She was born in
Vienna as Franziska Gräfin Larisch von Moennich, the daughter of Eugen Graf Larisch von Moennich (1835-1880) and his wife, Countess Gabriele
Deym von Stritez (1847-1878). She thereby came from a
Silesian
Uradel Larisch family which then ranked among the oldest and most prominent noble dynasties of
Austria-Hungary. In 1898 she married Prince (
Fürst) Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg (1861-1927), a large-scale landowner and scion of another very famous and even more prestigious aristocratic
House of Starhemberg. The couple resided in
Eferding,
Upper Austria, where their eldest son
Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg was born in 1899. Her husband was a hereditary member of the Austrian
House of Lords and in 1902 became a deputy of the Upper Austrian
Landtag diet in
Linz, while she committed herself to the
Austrian Red Cross and had several honorary positions, among them the chair of the
Upper Austrian Red Cross Women's Association from 1916. Franziska von Starhemberg became interested in politics herself, first as founder and head of the Upper Austrian Catholic Women's Organisation (
Katholische Frauenorganisation), from 1919 also as a board member of the Christian Social Party (
Christlichsoziale Partei) under
Ignaz Seipel. Upon the dissolution of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and the emergence of the
First Austrian Republic, however, her ambitions to become a candidate for the
National Council were denied. Instead from 1920 to 1931 she was a member of the
Federal Council (
Bundesrat), the
upper house of the
Austrian Parliament. During the rise of
Austrofascism in the early 1930s, she alienated from both the Christian Social Party and her son Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg. Chancellor
Engelbert Dollfuss provided her with a post at the
League of Nations in 1934. Upon the Austrian
Anschluss to
Nazi Germany in 1938, Franziska Starhemberg was temporarily arrested and afterwards retired from public life. She died in the
Czech Silesian spa town of
Bad Darkau (present-day Darkov, part of
Karviná). == Notes ==