This book is dedicated with profound respect to His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Rudolph of Austria, Knight of the Golden Fleece. His superb example of imperial and princely grace and my relationship with him created and refined my interest in the field of nobility and royalty, especially as it relates to international law that preserves the supreme legal right to rule.

Rudolf Syringus Peter Karl Franz Joseph Robert Otto Antonius Maria Pius Benedikt Ignatius Laurentius Justiniani Marcus d’Aviano von HABSBURG-LORRAINE (5 September 1919 to 15 May 2010), Prince Imperial and Archduke of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungary, Bohemia, and Croatia, His Imperial and Royal Highness, was born in exile as the youngest son of Karl Franz I & IV, the most recent Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary, Beatified and raised to the Altar on 3 November 2004 by Pope John Paul II.

Archduke Rudolph’s crib was a laundry basket because number 6 of the Anti-Habsburg Law enacted on 3 April 1919 by Dr. Karl Renner’s revolutionary Austro-Marxist Republic, had stripped his parents of all earthly possessions, and number 2 of the same law expelled them penniless from Austria. Dr. Renner permanently enshrined the Anti-Habsburg Law in Article 149(1), 5th Sentence, of the present Austrian Constitution.

Through the subtle mechanizations of Edward Benes, Mason 33º, the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia, who knew Emperor Charles suffered from bronchitis, the All-Seeing Eye of cosmopolitan international Masonry exiled Archduke Rudolph’s father, the Blessed Karl Franz I & IV of Austria and Hungary to the humid moist Isle of Madeira where the Emperor died of bronchial infection within a year.

Further exiled, first to Spain, and then to Belgium until the outbreak of World War II, his mother, Kaiserine Zita, was so broke that after being exiled to Canada she would send her children out to pick dandelions in the woods from which she would make salads. Yet, Archduke Rudolph said that his mother never once complained about their situation but was delighted to be alive having barely escaped from the wrath of the Nazi Führer. (The Cause for the Canonization of Kaiserine Zita was opened on Guadete Sunday, 2009.)

After World War II occult considerations of the State, by the All-Seeing Eye, string-pulling by international finance capital from behind-the-scenes, combined with the overt, more honest, policy reasons of Soviet Communism, Dr. Karl Renner’s 1919 Anti-Habsburg Law was institutionalized in Article 10(2) of the 1955 Austrian State Treaty.

Whilst a graduate student of public international law at the George Washington University in Washington DC, I discovered the possibilities for a case to recover the private entailed properties of the Habsburg Dynasty confiscated in 1919 by Dr. Karl Renner. These properties were returned in 1936 by the Catholic Austrian Dollfuss-Schuschnigg Government, but they were re-confiscated by the Nazis in 1939 after the Anschluss, which the present Austro-Marxist Republic has steadfastly refused to return to the Imperial Family since the end of World War II.

Ironically, at the time of the Anschluss, to save his hide (and his pension), Dr. Karl Renner, Founder of the Republic, called upon his fellow Austrians give up their sovereignty, the pride of their nation, and vote for the Anschluss in Hitler’s rigged Plebiscite of 10 April 1938:

While teaching international law and human rights at a poverty law school, your author taught inner city graduate students wearing Fidel Castro “shades,” Che Guevara fatigues, and Sandinastra liberation berets on top of Afro hairdos. They were very interested in how Kaiser Karl used his own royal coaches to haul coal to the poor of Vienna during the War: “One cool king dude” was their verdict as they assisted in the preliminary research and taught your author how to slap “high fives.”

During the summer of 1981, when your author was at The Hague Academy of International Law, he travelled to Brussels to meet Archduke Rudolph to discuss the possibilities for a legal case to recover these entailed properties to provide the Imperial House with the means to recover its sovereign political position in Europe.

I walked down from Gare Centrale in Bruxelles Midi to Archduke Rudolph’s office on Rue de la Loi. He was the managing partner of Banque Arthur Bonnewyn, a private bank in Brussels, engaged in investment management and venture capitalism around the world. This firm was so discrete that there was no sign – not even a brass door plate – announcing its existence. Housed in a magnificent 19th century building, one felt a sense of occasion upon walking through its massive Art Noveau wrought iron doors into a totally different world of gilded tellers’ cages and liveried footmen in white gloves.

Archduke Rudolph’s office was in a magnificent long room possessing a high ceiling, a superb marble fireplace mantel having a chiming clock, and a bust of King Leopold II. At one end of this room, by the side of the mammoth fireplace was Archduke Rudolph’s desk. Next to a pinkish copy of the FINANCIAL TIMES upon his desk sat the most marvelous antique Eiffel-tower telephone in complete working order all of which I can still picture in my mind’s eye.

Archduke Rudolph, himself, was the soul of kindness. He thanked me profusely for my gratis research to recover the Nazi confiscated properties belonging to his family (as acquired civil law rights vesting as property under the 1936 Settlement Agreement), which the present post-war Austro-Marxist Republic had adamantly refused to return to the Imperial Family for the past sixty-seven years. Thereupon, the Archduke entrusted me with a copy of the unpublished 1839 Family Statute, the 1900 Amendment thereto, and the text of the 1936 Settlement Agreement.

After listening to the details of my research to recover this Nazi-confiscated private family property from the clutches of the Republic, the Archduke took me to lunch at the Club Royale, founded by King Leopold II of the Belgians. The surroundings were absolutely regal. Archduke Rudolph introduced me to one of his friends, a Belgian financial Baron: I felt nothing but amazement at the splendor and grandeur of my surroundings.

One afternoon during that autumn of 1981, I received an unexpected telephone call from Archduke Rudolph in New York City. The Archduke travelled to New York four or five times a year on business. He invited me up for the day. I insisted that he didn’t have to, but the Archduke declared that he wanted to. One doesn’t argue with an Archduke.

At his office building next to the New York Stock Exchange, I remember particularly Archduke Rudolph’s personal kindliness and courtesy towards the Black porters, janitors, elevator men, floor sweepers, and toilet cleaners. All of whom addressed the Archduke as “Mr. Rudolph”, a form of respect used by American Blacks. Upon entering and exiting the office building at 63 Wall Street, Archduke Rudolph always made a point of speaking with these Black working men as genteelly as he might have addressed the Grand Master of the Order of Malta or some other prominent leader. By way of contrast, I noticed that the capitalists, plutocrats, and Republicans who inhabited this building treated these Black floor sweepers as dirt beneath their feet.

That an Archduke would be courteous to a Cardinal clad in scarlet is only to be expected, but the fact that he might show the same exact courtesy towards Black porters and trashmen was completely unexpected. This evidenced the authentic innate character of Archduke Rudolph as a true prince of the earth.

For the next twenty years, this became a regular ritual of my life. Living in either Washington or Boston (where I researched the Case at the famous Harvard International Law Library, four or five times a year I rose at 4:30 am, took the 6:00 am express train from South Station, Boston, arriving at Penn Station, NYC, at 11:30 am, took the subway to Archduke Rudolph’s office on Wall Street; attend Mass with him at Our Lady of Victory Church, and lunched with the Archduke to discuss the Case at his private club in the Financial District. The Archduke would insist upon giving me expense money for my trip, which was always far more than the price of my train ticket.

In October 1986, the Archduke visited me in Boston where I had arranged for him to address the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Afterwards, we went to my apartment in a triple-decker tenement where I wanted Archduke Rudolph to see a portrait of Kaiser Karl painted for me by a retarded and illiterate dustman, whom I had taken in after his mother died, the painting of which led to his conversion. Slightly but delightfully retarded as a permanent child, Raymond thinks that he is a pig and “Oinks” at people.

The Archduke thanked him for keeping me picked-up so that I might work full-time upon the Case for the Imperial House. Raymond was so thrilled upon having his particular role in this Case recognized by Kaiser Karl’s own son that in pure joy he began “Oinking” at Archduke Rudolph. One received the distinct impression that the Archduke did not mind being “Oinked” at.

It is the magnanimous measure of his innate inner nobility that Archduke Rudolph treated a poor retarded dustman as genteelly as he treated that Belgian financial Baron at the Club Royale in Brussels. There was more than an obvious difference between genuine nobility, such as, Archduke Rudolph, and the spurious superficial “nobility” of snobby rich “elite” who judge every aspect of life by money. Archduke Rudolph saw the worth and value of every human being.

Whenever I travelled to Europe to work on the Habsburg Case with Counsel in Vienna, I always stopped in Brussels to visit Archduke Rudolph: He even invited me to his private home in the Woluwe St. Pierre suburb and introduced me to his young wife and his little daughter, age 9, who possessed all of the delicate blond features of a porcelain doll. The Archduke had been married previously. His first wife was killed in a tragic automobile accident, leaving the Archduke with a house full of small to half-grown children. Similar to the aristocratic father in “The Sound of Music”, Archduke Rudolph re-married a much younger Princess from Bavaria to provide a new mother for all of these children! This little girl was the child of his second marriage. She knew she was a real princess, recited her descent from the Merovingian Kings, and curtseyed as charmingly as might any princess in a storybook:

As a ritual of life, Archduke Rudolph went to a small church near his office for daily Mass. Visiting in Brussels, I always went with him. The other members of the congregation appeared to be Belgian charwomen, workingmen, and common labourers. The Archduke was the only man with a coat and tie. I recall seeing a chauffeur’s uniform on one man, janitor’s clothes on another, and charwomen in soiled dresses. They were real people who did genuine work to earn their daily bread.

I was impressed that the Archduke always chose to go for daily Mass in this particular church patronized by honest working men and charwomen who cleaned toilets. There appeared to be a certain bonhomie between Archduke Rudolph and the working class people with whom he went to daily Mass. They knew each other as fellow Christians with a mutual devotion to the Eucharistic Jesus: If more princes were like Archduke Rudolph, there would be fewer republics.

Watching Archduke Rudolph out of the corner of my eye as he received Communion, I noticed that he was just as devout as the humblest charwoman in that congregation. The Archduke was as real a person as any of them.

He told me about serving in the U. S. Army during World War II. President Roosevelt promised Archduke Otto (Rudolph’s eldest brother) the creation of an “Austrian Battalion” in the U. S. Army for refugees from Nazism to assist in Austria’s liberation. Rather than recruit practicing Catholics from ethnic national parishes in large American cities, who would have been delighted to serve with the Habsburgs, the leftist component of Roosevelt’s entourage directed agnostics and Marxists into this “Austrian Battalion” with the intended result that it would collapse.

Having enlisted in the U. S. Army to serve in the Austrian Battalion, Archduke Rudolph then elected to receive OSS (guerrilla warfare and counter-intelligence) training from the U. S. Army. Secretly entering the Tyrol, Austria’s most loyal Crownland to lead an anti-Nazi resistance group, Archduke Rudolph was captured by the Gestapo. A search quickly discovered documentation revealing his true identity as an Archduke, the youngest son of the most recent Emperor.

Der Führer harboured a particular enmity towards the Habsburg Family as can be easily seen in the book MIEN KAMPF. He had a bitter personal grudge against Empress Zita dating from the Winter of 1912 when she was a young bride and he was a street bum. Zita had hired Hitler and other street people to clear the snow from the Hotel Imperial in Vienna for a party she was giving. According to Hitler’s own account, the young Archduchess Zita failed to give him proper recognition as a “man.” Age 20, she was very good looking, but was, apparently, not the least “attracted” to him. The future Führer deeply resented this slight by the beautiful young woman who soon became Empress of Austria.

Archduke Rudolph was sentenced to be hung for “treason” against the Third Reich. The Gestapo planned to film Archduke Rudolph’s execution to send to Berlin for the enjoyment of the Führer. The condemned Archduke was confined in a third-story room of the Gestapo headquarters while the scaffold was being constructed. Archduke Rudolph said that he could hear the hammering of the Gestapo as they erected his scaffold. Saying an Act of Perfect Contrition, Archduke Rudolph noticed that there were no bars on this third-story window.

Taking advantage of his paratrooper training with the American OSS, Archduke Rudolph jumped out of the third-story window. Landing safely on his feet, Archduke Rudolph saw that the Gestapo had just completed his gallows and noticed the cameras waiting to film his impending execution. Desperate, he fled into a nearby woods that was covered with a low, dense fog.

Running hither and thither through the forest during the night, Archduke Rudolph could hear SS men shouting directions as the search began. He was chased through the forest by the SS, Gestapo police officers, Nazi police dogs, and searched after by low flying airplanes. Hearing barking, the Archduke surmised that the Nazis had scented savage police dogs to find him. Archduke Rudolph found a swift flowing creek and ran a mile up stream through the raging icy waters to throw off the ravening Nazi dogs that he could hear howling from afar for his flesh.

As he fled, Archduke Rudolph said he could see low flying Nazi airplanes training search lights upon the fog-ridden woods in an attempt to find him. As one such search plane flew directly overhead, the Archduke quickly ducked into the freezing creek. He saw the floodlights piercing eerily through the thick fog above him, but the airplane was unable to spot him through the denseness of the fog: “Thank God for that fog!” he exclaimed as he realized he had a very good chance of surviving.

Shivering from exposure, Archduke Rudolph was discovered by loyal Tyrollean peasants from the most Catholic part of Austria. They took him to a nearby church. The priest hid Archduke Rudolph in a secret room in the medieval church tower. Through slits in this room Archduke Rudolph could follow Mass. He also watched the SS invade the church with dogs attempting to sniff him out, but to no avail. “I never prayed so hard in my life,” he confessed. Finally, he was able to make contact with his resistance group in the Tyrol. For his exploits in November 1945, Archduke Rudolph was created a Knight of the Golden Fleece – he had truly earned his spurs by his courage and unrelenting fortitude!

Thoroughly impressed, your author renamed him “The Hero Archduke” though he always insisted that he was not a hero because as he explained, “I was scared to death the entire time!” Be that as it may, his becoming modesty makes Archduke Rudolph even more of a true hero. He clearly qualified for the Order of Maria Theresa – the Old Austrian equivalent of the Victoria Cross or the American Congressional Medal of Honour.

Proudly, Archduke Rudolph returned to the forced exile imposed by the Republic secure in the knowledge that he had done his duty to help free his native land from tyranny, so unlike Dr. Renner who sold out his country upon the occasion of the 1938 Anschluss. Who was the true Austrian Patriot and who was the Knave?

The Archduke is now history. He was the mettle of legend. He gave the heroic example of Christian Knighthood in action – coming over oceans and mountains, crossing frontiers bristling with bayonets, and searched for by ravening Nazi dogs thirsting to tear at his flesh, Rudolph of Austria came as a Knight errant freely offering his life to free a Land from which he had been exiled before his birth from the tyranny of Nazism into which it had been betrayed by native Quislings and Collaborators unworthy of the name “Austrian.”

Archduke Rudolph was the finest man I ever knew. This book is dedicated to the honor of this great man and the laws that uphold the sovereign rights and entitlements of dispossessed kings and princes as well as the exiled governments that maintain the rights of non-territorial sovereignty.