The Otto von Habsburg Foundation launched its online platform in Budapest on Monday, making the legacy of the last heir to the Hungarian throne searchable.
Otto von Habsburg contributed to the fact that the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall no longer separated Europe and Germany, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, Gergely Gulyás recalled in his speech.
He had witnessed the fall of the Habsburg Empire and the death of his father Charles IV as a child, but regardless of his changed status, he followed the legacy of his ancestors and the best traditions of duty and service. He fought against Nazism and communism, the minister said.
Gergely Gulyás
Otto von Habsburg was committed to working for the building of a new continent on a Christian democratic basis. He advocated the creation of a European Union made up of cooperating nations rather than empires fighting each other to the death.
“Today, when we are confronted with so many difficulties and divisions in European politics, when allies appear as enemies, we can say that the message of Otto von Habsburg is more relevant than ever, and hopefully more people will consider it as a guideline”, Gergely Gulyás said.
Gergely Prőhle, director of the Otto von Habsburg Foundation, emphasized:
Otto von Habsburg referred to his Hungarian roots in many of his documents and he referred to Hungarian as his second mother tongue.
The foundation, whose sponsor is the Prime Minister’s Office, can also contribute to promoting Otto von Habsburg’s values in relation to Christian Europe, the director said.
Gergely Prőhle
The foundation began working on the legacy in 2019. In recent years, they have developed a system for managing the collections, the basic structure of the archive, and a methodology for digital access. The event presented the results so far of the thematic processing of the different collection areas – archive, library, and artifact collections.
On the newly launched online platform, the Hungarian-language secretarial correspondence of Ottó Habsburg, part of his photo collection, and excerpts from video interviews conducted by Péter Bokor and Gábor Hanák in the 1980s will be made digitally accessible for the first time.
This article was originally published on our sister site Ungarn Heute.
Photos via MTI/Koszticsák Szilárd; featured photo via the Otto von Habsburg Foundation