married
* Baroness Dagmar Nicolis Podrinska (Zagreb 15 July 1898 - Lausanne 15 November 1967), morganatically, on 12 April 1919 in Vienna, but they were divorced in 1931. :*He had a daughter, Countess Gabrielle of Habsburg-Lorraine (Vienna 15 May 1921) (created Countess of Wolfenau in 1922), who married Jan van der Mühll (Riehen near Basel 17 November 1918) in 1948 and had two daughters and a son in Switzerland before her divorce in 1958.
*Alicia Gibson Coburn (New York 20 January 1898 - New York City 25 August 1960), also morganatically in 1932, also ended in divorce.

ee also

*Family Tree of Archduke Leopold Alfons

References

* [http://pages.prodigy.net/ptheroff/gotha/tuscany.html Paul Theroff's Online Gotha] Comprehensive Genealogical data.

*cite news| title=Leopold Habsburg Lorraine Dead at 61
publisher=New York Times | page=17 | date=15 March 1958

* [http://www.wargs.com/essays/succession/complete.html Historical Line of Succession to the British Throme]