In the circle of the Habsburg myth. Alicja Ankarcrona – the Badeni family – the Habsburgs – Altenburg (1889–1985)

Abstract

Alicja Ankarcrona lived in Stockholm, Brussels, Busko, Lviv, Vienna and Żywiec. She belonged to the European elite of the elites of the turn of the 19th and the 20th century. The Swedish aristocrat who married the Polish count and, after his death, married the Habsburg archduke. She did not stop being a Swede when she became Polish. She did not stop being Polish when during WWI she tied the knot with the Habsburg from Żywiec. She belonged to “the Beautiful Era”. In her life she experienced emperors and kings, two world wars and times of dictatorship but mentally never left that era. She was a member of the Home Army (AK). After the war she lived in a very modest way. She was addressed as the Habsburg duchess (after her husband) although the title no longer existed. She was the embodiment of “better times” and “the Habsburg myth”. Her life was the history of Europe in a miniature scale and an incredibly curious case of eternal entanglement in the past.