Friday, February 26, 2010

Viennese newspaper seized over reports of Franz Ferdinand's marriage

February 26, 1900

By special cable to the New York World and the Chicago Tribune, and based on a letter from Vienna, dated February 23. "It is reported the government has seized a greater portion of today's issue of the Wiener Tageblatt, because it published a story of a secret morganatic marriage of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austrian throne.
"Ferdinand is said to have been a long time in love with the Countess Sofie Chouk [sic] and the story declares that two months ago the Archduke arrange to marry her at a small village in south Hungary, but that Emperor Franz Josef discovered the scheme and thwarted it."
According to the letter, on February 5, the Archduke found a priest in a convent near Styria, who was willing marry the couple. The ceremony took place the next day, aalthough "regular news agencies and the official papers deny the story."

No comments: