Archduchess Karoline Marie of Austria


Archduchess Karoline Marie of Austria was a member of the House of Habsburg-Tuscany and Archduchess of Austria, Princess of Tuscany by birth. Through her marriage to Prince August Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Karoline was also a member of the Koháry branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Karoline was the fourth child and second eldest daughter of Archduke Karl Salvator of Austria and his wife Princess Maria Immaculata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. She was Princess-Abbess of the Theresian Royal and Imperial Ladies Chapter of the Castle of Prague.

Marriage and issue

Karoline married Prince August Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, second eldest son of Prince Ludwig August of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and his wife Princess Leopoldina of Brazil, on 30 May 1894 in Vienna. Karoline and August had eight children together:
  1. August Clemens.
  2. Klementine Maria, married on 17 November 1925 to Eduard von Heller.
  3. Maria Karoline. She had been living in an institution for mentally disabled people in Schladming, but was taken away and executed by gassing along with her fellow patients as a result of the Nazi eugenics policy, Action T4, in the concentration camp at Schloss Hartheim. As a great-granddaughter of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, she is commemorated in the Holocaust memorial at Rio de Janeiro.
  4. Rainer. Married twice and had issue by first marriage.
  5. Philipp, married morganatically on 23 April 1944 to Sarah Aurelia Hálasz; their only son and their four grandchildren were barred from the succession of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Kohary.
  6. Theresia, married on 6 October 1930 to Lamoral, Freiherr von Taxis di Bordogna e Valnigra.
  7. Leopoldine Blanka.
  8. Ernst Franz, married morganatically on 4 September 1939 to Irmgard Röll. This marriage was childless.