Archduchess Maria Magdalena of Austria (1939-2021)

Archduchess Maria Magdalena, 2004.

The death of Archduchess Maria Magdalena of Austria was announced on Wednesday, 18 August. According to the Romanian royal house, Maria Magdalena died in Salzburg, Austria. The archduchess was eighty-one years-old. Castle Bran's Facebook account issued the following statement:

At Bran Castle, we mourn the passing into eternity, after a long and undeserved suffering, of Her Imperial and Royal Highness, Archduchess Maria Magdalena Holzhausen.

A model of grace, dignity, and warmth, she was, along with her brother and sister, the cornerstone of the Castle’s reconstruction, devastated after decades of neglect. She became one of the legends of Bran by mixing, with royal discretion and unparalleled humor, guidance and support.

We express our deepest condolences to her husband, Baron Hans von Holzhausen, her children, Baron Johannes, Baron Georg and Baroness Alexandra, her brother Archduke Dominic Habsburg and her sister Archduchess Alexandra Baillou.

She will always be in our hearts and our prayers, as is her grandmother, Queen Maria, her mother, Princess Ileana and her dear sister, Archduchess Elisabeth. May God grant her Eternal Rest in Peace.

Princess Ileana and Archduke Anton, 1931.
Photograph (c) Getty Images / Keystone-France.

Born at Schloß Sonnberg on 2 October 1939, the archduchess, known en famille as "Magi," was the fifth child and third daughter of Archduke Anton of Austria (1901-1987) and Princess Ileana of Romania (1909-1991), who married in 1931 and divorced in 1954. Maria Magdalena had five siblings: Archduke Stefan (1932-1998), Archduchess Maria Ileana (1933-1959), Archduchess Alexandra (b.1935), Archduke Dominic (b.1937), and Archduchess Elisabeth (1942-2019).

Archduchess Maria Magdalena, Princess Ileana, and Archduchess Elisabeth at the graduation of Maria Magdalena from Notre Dame de Sion.
Photo (c) The Kansas City Star of 9 June 1957.

Along with her siblings, Maria Magdalena spent her youth in the United States, where her mother Ileana had relocated in the early 1950s. The archduchess attended the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, before transferring to study at the French Institute of Notre Dame de Sion, a Roman Catholic school in Kansas City, Missouri; she graduated from Notre Dame de Sion in 1957. Her younger sister Elisabeth was also a student at Notre Dame de Sion. After completing her high school education in the United States, Maria Magdalena went on to study French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1959, Archduchess Maria Magdalena of Austria married Baron Hans Ulrich von Holzhausen (b.1929). The couple had three children, two sons and a daughter.

Archduchess Maria Magdalena.
Photo (c) Castelul Bran.

Archduchess Maria Magdalena was a granddaughter of King Ferdinand I and Queen Marie of Romania. Among her first cousins were King Michael I of Romania and King Peter II of Yugoslavia. The archduchess was a second cousin of Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia.