Archduke Of Austria Leopold Ferdinand

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Family

Austrian archduke as the eldest son of Ferdinando IV, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Alicia of Bourbon-Parma. In 1892 and 1893 Leopold accompanied Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on a sea voyage through the Suez Canal and on to India and Australia. The relationship between the two Archdukes was extremely bad and their permanent attempts to outdo and humiliate the other one led the Kaiser Franz Joseph to order Leopold Ferdinand to return to Austria immediately. He left the ship in Sydney and went back to Europe. He was dismissed from the Austro-Hungarian Navy and entered an infantry regiment at Brno. Eventually he was appointed colonel of the 81st Regiment FZM Baron von Waldstätten. Leopold fell in love with a prostitute, Wilhelmine Adamovicz, whom he met for the first time in Augarten - a park in Vienna (some other sources claim their first meeting took place in Olmütz), having begotten an illegitimate child with another woman only a little time before. His parents offered him 100,000 florins on condition that he leave his mistress. He refused to do so and instead decided the renounce the crown in order to be able to marry her. On 29 December 1902 it was announced that the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria had agreed to a request by Leopold to renounce his rank as an archduke. He adopted the name Leopold Wölfling. On the day of his departure from Austria he was notified that he was forbidden from returning to Austrian lands. He became a Swiss citizen. He was given a gift of 200,000 florins as well as a further 30,000 florins as income from his parents. After World War I Wölfling's allowance from his family stopped. In 1921 he returned to Austria, and did various jobs. He then moved to Berlin where he worked in menial jobs, acted in a cabaret and wrote his memoirs. His third marriage in Niederschöneweide was with the Berlin-born Klara Hedwig Pawlowski in 1933. Wölfling died impoverished on 4 July 1935 in Berlin. Link to Wikipedia biography