Archduchess Mechthildis of Austria was a daughter of Archduke Charles Stephen of Austria and a first cousin of King Alphonso XIII of Spain.
Background
Archduchess Mechthildis was a daughter of Archduke Charles Stephen of Austria and his wife Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria, Princess of Tuscany. Mechthildis’s father was a grandson of Archduke Karl Ferdinand of Austria who had led the Austrian army against Napoleon Bonaparte. Her father was a brother of Queen Maria Christina of Spain.
Education
Archduchess Mechthildis was educated by private tutors, her education made special emphasis on languages and she learned German, Italian, English French and from 1895 Polish.
Career
The couple had four children and lived in Poland until the outbreak of World World War II when they emigrated to Brazil. Mechthildis’s mother, Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria, Princess of Tuscany was a granddaughter of Leopold II, the last reigning Grand Duke of Tuscany. On her mother line, she was a great-granddaughter of King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies.
Her father had followed a career in the Austrian Navy and Mechthildis spent her formative years primarily in Istria in the then Austrian port of Pula in the Adriatic.
Her father was very wealthy and the family had a winter residence in the island of Losinj in the Adriatic, a palace in Vienna. In 1895 her father inherited from Archduke Albert vast properties in Galicia.
From 1907 the family main residence was in Zywiec castle in western Galicia.
Membership
She was member of the Teschen branch of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and an Archduchess of Austria and Princess of Bohemia, Hungary, and Tuscany by birth. At the outbreak of World World War II they fled to South America and stayed initially at Petropolis with members of the Brazilian Imperial family, the Orleans Braganza.