Archduke Joseph Ferdinand of Austria was an Austro-Hungarian Archduke and the titular Grand Duke of Tuscany from 17 January 1908 to 2 May 1921, military commander, from 1916 Generaloberst, and early advocate of air power. He later retired to life as a common citizen of Austria, and was briefly imprisoned in Dachau during the Nazi era.
Background
Joseph Ferdinand was born in Salzburg to Ferdinand IV, Grand Duke of Tuscany, the last Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his wife, Alice of Bourbon-Parma. As the fourth child and second son, he assumed the mantle of heir after his elder brother gave up the claim following numerous scandals. He succeeded his father as head of the House of Tuscany on 17 January 1908.
Education
Joseph Ferdinand attended the military Oberrealschule at Hranice (in that time also known as Mährisch Weissenkirchen) and later the Maria Theresa Military Academy at Wiener Neustadt. Upon graduating from the academy, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Tirol Jäger regiment on 18 August 1892.
Career
General of Infantry Joseph Ferdinand at the outbreak of the Great War led the XIV Army Corps under General Moritz von Auffenberg near the Bug River, seeing action at Komarow, Zamocs, and Rawaruska. Joseph Ferdinand spent the winter of 1914 as head of the Fourth Army defending the snowy Carpathian passes. Early in 1915 he led this force at Bochina and Limanowa, taking part in the overall advance from Cracow to the Dunajec. The archduke was especially active during the capture of Krasnik, Lublin, and Volhynia. On June 4, 1916, however, General Aleksei Brusilov mounted his massive offensive against the Dual Monarchy's forces on a broad front stretching from south of the Pripet Marshes to the Rumanian frontier. The mixed German-Austro-Hungarian troops were under the command of the German General Alexander von Linsingen and consisted of the Austro-Hungarian
Fourth Army (Joseph Ferdinand), the First Army (Puhallo), the Seventh Army (Pflanzer-Baltin), and a composite force under General Felix von Bothmer. When the offensive finally ground to a halt in September, Brusilov had taken Austrian Galicia, the entire Bukovina, and was encamped on the slopes of the Carpathians; beyond lay the Carpathian passes and the very heart of the Dual Monarchy.
Joseph Ferdinand had been badly defeated at Luck, and the archduke had to witness the ignominious desertion of numerous Czech and Ruthene units. Nor had he helped his cause by spending the days hunting with aristocratic friends and permitting morale and discipline to decline precipitously. In fact, Joseph Ferdinand was a poor commander and after Luck was relieved as head of the Fourth Army. However, the new Emperor Charles exercised imperial prerogative and appointed the archduke, one of the empire's first balloonists, inspector general of air forces in 1917. Joseph Ferdinand died in Vienna on August 26, 1942.
Connections
He was married at Maria Plain on 2 May 1921 to Rosa Kaltenbrunner (Linz, 27 February 1878 - Salzburg, 9 December 1929), who was not a noble; the marriage lasted until their divorce in 1928. In Vienna on 27 January 1929, Joseph Ferdinand married again, this time to Gertrude Tomanek, Edle von Beyerfels-Mondsee (Brünn, 13 April 1902 - Salzburg, 15 February 1997). He had two children from this marriage; a daughter, Claudia Maria Theresia von Habsburg-Lothringen, Princess of Florence, born in Vienna on 6 April 1930, unmarried and without issue, and a son, Maximilian Franz Joseph Karl Otto Heinrich von Habsburg-Lothringen, Prince of Florence, born in Vienna on 17 March 1932 and married in London on 3 September 1961 to Doris Williams, born in Blundell Sands, Lancashire, on 24 December 1929, by whom he had an only daughter, Maria Camilla von Habsburg-Lothringen, Princess of Florence, born in Wimbledon on 29 May 1962, unmarried and without issue. After his first marriage he resigned as head of the House of Tuscany.