On Wednesday 5 April 1922, one hundred years ago, in Madeira, the funeral of the Emperor Charles of Habsburg took place, who died at the age of 34 on 1 April at the Quinta do Monte on the hill of Funchal, struck down by pneumonia. He was the last ruler of the House of Austria and was buried, exceptionally, in Funchal in the small church of Nossa Senhora do Monte and not in the legendary Capuchin Crypt in Vienna.
Franz Joseph, the penultimate Emperor of the Dual Monarchy, who died at the age of eighty-six, was buried in the Capuchin Crypt in Vienna. It was November 30, 1916. A famous photograph recalls the event: the coffin of the old monarch, on the gloomy hearse drawn by eight black horses, followed by the new imperial couple, the Emperor Charles and Zita. At the center of the couple, Crown Prince Otto.
The same hearse carried Zita, who died at ninety-six, to Vienna in the Capuchin Crypt on April 1, 1989. The same public ceremony had Otto, who died at ninety-eight, on July 16, 2011. Thousands of people accompanied the coffin through Vienna. , up to the threshold of the Capuchin Crypt, where the ancient traditional ceremony took place, in which the illustrious body must leave any symbol of temporal power before being able to rest in the ancient tombs of the House of Austria. Following a centuries-old ritual, the master of ceremonies knocks three times on the closed door of the Capuchin Crypt and twice in vain. For Zita, for example, the first time, when the guardian friar asked who was asking to enter, the master of ceremony listed aloud more than forty titles brought by the deceased. After those of Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, these covered the whole geographical map of Europe, starting from Queen of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, Galicia and Illyria to Duchess of Lorraine, etc. None of these titles should have impressed the friar who, as required by the ritual, declared that he did not know this person. A similar response came after the master of ceremonies knocked a second time, when the body was more succinctly described as that of “Her Majesty, Empress and Queen.” Only when the third identity of “Zita, a sinner and mere mortal” was proclaimed was the door opened and the coffin carried inside for the family funeral office. Why was the last Emperor Charles of Habsburg, beatified on 3 October 2004, not buried in Vienna?
In these days in early April, the heirs of Carlo and Zita (who had eight children and many grandchildren) met for the centenary of the death of Blessed Carlo in Madeira. Everyone, absolutely everyone, agrees that the body of the “Rei Santo”, as the inhabitants of the Portuguese island already greeted him in 1922, remains in the small church of Nossa Senhora do Monte.
In fact, on April 5, 1922, almost the whole island, thirty thousand people, gathered around the body of the last Emperor. In the presence of the Bishop of Funchal, António Pereira Ribeira, the body was then buried in the side chapel of the church of Nossa Senhora.
The coffin was carried to the tomb on a low two-wheeled cart, pulled by some of the followers, because there were no draft horses there. Dressed in black, in a modest manner, with worn shoes, the three eldest children – Otto, Adelaide and Roberto – followed the coffin, with in front, all hidden by a veil, a tall, erect woman, which fate had not bent. She was her Zita. The other figure, seen in a vintage photo, is Archduchess Maria Teresa.
The British, former enemies of the Great War, had brought the Habsburg imperial couple into exile in Madeira. King George V personally intervened, with trusted men, to save Charles and Zita, who in 1921 had twice tried to restore the monarchy in Hungary, in vain, from the chaos of Europe in flames. The English king did not want a repeat of a massacre like that of Tsar Nicholas II and of the entire Russian imperial family.
The landing in Funchal, on the southern coast of Madeira took place at three in the afternoon on Saturday 19 November 1921. By early morning the Cardiff officials had formally greeted the couple in the square. The vintage film shows the scene of the landing in Madeira, to which we can add details that have been handed down to us by the witnesses of that day, enriching the black and white images with virtual brushstrokes of color. A small boat, the Corbeia, takes Cardiff’s English captain Maitland-Kirwan to Pontinha pier. Carlo has a gray felt hat and is wearing a yellow raincoat. Zita is dressed in an elegant navy blue suit and her head is covered with a travel cap encircled by a red ribbon. The British consul goes on board to greet the sovereigns but has no instructions with him, he can ascertain, however, that the Emperor’s entourage is made up only of the count and countess Hunyady and two servants.
The Earl and Countess Hunyady, wealthy as they were in Hungary, could not afford the financial burden of a long stay in an English currency country, and in December 1921 they left the island. In January 1922, when the Empress returned to Switzerland to assist her sick son Roberto, Charles would have been completely alone if a Portuguese gentleman had not lent himself to keep him company.
The Emperor found a home in the Quinta do Monte, a villa suitable for the summer, but not for the winter and spring seasons. Zita, to Carlo’s great joy, reappeared with all her children in Madeira in February 1922 with the steamship Avon. On March 14, the Emperor fell seriously ill, but months before he had arrived on the island exhausted. He died on April 1, 1922, at noon twenty-three minutes. In his hands he has a crucifix and the Golden Fleece on his breast. He died echoing the last moments of Charles V and Philip II, watching from the bed through an open door the mass that was being celebrated in the adjacent room. And like Charles V, in the monastery of Yuste, he asked for the sacraments a second time before dying, and perhaps for the same reason.
Otto later recalled his father’s tragic end: “On 1 April 1922, the day he died, my mother called me. I remember this image very clearly: her pink dress, the flowers in the garden, the beautiful day, I remember her as my mother came up in that pale dress and said that my father was invoking me. I had to see how a Christian dies. And that’s how he died. ‘
On the death of the last Emperor, Otto was nine years old. According to the rules of the Habsburg family, according to the license of Francis II, the last Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, of 11 August 1804, the Habsburg head of the family bears the title of Emperor, no matter if and where he reigns. For the family, for the monarchical and legitimist circles, Otto is the new Habsburg ruler. Zita, above all, is the keeper of tradition: she had promised her dying husband to educate Otto as Emperor. Zita admonished him, “Now the responsibility is yours. You have to live up to him ». A photograph faded by time shows in the center Carlo’s widow, Zita, with Otto beside her. The new relationship between mother and child, the desire expressed on the deathbed by the father, as well as the quiet commitment of continuity assumed in front of that bed, all of this is captured in this memorable shot in which the characters are carefully placed in poses, after the funeral. Zita, in deep mourning, fixes her gaze on her eldest son, and with her right arm she protects his right arm. Her face is turned to the side. But the boy, also dressed in black, stares directly at the lens of the camera, his gaze is melancholy, but it is as if he had already assumed the responsibility his mother had told him about. In fact it was on Zita’s instructions that, from that moment on, the family had to address him with the title of “Your Majesty”.
* Roberto Coaloa, historian and Slavist, is the author of Charles of Habsburg. The last emperor. The “European gentleman” prophet of peace in the Great War (Il Canneto Editore, 2012), professor at the University of Paris-IV Sorbonne. He deals with the history of the Danubian countries and Eastern Europe.
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