I enjoyed reading an article in German magazine Der Spiegel about the jewels of the last Austro-Hungarian Empire ruler, Karl I, and how they ended up in a safe place in Canada. Here's a lengthy excerpt.
It was the morning of November 1, 1918, and the end of his reign was nigh – that much was clear to Austria’s final emperor. His multi-ethnic empire of Austria-Hungary was rapidly disintegrating as crowds in the streets clamored for a republic. Given the direness of the situation, he turned to a loyal servant, Lord High Steward Leopold Count Berchtold and put him in charge of a sensitive mission. Emperor Karl I asked the count to secret the Habsburg family jewels out of the country.
Count Berchtold and his men retrieved dozens of pieces from the display cases of the Imperial Treasury in Vienna’s Hofburg. And in the chaotic days of the revolution, the emperor’s minions brought the riches safely across the border into Switzerland on November 4.
Among the pieces was the diamond crown of Empress Elisabeth (better known as Sisi), a cuff of brilliant-cut diamonds featuring a large emerald that Empress Maria Theresa used to wear for festive sleigh rides – and the legendary Florentine Diamond, a glorious, walnut-sized gemstone said to glow yellow. At 137 carats, it was said to be the fourth-largest diamond in the world. The only existing photograph of the diamond, a black-and-white image taken before 1918, shows it as part of a hat brooch.
Only three years after the clandestine operation, the treasure vanished without a trace. Since then, myths and conspiracy theories have swirled around its fate. It was stolen, said some, the Florentine Diamond cut up and transformed into cash. The rumors were myriad.
Now, though, those rumors can be put to rest.
. . .
At the center stands Zita of Habsburg, Austria’s last empress, Karl Habsburg’s grandmother. The grandson sketches the image of a brave, largely destitute woman, fleeing with her eight children.
The imperial couple eventually ended up on the Portuguese island of Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean. There, Karl I soon died of pneumonia.
Zita relocated with the children to the Basque Country and then to Belgium. Beginning in the mid-1930s, her eldest son Otto, Karl Habsburg’s father, rose to become an opponent of the Nazis. He was persecuted, and when the Wehrmacht attacked Belgium and France in 1940, Zita of Habsburg once again found herself on the run with her family.
They traveled through Bordeaux to the Spanish border, where hundreds of refugees were waiting to cross, but it was closed. A border guard, as Karl Habsburg tells it, recognized the former empress and allowed her to pass. "And then he asked who in the waiting crowd was part of her entourage and also needed to cross. And grandmother said: All of them.” Habsburg gestures expansively into the restaurant as though a long line of refugees were waiting there, desperate to cross a border in the Pyrenees.
And was the jewelry, was the giant diamond with them the whole time? That he does not know, Habsburg says. But in his narration, it isn’t difficult to visualize a delicate woman with a leather suitcase in her hand. In 1940, she resettled to Canada, in the Quebec City suburb of Sillery.
. . .
Christoph Köchert [co-owner of A.E. Köchert "Imperial and Royal Court and Chamber Jewelers and Goldsmiths since 1814”] in the sixth generation, is a man of gentile bearing.
On behalf of the Habsburgs, the jeweler recently traveled to Canada with a portable carat scale, a refractometer and an electronic diamond tester packed away in his suitcase. His task was determining whether the items in the safe were indeed those that had been missing for so long.
There is a note of reverence in Köchert’s gentle voice when he speaks of seeing the contents of the suitcase for the first time. "It was a sublime moment,” Köchert folds his hands, "possibly one of those you only experience once in a lifetime.”
Some of the pieces in the collection were made, augmented or worked on by his own forebears. He pulls out a photo of a watch set into a large, pear-shaped emerald with another emerald, ground wafer-thin, as its cover. Maria Theresa gave it to her daughter Marie Antoinette, who would later become queen of France and meet an untimely end at the guillotine.
There is a bodice bow of rubies, emeralds, and diamonds in the Hungarian national colors, once owned by Sisi. And there is the "stone of destiny,” that large, 137-carat yellow diamond.
"It is rare to see such a perfect stone,” Köchert says. It is extremely pure, he says, the color reminiscent of "a good Scottish whisky.” The cutter left the original surface in places on the edges. "This is one of the most famous diamonds in the world. The history, the craftsmanship – it is overwhelming.”
The diamond and the 15 other pieces in the safe are genuine, Köchert has no doubt about that. He has put it in writing in two authentication reports.
There's much more at the link. It's a fascinating story.
Peter
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