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Archduke Charles Albrecht of Austria, Archduke Charles Stephen of Austria, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Emperor Charles I of Austria-Hungary, Kingdom of Poland, Regency Kingdom of Poland, Republic of Poland, World War I
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary allowed formation of a Polish quasi-government, the Supreme National Committee, and had three different ideas regarding Poland. One, the “Austro-Polish Solution”, involved the creation of a Polish kingdom under the Emperor of Austria, who, among his other titles, was already King of Galicia and Lodomeria. German and Magyar (Hungarian) elements within the Habsburg monarchy opposed such a move for fear of creating a predominantly Slavic area.
Unlike Emperor Franz Joseph, however, Emperor Charles I of Austria, who had acceded to the Habsburg thrones in 1916, promoted the idea. The other two ideas involved the division of the former Congress Poland between Germany and Austria-Hungary, or between Austria-Hungary and a state built from Lithuania, Belarus and the remnants of Congress Poland to create a new version of the 1795 dissolved Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Habsburg candidate
Of the candidates for the new Polish throne, Archduke Charles Stephen of Austria (1860 – 1933) and his son Archduke Charles Albrecht (1888 – 1951) were early contenders. Both resided in the Galician town of Saybusch (now Żywiec) and spoke Polish fluently. Charles Stephen’s daughters were married to the Polish aristocrats Princes Czartoryski and Radziwiłł.
Archduke Charles Stephen of Austria was born at the castle of Gross Seelowitz in Moravia (today Židlochovice near Brno in the Czech Republic), the son of Archduke Charles Ferdinand of Austria 1818–1874, himself son of Archduke Charles of Austria, Duke of Teschen; and of his wife Archduchess Elisabeth Franziska of Austria (1831–1903), the daughter of Palatine Joseph of Hungary, Archduke of Austria (1776–1847) and his third wife Maria Dorothea of Württemberg (1797–1855).
On February 28, 1886 at Vienna, Charles Stephen married Archduchess Maria Theresia, Princess of Tuscany, she was the daughter of Archduke Charles Salvator of Austria, Prince of Tuscany and his wife Princess Maria Immaculata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. The ceremony took place in the Hofburg and was witnessed by Cardinal Ganglbauer.
Their son, Archduke Charles Albrecht of Austria, was a landowner in Żywiec, a colonel of artillery in both the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army (cavalry) and the Polish Army, and the 1,175th knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1910.
In 1918 and again in 1939 he became a volunteer in the Polish army. He fought in the Polish–Soviet War. In 1920, he commanded the Grudziądz Fortress. During the German occupation of Poland, he declared Polish nationality and refused to sign the Volksliste. He was imprisoned in November 1939, kept in Cieszyn[citation needed] and tortured by the Gestapo. His wife was interned in Wisła. He left prison blind in one eye and half-paralyzed. In October 1942, Albrecht and his family were sent to a labor camp in Strausberg. After liberation, he moved to Kraków and then to Sweden. His estate was confiscated in 1939 by the invading Germans, and again in 1945 by the Polish People’s Republic.
Family and children
On November 8, 1920 he married morganatically Alice Elisabeth Ankarcrona (born at Tullgarn, near Trosa, December 18, 1889 and died at Saltsjöbaden, near Stockholm, November 26, 1985) in the castle of Żywiec Poland. She was a daughter of Oscar Carl Gustav Ankarcrona and his wife, Anna Carleson. The head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine accorded her the hereditary title of “Princess of Altenburg” on December 15, 1949.
According to Polish historian Janusz Pajewski “the Austrians had underestimated Germany’s desire to determine Poland’s fate”. They did recognise, according to Prime Minister Karl von Stürgkh, that “Poles will remain Poles […] even 150 years after Galicia was joined to Austria, Poles still didn’t become Austrians”.
After Germany’s 1918 Spring Offensive had failed to win the war on the Western front, General Ludendorff in September proposed seeking peace based on the plan outlined by U.S. President Wilson in January 1918 in his Fourteen Points, which in regard to Poland demanded the creation of an “independent Polish state … guaranteed by international covenant” with “free and secure access to the sea”. On October 3, the new German Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, announced Germany’s acceptance of Wilson’s plan and immediate disestablishment of military administration in the countries occupied by Germany.
In spite of the initial total dependence of this client state on its sponsors, it ultimately served against their intentions in the aftermath of the Armistice of November 11, 1918 as the cornerstone proto-state of the nascent Second Polish Republic, the latter composed also of territories never intended by the Central Powers to be ceded to Poland, and therefore played a crucial role in the resurrection of Polish statehood.
On November 16, 1918, Piłsudski sent a radio telegram to “Mr President of the United States, the Royal English Government, the Government of the French Republic, the Royal Italian Government, the Imperial Japanese Government, the Government of the German Republic, as well as the governments of all the warring or neutral states”, notifying them about the establishment of an independent Polish State, named in the telegram as the Polish Republic.
On November 17, both the newly designated prime minister Daszyński and the provisional government of Wróblewski resigned in favour of the new Moraczewski government, finally ending the governmental diarchy. Therefore, either November 14, or November 17, may both be considered the final day of kingdom’s existence. The transition to republican government was formally completed through the decree of November 22, 1918 on the supreme representational authority of the Polish Republic, which stipulated assumption by Piłsudski of the interim office of chief of state.