The Atlantic on Europe's non-reigning royals

I have mixed feelings about The Atlantic's new article on Europe's non-reigning royalty, focusing on Prince Leka of Albania and Archduke Karl of Austria, but it's worth reading. I for one will never give up on the dream of Restoration.

Remembering Bl Karl

Today I attended a mass in honour of the centennial of the death of Emperor Bl. Karl (1887-1922) at St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church in Flower Mound, Texas. The brand new church is one of the most attractive new churches I've seen, with expansion of the sanctuary and a new Casavant pipe organ yet to come. The celebrant was Fr. Allan Hawkins, originally from England, who had corresponded with Bl. Karl's son & heir Archduke Otto (1912-2011) for decades. It was Fr. Hawkins who in 2010 invited me to give a talk on sacred music at St. Mary the Virgin Catholic Church in Arlington, of which he was then the pastor. Not having expected until he invited me to be able to attend any events commemorating this centennial, I was very glad to be able to attend this mass, which concluded with appropriate English words to Haydn's immortal Kaiserhymne, the Habsburg imperial anthem.

Blessed Karl, pray for us!

Centennial of the Death of Bl Karl

One hundred years ago today, the holy Emperor Karl I of Austria-Hungary (1887-1922), died at only 34 in exile in Madeira. A true royal saint of modern times, he had done his best in his brief reign (1916-18) with the challenging situation he inherited and did everything he could to end the horrors of the Great War and serve his people, but treacherous and ignorant men thwarted and betrayed him. Emperor Bl. Karl, pray for us and for the restoration of the Habsburg Monarchy!

History and Restoration

 

I don’t know why some people in online discussions think assertions of counterfactual history—which by definition no one can either prove or refute—constitute valid moral arguments.

“Hawaii would have been conquered by Japan eventually anyway”

 

You can’t prove that, and so what? The republican coup and US annexation were still wrong.

 

It is reasonable on the other hand to argue that the abolition of the German and Austro-Hungarian monarchies in 1918 paved the way for the rise of Nazism and the subsequent expansion of Communism. This can be demonstrated with facts and logic. Had the monarchies survived, their peoples might have been spared a great deal of suffering. But counterfactual scenarios, however enticing (and no one wishes 20th century European history had proceeded differently more than me), are not the core of the moral argument.

 

I believe that the abolition of an ancient monarchy, let alone dozens of them at once, is wrong in itself, regardless of consequences. It is an offence against obedience, tradition, patriotism, aesthetics, the foundation of all previous legality, and the divine order. And that is why restoration is a moral imperative even after the most obvious negative consequences have subsided. Modern Germany and Austria, and the other lands that once made up the Habsburg Empire, may be decent places to live in a narrow materialistic sense, though it took over three decades in the West and seven in the East after the falls of the monarchies for that to be the case, with unprecedented horrors along the way. But there is more to life than materialism.

 

We cannot bring the dead back to life. But when something wrong was done, no matter how long ago, that can be reversed, it must be. And that is why I will insist as long as I draw breath that the occupation of Germany, Austria, Hawaii, and other countries that used to be monarchies by republican regimes is intrinsically immoral, because it constitutes an injustice that though it could be has never been corrected.

Archduke Trio

Last month for Fine Arts Chamber Players' 2020 Basically Beethoven Festival-in-Place I recorded Beethoven's "Archduke" Trio Op. 97, dedicated in 1811 to the musical Archduke Rudolf (1788-1831), youngest child of Emperor Leopold II. The video of the performance, which also includes the "Spring" Sonata Op. 24 and the "Heiliger dankgesang" movement of the Op. 132 Quartet, is now available online. I managed to work some monarchical context into my program notes video.

Archduke Rudolf of Austria (1788-1831)

Summer in Russia and Britain, and a Habsburg event in Dallas

Apologies to anyone still reading this blog for my lack of activity here. There's so much I theoretically could have blogged about in recent months, particularly my July trip to Russia "In the Steps of the Romanovs" culminating in my participation in the solemn commemorations of the centennial of the murder of the Imperial Family in Ekaterinburg, but having documented my trips so thoroughly on social media I never got around to also producing a blog entry. I would like to encourage anyone curious about my experiences in Russia and Britain ("Wonders of Wales and England") to follow me on Instagram, or even if you're not an Instagram user check out my page (which unlike my Facebook is Public), and peruse my photos there (in reverse chronological order) which cover all the highlights.

https://www.instagram.com/royalcello/

Today, however, here in Texas I was reunited at the Blessed Karl Symposium at Mater Dei Catholic Church with HI&RH Princess (née Archduchess) Maria Anna Galitizine, granddaughter of Bl Karl, nearly two years after I first met her in Washington DC. I think she liked my shirt!
 

Royal Encounters in Mexico

Last week I visited my brother William in Mexico, where he has been serving as concertmaster of the Orquestra Sinfónica Nacional in Mexico City. We did a lot of fairly typical Mexican sightseeing (including Chapultepec Castle where Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota lived) and eating, mostly beyond the scope of this blog post, but the evening of June 6 was far from typical: a performance for HI&RH Archduke Carlos Felipe, a grandson of Emperor Bl Karl of Austria-Hungary and great-great-grandnephew of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, at his Mexico City home, for an audience that also included his wife, his two sons, and his cousin HRH Prince Alexander Margrave of Meissen, head of the Royal House of Saxony! While I have had many special experiences as a musician, it's hard to imagine that anything could top playing Bach, Kreisler, and the Kaiserhymne for such an audience. Afterwards (as well as the day before when we were getting ready) I had ample opportunities to talk to all the royalty present, who were impeccably gracious and appreciative: a monarchist musician's dream. I felt that my brother and I got to be the latest in a long line of musicians who have performed for members of the Habsburg dynasty over the centuries. Archduke Carlos Felipe has done a great deal to rehabilitate the image of Emperor Maximilian in Mexico and it was a tremendous honour to be his guest.

With Archduke Carlos Felipe and his wife Annie-Claire in front of a portrait of Emperor Maximilian, June 5

Portraits of Maximilian & Carlota, and their piano, at Chapultepec Castle

My brother and I with Prince Alexander of Saxony, Margrave of Meissen

With Archdukes Louis-Damien and Julian

With Archduke Carlos Felipe and a portrait of his ancestor Emperor Charles V

Altar of the Kings, Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral, June 7

Habsburg Twitter and Me

Yesterday, much to my delight, I had a light-hearted exchange with not one but two Habsburgs on Twitter. You can read about it at my friend Jovan's blog here.

From Isabella to Isabella

Since the Reformation, European royalty have tended to divide into two genealogical groups, Catholic and Protestant, with Orthodox royalty generally having become linked more closely to the Protestant group since Peter the Great started importing German princesses to Russia in the 18th century (Protestant princesses being more willing than Catholic ones to embrace Orthodoxy). While plenty of relationships across the confessional divide exist (the Romanian and Belgian royal families, for example, are closely related to both Catholic and Protestant dynasties), in general they tend to be more distant, so that most contemporary Protestant royals do not have many recent Catholic royal ancestors. 

When reading about the family of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V as background for Carlos, Rey Emperador, as mentioned in a previous post, I was intrigued to learn that while his sister Isabella (1501-1526) was Queen of Denmark as the wife of the unfortunate King Christian II (deposed in 1523), none of their descendants occupied the Danish throne until 1912. The present Princess Isabella, who will turn ten this month, granddaughter of Queen Margrethe II, is named for her distant Habsburg ancestress. With a little help from Wikipedia, I determined exactly what the line of descent is.

-Isabella I of Castile (1451-1504), m. Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452-1516)
-Joanna "the Mad" (1479-1555), m. Philip "the Fair" (1478-1506)
-Isabella (1501-1526), m. Christian II of Denmark (1481-1559)
-Christina (1521-1590), m. Francis, D. of Lorraine
-Renata (1544-1602), m. William V, D. of Bavaria
-Magdalene (1587-1628), m. Wolfgang Wilhelm, C. Palatine
-Philip Wilhelm (1615-1690) El. Palatine, m. Elisabeth Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt
-Carl III Philip (1661-1742), El. Palatine, m. Ludwika Radziwill
-Elisabeth (1693-1728), m. Joseph, C. Palatine of Sulzbach
-Maria Franziska (1724-1794), m. Frederick Michael, C. Palatine of Zweibrücken
-Maximilian I of Bavaria (1756-1825), m. Augusta of Hesse-Darmstadt
-Augusta (1788-1851), m. Eugene, D. of Beauharnais (son of Napoleon's first wife Empress Josephine)
-Josefina (1807-1876), m. Oscar I of Sweden
-Carl XV of Sweden (1826-1872), m. Louise of the Netherlands
-Louise (1851-1926), m. Frederik VIII of Denmark
-Christian X (1870-1847), King of Denmark 1912, m. Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
-Frederik IX (1899-1972), m. Ingrid of Sweden
-Margrethe II (1940- ), m. Henri de Laborde de Monpezat
-Frederik (1968- ), m. Mary Donaldson
-Isabella (2007- )

And that's how the blood of King Christian II and Isabella of Austria finally worked its way back onto the Danish throne in 1912. I find this sort of thing fascinating; I hope you do as well.

Archduchess Isabella of Austria, Infanta of Castile & Aragon, Queen of Denmark (1501-1526)

Princess Isabella of Denmark (b 21 Apr 2007)

Carlos, Rey Emperador

I stayed up past 2:00 last night to finish Carlos, Rey Emperador. While not always historically perfect, it's a stirring and powerful drama from start to finish that will lift these distant royal historical figures from paintings and books into your heart. The Emperor's final scene, in which on his deathbed he finally addresses his promising young illegitimate son "Gerónimo" (Don Juan of Austria), who has come to be the pride and joy of his final years (and one day will lead Christendom to victory at Lepanto), as "my son" ("mi hijo") for the first and only time, is profoundly moving. As with its predecessor Isabel, I cannot recommend this series highly enough.

Watch it online with English subtitles at: http://wlext.net/series/carlos-rey-emperador?server=openloadco&episode=001

A dying Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) (Álvaro Cervantes) bids farewell to his natural son Jeromín (1547-1578) (Álvaro Villaespesa)

Anniversaries 2017

This year features many major round-numbered anniversaries, most of them bad. Going backwards, we have the 50th of the colonels' coup in Greece and King Constantine's subsequent unsuccessful counter-coup which led to his exile and the eventual fall of the monarchy, obviously the 100th of the Russian Revolution (both of them), and the 150th of the regicide of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. For my Roman Catholic friends, the 100th of Fatima can be celebrated but the 300th of the founding of the Grand Lodge of London and the 500th of Luther's revolt (about which I'm ambivalent myself) will be more sinister occasions.

On the bright side, we can celebrate the 150th anniversaries of Canadian confederation and of the Austro-Hungarian compromise that created the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as the anniversaries of the births of two of my favourite royal women in European history, Queen Frederica of Greece (1917-1981) and Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780). This summer will also see the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of the House of Windsor (formerly known as Saxe-Coburg & Gotha) in the United Kingdom.

Gone but not forgotten

This must be the saddest British Pathé newsreel ever. And they don't even include Albania, Serbia/Montenegro/Yugoslavia, or Bulgaria, not to mention all the regional German ones. (France, of course, the only major European monarchy of which no film footage exists, had fallen long before the 20th century.) Excellent old footage though, with more recent captions reflecting the perspective of no earlier than the 1970s. (At least one error in the narration: in the beginning of the Russian portion, it is the Tsar's mother, not his wife, on his arm in the procession; Russian protocol gave the Dowager Empress precedence. At the end of the segment, it is indeed Empress Alexandra who walks with her husband.) Beyond Europe, the second half of the 20th century would prove as disastrous for monarchy in Asia and Africa as the first half was for monarchy in Europe.

The Incoherence of the Austrian Republic

Watching the Vienna Philharmonic New Year's concert, I am once again struck by the impression that modern Austria is the most schizophrenic and hypocritical of all the European republics that used to be monarchies. Everything they pride themselves on, everything they market to tourists, everything they present to the world, is from the time of the Habsburg monarchy and indelibly linked to it. There is no attempt to hide this or pretend that Austria is all about being Modern. Yet they insist on maintaining this drab ahistorical Republic, in which even the use of "von" is illegal, voting for horrid Socialists, and treating my friends in the heroic Die Monarchisten - Schwarz-Gelbe Allianz (whose stickers I proudly display on my car) like irrelevant harmless eccentrics at best, traitors at worst. The mind boggles. Austria, like the rest of Central Europe, needs an Emperor, not a President! Restore the Habsburgs!!!

(At 14:00 there's an interlude in which Dame Julie talks about how Queen Elizabeth II recently became Britain's longest-reigning monarch, but the length of her reign was exceeded by Emperor Franz Joseph's, with footage of the Emperor, concluding the narration in the room where he died in 1916.)

Unlikely

In a recent Facebook discussion on a Catholic friend's page, I pointed out, and no one disagreed with me, that while the restoration of the Habsburg monarchy as envisioned by the Schwarz-Gelbe Allianz is certainly unlikely (alas), it's no more unlikely than most of the political goals of today's American Conservative Catholics (and other religious & social conservatives), which get a lot more press. I'd rather focus on the Habsburgs.

Sarajevo at 100

It is morning in Sarajevo on 28 June: the centennial of one of the most catastrophic single events of all time. One hundred years ago, a wicked assassin's bullet snuffed out the lives of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife, and with them the Old Order of European Civilisation, probably forever, as much as present-day monarchists sometimes try against all probability to be optimistic. There have been other pivotal events in world history, but the magnitude of 1914 is unparalleled: until that time, in spite of revolutions in the Americas, France, and more recently Portugal and China, Monarchy remained the dominant form of government on earth; five years later, that was no longer true, and since then the cancer of republicanism has only grown.

The West's internal political controversies of today seem trivial and pointless by comparison. Contemporary European governments, most of them illegitimate republics that ultimately owe their miserable worthless existences to Princip's bullet, will issue their statements and hold their commemorative events. There will probably be blather about "freedom" and "democracy," but it's all balderdash. Europe today is a pathetic shadow of what it once was; all that's left are echoes, remnants, and memories. If Europe is still able to awe and delight both inhabitants and visitors, it is because of the greatness of what was built--physically, culturally, and spiritually--in the centuries before 1914.

RIP Archduke Franz Ferdinand. RIP Duchess Sophie. RIP all the millions of men, many of them teenagers, who died for no good reason. Any analysis that blames one country or one ruler for the war is an oversimplification. But the real Europe was the Europe of kings and emperors, archdukes and duchesses. And that Europe was destroyed one hundred years ago this day, though it would take a few years for that to become clear. The lamps went out all over Europe, and they have not been lit again.

Habsburgs Revisited

I don't usually link to articles I don't like, but this one is too frustrating to ignore. It's like the writer feels guilty for regretting the collapse of the Habsburg Empire at all, so contradicts himself with baseless assertions, oversimplifications, and half-truths. The incoherent article might be summarized like this: "Yes, Europe was better off when the Habsburgs ruled, but the Habsburgs deserve absolutely no credit for that and what's happened since 1914 is all their fault anyway."

Since Prince Philip Kiril of Prussia asked the British people's forgiveness for his great-great-grandfather's role in the beginning of World War I a century ago, perhaps the British and other Allied governments should ask for _his_ forgiveness for their role in the republicanization of Europe--a monumental tragedy from which Europe has never recovered and for which Europeans, clinging to egalitarian and republican lies, have never repented. That the 20th century would have been better for everyone, including non-monarchists, if the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs had remained on their thrones is so blindingly obvious that it ought not to be controversial to say so. Republicanism is Death, basically, and Europeans should never be allowed to forget that.

An Archduke's New Video

Earlier this month, Ferdinand Habsburg (aka HI&RH Archduke Ferdinand, de jure Crown Prince of Austria & Hungary) released his second "vlog" (first here) on his training as an aspiring future Emperor...uh, I mean, racing driver.



It's hard for monarchists not to feel a twinge of disappointment when this charming 16-year-old (who undoubtedly would make a splendid Crown Prince if he were allowed to be) says that "One day I'd like to be famous for being a successful F1 driver, and not for being the great-grandson of the Emperor." But then if one of the advantages of monarchy is a head of state who did not seek the position, one can hardly expect non-reigning royalty to "campaign," and with the role of Crown Prince not currently available, HI&RH must carve out his own future. (One just hopes he'll stay safe.) Alas, it is the lot of 21st-century monarchists to often find ourselves "plus royaliste que le roi."

Blessed Karl Mass

I have been asked to help promote the Third Annual Blessed Emperor Karl Mass, Luncheon & Conference in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania on April 6. All details are available at the local Knights of Columbus blog. While I will be obligated to remain in Dallas, I encourage all readers able to be in the Pittsburgh area that Sunday, Catholic or non-Catholic, to make plans to attend.

Emperor Karl II

I applaud Archduke Karl's defense of his family and his grandfather, but respectfully disagree if HI&RH thinks the present European Union has anything in common with his family's great Empire. The republics occupying the lands ruled by his ancestors are abominations, and he is their legitimate Sovereign, even if he will not say so himself. (The Guardian's headline is misleading: Archduke Karl is not a descendant of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.)

Ferdinand Habsburg on YouTube

The sixteen-year-old heir to the Habsburg dynasty (HI&RH Archduke Ferdinand Zvonimir of Austria & Hungary to monarchists, Ferdinand Habsburg-Lothringen to racing fans) now has his own YouTube channel, DoubleEagle62, with his first video (filmed in Jamaica) debuting today. One wonders what his ancestors would think. It's slightly surreal as he works out to pulsating electronic music to remember that this is the great-grandson and de jure eventual successor of Emperor Bl Karl. But I have no doubt that he would be an extremely popular Crown Prince were his family still reigning. Both the fact that he is proud to race for both Austria and Hungary, and the name of his channel, suggest that he is not indifferent to his imperial heritage. Since it is not politically possible at the moment to support him as future Emperor, monarchists might as well support him as an increasingly visible motor sports star. Why not Subscribe today?