In the 1020s Radbot of Klettgau built a fortress in Aargau, in modern Switzerland, whose name likely means hawk’s castle; his grandson Otto II became the first Count of Habsburg. The family rose by serving the Staufer emperors and absorbing lands of extinct noble lines. Rudolf I was elected King of the Romans in 1273, defeated Ottokar II of Bohemia at the Marchfeld in 1278 and moved the family base to Vienna, while the Swiss Confederacy took the original castle in 1415. Rudolf IV forged the Privilegium Maius around 1358 to invent the title Archduke, which Emperor Charles IV rejected and Frederick III finally recognized in 1453. Marriages did the rest: Frederick III to Eleanor of Portugal, Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy and Philip the Handsome to Joanna of Castile, until Charles V in 1519 ruled an empire on which the sun never set.
After Charles V split the dynasty in 1556, the Spanish and Austrian branches married each other to hold their alliance together. Charles II of Spain, unable to chew because his jaws did not meet, died childless in 1700, and the Austrian male line ended in 1740. Maria Theresa and Francis Stephen of Lorraine rebuilt the house, Francis II dissolved the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and Charles I stepped back in November 1918 without formally abdicating before a 1919 law banished the family. In exile Otto von Habsburg, who spoke eight languages, campaigned against the Nazis, and the Gestapo executed Habsburg resistance fighters.
- A 2019 University of Santiago de Compostela study of 3,000 relatives over 16 generations linked inbreeding to the jaw.
- Charles II’s inbreeding coefficient was higher than that of a child of siblings.
- Franz Joseph learned Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Latin and Greek to address his subjects.
- Resistance member Heinrich Maier passed information on V-2 rocket and Tiger tank production to the Allies.
- About 150 Habsburgs lie in Vienna’s Capuchin Crypt, while their organs were kept in urns at St. Stephen’s Cathedral.
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