Karl Habsburg was born on 11 January 1961 in
Starnberg,
Bavaria. He was baptised in
Pöcking, Bavaria, as Archduke Karl of Austria (), the name entered in the baptismal records. At the time of his birth, his father was
de facto stateless and possessed a Spanish
diplomatic passport (he had grown up in Spain), while his mother was a German citizen. Like his father and siblings, he was
banished from Austria for the first years of his life. However, the administrative court of Austria later ruled that applying to return to the country was legal, and his family was granted visa entrance in June 1966.
House of Habsburg titles and issues In 1961, Karl's father,
Otto von Habsburg, renounced all claims to the defunct Austrian throne, as a necessary legal condition to being allowed to
return to Austria. Karl does not use his ancestral titles, because unlike most European countries, even the unofficial use of such titles is not permitted in Hungary and Austria. Habsburg says: I don't refer to titles, I'm not that vain. People use these titles out of respect for history and the role of my family in history.Although the
Adelsaufhebungsgesetz (Law on the Abolition of the Nobility) abolished all Austrian and Hungarian noble, royal, and imperial titles in 1919, and their usage is still illegal in those countries, media elsewhere occasionally refer to Karl Habsburg by his
ancestral titles of Archduke of Austria, Royal Prince of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia. At the request of the
USSR, which was wary of a restoration of the monarchy, the anti-Habsburg laws became mandatory international and constitutional components of the
Austrian State Treaty in 1955. The family tried to get their former property returned under rules for victims of the Nazi regime. The attempt of Karl Habsburg failed because the law of expropriation still has constitutional status. On 1 January 2007, his father relinquished his position as the
head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, a status which then devolved on Karl. In 2008, he became the Grand Master of the
Order of Saint George. As head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, Karl undertakes numerous commitments. On the one hand, these are cultural, historical, political, but also tourist events and, on the other hand, commitments to orders of chivalry, associations or military units. Many events, such as the participation in the peace flight in 2018 as a pilot with his plane, concerned the centenary of World War I. In 2019 there were many events in honor of his ancestor
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. He is supported in this work by an
adjutant general.
Education Between 1982 and 1989, Habsburg studied
law,
philosophy, and
political science at the
University of Salzburg, passing his first
staatsexamen in 1984; while there, he spent a year studying law and philosophy at
Michigan State University in the
United States. He received graduate degrees in business and law from
IMADEC University in 2012. ==Career==