Unfortunately, the Spiegel interview is behind a paywall. But Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times independently reported the story and spoke to Habsburg family members.
“In 1918 […] To safeguard jewels that the ruling Hapsburgs had owned for centuries, [Emperor Charles I] had them transported to Switzerland.
One gem in the collection was a particular prize, a 137-carat diamond admired not only for its pear shape and yellow hue but also for its illustrious history. Before the Hapsburgs, it had been owned by the Medici family, the rulers of Florence.
[…] It’s been in a bank vault in Canada since the family fled there in the midst of World War II, according to three Hapsburg relatives who last month invited The New York Times to inspect the diamond and other jewels.
Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen, 64, a grandson of Charles I, said in an interview that the secret had been kept out of respect for Charles’s wife, the Empress Zita. She told only two people — her sons Robert and Rodolphe — about the diamond’s location, he said, and asked that, as a security precaution, it be kept undisclosed for 100 years after Charles’s death in 1922. Before they died, the brothers passed the information to their own sons, according to the family.
[…]
“The less people know about it, the bigger the security,” said Mr. von Habsburg-Lothringen, whose family prefers the original spelling of the Habsburg name. He said he had only recently learned of the existence of the jewels from his two cousins — Robert’s son, Lorenz von Habsburg-Lothringen, 70, and Rodolphe’s son, Simeon von Habsburg-Lothringen, 67.
[...]
But now, with the vow fulfilled, the family wants to display the Florentine Diamond and other jewels in Canada to thank the country for taking in the empress and her children.
“It should be part of a trust here in Canada,” Mr. Habsburg-Lothringen said. “It should be on exhibition in Canada sometimes, so that people can actually see those pieces.”
[…]
Christoph Köchert of A.E. Köchert jewelers, once Austria’s imperial court jewelers, examined the diamond and attested to its authenticity.
[…]
The collection includes a number of other items of jewelry, including a diamond-encrusted Order of the Golden Fleece, the house order of the Hapsburg family.
[…]
After Charles I died from pneumonia in Madeira, where the family had moved from Switzerland, Empress Zita and her children relocated to Spain, and then to Belgium in 1929.
[…] When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, an event known as the Anschluss, Otto was declared an enemy of the state. Concerned that Germany was about to invade Belgium, Zita fled with her eight children, ultimately arriving in the United States in 1940, according to the family.
The empress, family members said, carried the jewels with her in a small cardboard suitcase. Finally, with American help, the family traveled to Canada and settled in a modest house in the province of Quebec.
[…] In 1953, Zita returned to Europe and left the jewels in the care of the Quebec bank.
[…] Just how rumors of the diamond’s disappearance originated is unclear; the family says it did not start them.
[…]
Mr. [Richard] Bassett’s report says the jewels that Charles I took with him were listed in a separate inventory from the state crown jewels of the Hapsburg monarchy. He said this position — that items taken by the family were the private property of the Habsburg-Lorraine house — was confirmed by a legal advocate for the imperial family in 1921, when the Austrian government put pressure on the Swiss government for their return.
While the First Austrian Republic enacted legislation in 1919 that expropriated the Hapsburg family’s private property in Austria, Mr. Bassett said it did not apply to the jewels because by that time they were outside Austria.
Signage at the Imperial Treasury museum in Vienna, he pointed out, refers to the gems that Charles took with him into exile as those that had been “inventoried as personal jewellry.”
[…]”
archived 6 Nov 2025 10:10:58 UTC
archive.ph
On a side note: Interesting that Prince Lorenz of Belgium chooses to use “Lorenz von Habsburg-Lothringen” and avoids mentioning his Belgian royal status for this story.
I wonder if it was because Robert and Rodolphe were bankers whereas Otto was a politician?
nos.nl
www.habsburg-heritage.com
www.derstandard.de
I am not informed enough to speculate on his thinking, but generally speaking, comments in the vein of “If I can do it, I absolutely will” can be a diplomatic form of saying “I can do nothing”.
