Archduke Wilhelm of Austria

Archduke Wilhelm Franz of Austria, later known as Wilhelm Franz von Habsburg-Lothringen (10 February 1895 – 18 August 1948), and also referred to as Vasyl Vyshyvanyi He also declared his social status as a "landowner" (pomeshchik) and stated that he was unemployed.

World War I

At the outbreak of World War I, Wilhelm was studying at the Vienna War College.

Wilhelm and his troops were ultimately recalled from Ukraine in October 1918 amid revolutionary upheaval and redeployed to the Duchy of Bukovina. This deployment helped set the stage for the proclamation of the West Ukrainian People's Republic on 1 November.

While Wilhelm was in hospital, the First World War ended, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, and the Habsburg dynasty was dethroned.

In June 1919, Wilhelm was arrested by Romanian troops while crossing the Carpathians. He was detained for three months but was released after a petition by the Ukrainian People's Republic. Wilhelm was present at a meeting between Couyba and the investor, possibly to lend the scheme credibility. Ultimately, Wilhelm was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison, while Couyba was released.

In 1944, Wilhelm made the acquaintance of a French national named Paul Maas—alternatively recorded in documents as Masse—although it is possible that this name was a pseudonym. Wilhelm Habsburg died from tuberculosis, having spent six weeks in hospital. Official documents do not record his burial location. It is assumed that he was interred in an unmarked grave, either in the prison courtyard or at the Lukyanivka Cemetery.

The Austrian government made formal inquiries about the fate of its citizen. In response, Soviet authorities provided only a certificate of Wilhelm's sentencing, concealing the fact of his death. Rumours circulated in Vienna that Wilhelm Habsburg-Lothringen had been seen alive in the Soviet Union. In 1952, the Austrian Republic declared that the passport issued to him in the 1930s had been granted illegally—on the grounds that he had not renounced his dynastic claim to the throne—and consequently revoked his citizenship.

Rehabilitation During the period of perestroika in 1989, the Office of the Military Prosecutor of the Soviet Union fully rehabilitated both Wilhelm Habsburg and Roman Novosad. Novosad later became the author of the first publication about Wilhelm Habsburg in independent Ukraine; in 1992, his recollections were published in the magazine Ukrayina. By that time, the name of the Archduke had largely been forgotten.

In 1994, the declassified case files of Wilhelm and Novosad were transferred from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Archive to the Central State Archive of Public Associations of Ukraine. In 2005, all personal documents and photographs related to Wilhelm, which had been preserved in his dossier, were handed over to Wilhelm's nephew and German citizen, Leo Habsburg-Lothringen, via the German Ambassador to Ukraine, Dietmar Stüdemann. Copies of the original documents were retained in the archive.

Arms

Ancestry