The Final End of the Hapsburg Dynasty

[Guest fountainhall]

Its death throws have lasted for most of the last 100 years. But now the House of Hapsburg, one of the most important royal houses of Europe for centuries with roots dating back to 10th and 11th centuries, can finally be said to be officially no more!

 

In its heyday, the Empire, ruled over many countries in Europe, including Spain, much of Italy and large chunks of Central Europe. It was the origin of all the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, a title that goes back to Charlemagne in the 8th century.

 

By the mid-19th century, with the emergence of many new countries within Europe, the Austrian House of Hapsburg agreed to share power with the separate state of Hungary to become the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was the assassination in 1914 of the Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, which started the First World War. By its end the Empire had collapsed and was split up, with chunks allocated to Austria, Hungary, Italy Poland, Romania, Croatia, the Ukraine, the new state of Czechoslovakia, and a clutch of smaller states in the Balkans - Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, which were later to form the bulk of Yugoslavia. This was in turn to lead to the Balkan wars of independence in the 1990s.

 

Now comes news that Otto von Hapsburg, the eldest son of the last ruler of the Empire, has died in Germany at the age of 98. A centuries-long chapter of European history, much of it filled with blood, is finally at an end.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14019319

[Guest aot87]

I agree that the last son might have died , but he also had sons

[Guest fountainhall]

It seems he was survived by quite a brood - a younger brother, as well as 7 children, 22 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. The point of the BBC's article, though was that Otto was the last official heir to the throne. He was four when his father the Emperor died in 1916. The Empire was dissolved at the end of World War I two years later. So, without no throne, there can now be no further heirs to the House of Hapsburg.