![]() The palace itself houses a substantial exhibition on the life of Franz Ferdinand and his family. 1 His grandson was the last emperor of Austria, Charles I. Upon request, today’s visitors to the family crypt at Hohenberg are handed a large key in order to explore on their own the resting place where the subsequent generations of the family were also buried. Archduke Karl Ludwig Josef Maria of Austria (30 July 1833 ) was the younger brother of both Franz Joseph I of Austria and Maximilian I of Mexico, and the father of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (18631914), whose assassination ignited World War I. The funeral ceremony in Artstetten was deliberately low-key. ![]() Only four years later the couple fell victim to assassination in Sarajevo, which was exploited as the trigger for the First World War. The assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia on June 28, 1914, is known as the Sarajevo assassination. He was the eldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria, who was Emperor Franz Joseph’s younger brother. In order to spare the Countess such ignominy - at the Viennese court she was reminded at every opportunity of her inferior status – Franz Ferdinand pre-empted the situation in 1910 by setting up a family crypt below the choir of the Schlosskirche. Franz Ferdinand was born in Graz, Austria, on the 18th December 1863. As a result, not only did he have to agree to his descendants waiving their claim to the throne, but he also knew that he could not be buried together with his beloved wife in the Imperial Crypt. One year later, Franz Ferdinand decided to marry, for love, a woman below his station, Countess Sophie Chotek, an aristocrat from the Bohemian nobility. At his wifes death, the Royal Court decided she should not receive honors, and not be buried with the Archduke in the Capuchin Church Imperial Vaults in Vienna. Thus it returned to the ownership of Carl Ludwig, who passed it on to his eldest son Franz Ferdinand in 1889. However, Maximilian was never able to use his newly-acquired estate, since he was executed in Mexico just one year later. ![]() However, he possessed little expertise and was often taken in by forgeries. Franz Ferdinand was also an enthusiastic collector of art, buying large quantities of antiques. He would spend several weeks there in the spring and summer until, in 1866, Emperor Maximilian of Mexico bought the palace from his brother. This mammoth project was to remain uncompleted. The Archduke had the building lavishly renovated both internally and externally, and laid out a large park. Franz I bequeathed the estate to his fourth wife, Empress Caroline Auguste, and she in turn left it to her grandson Carl Ludwig, the second-oldest brother of Franz Joseph. The sumptuous Baroque residence is a place heavy with history: this is where Anita von Hohenberg’s great-grandparents, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, the. When Emperor Franz I purchased Artstetten Palace in 1823, situated near Melk in Lower Austria, it came into the ownership of the Habsburg family. ![]()
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