The Habsburg Lip [Habsburg Jaw / Habsburg Chin]
The Habsburg family possesses certain very marked hereditary peculiarities. The hanging Habsburg lip and the long narrow jaws may be traced back through generation after generation as far as the fifteenth century. King Alphonso of Spain curiously resembled his great ancestor, the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who ruled four centuries earlier. Certain traits of character of the Habsburg family were equally persistent, and among these the spirit of acquisitiveness was particularly marked. The Habsburgs were the most successful family of matrimonial and land speculators known to history. While most dynasties rose to eminence by placing themselves at the head of great nations and by conducting successful wars of conquest, the Habsburgs rose from obscurity to the greatest power by acquiring territories in all parts of the world by judicious purchase, by exchange, and especially by profitable marriages.
The long list of irregular affairs of the heart for which the Austrian royal house was noted began with the Archduke Johann, brother of the Emperor Franz I. It was his lot to fall in love with and marry Anna Plochl, daughter of the job master at Aussee, in the province of Salzburg, whom he saw first in 1822, disguised as a boy and acting as postillion for his royal highness. Sixty-four years later another Archduke Johann, nephew of the Emperor Franz Joseph, became enamored of Milly Stubel, a dancer in the Vienna opera-house. The emperor refused permission for the proposed marriage, but the archduke had his way in the end at the price of his rank and Austrian citizenship. They were married in London, in 1890.
The saddest tragedy of the 19th Century that befell the house of Hapsburg hadg its origin in a mariage de convenance [Fr: a marriage of convenience, a marriage arranged as a matter of business - among the nobility the mariage de convenance was much more customary than any other sort of alliance]. Crown Prince Rudolf, the emperor's only son, was married in 1881 to Princess Stephanie, daughter of the king of the Belgians. He made no pretense of loving her. At this juncture, Prince Rudolf met the Baroness Marie Vetsera, and lost his heart to her instanter - a love that could not be sanctioned either by the church or by the family. His application to the pope for permission to divorce Stephanie was sternly refused.
In January 188l, Crown Prince Rudolph and the Baroness Marie Vetsera committed suicide in an Alpine shooting lodge, under circumstances which will probably never be fully explained. Francis Ferdinand became — in line after his father the Archduke Charles Louis, living in complete retirement — the next heir to the Habsburg throne. On the disappearance of the Crown Prince, the Archduke Charles Louis, father of Franz Ferdinand and brother of the Emperor Francis Joseph, became the heir to the throne; but Charles Louis was a philosopher, and, appalled by the burden and anxiety of power, he renounced his rights, and died in 1893. The Emperor was reluctant to recognize Franz Ferdinand as his successor, preferring the latter's younger brother, Otho Francis Joseph, who, however, disappointed the hopes of the aged monarch. He was a spendthrift. He died in 1906, leaving Franz Ferdinand in free and unchallenged possession.
The Archduke Francis Ferdinand married Countess Sophie Chotek de Chotkowa et Woguin, the younger daughter of an ancient but somewhat impoverished Bohemian family. The marriage, which took place on 01 July 1900, was preceded by a solemn renunciation of the succession for his future children. No Habsburg heir had ever before married outside the magic ring of royalty as defined by the House Law of the Habsburgs, which would have restricted his choice of a wife to one of the thirty or more Habsburg Archduchesses who were his cousins.
There were several great family groups in which the custom of intermarriage was continuously carried on from generation to generation, but which very seldom extended to the families of other groups. Sometimes, as in the case of the House of Hapsburg and the Royal House of Hohenzollern or Prussia, a direct matrimonial alliance almost never occurs; there had not been a marriage between these two houses within two hundred years. In the south of Europe the Houses of Hapsburg, Savoy, Bavaria, Saxony, and Bourbon seemed to form one combination of these family groups, while in the north the principal combination was made up of the House of Hohenzollern Prussia, Great Britain, Denmark, Russia, and the Saxon Duchies.
In a general way, it had long been held to be almost as improper for Kings and Queens to marry their subjects as for angels to marry the daughters of men. A purer and bluer blood ran in their veins than in the veins of their subjects; and to adulterate that blue blood with red blood was to degrade it. They must, therefore, seek their brides and bridegrooms within the magic circle. Kings must marry Queens, and Princes must marry Princesses; and the distinctive exclusiveness of reigning houses must be maintained by a succession of unions between cousins.
Among the Habsburgs it was common custom for first cousins to marry, and even uncles with nieces, so the entire marriage system became most intricate and complex. Almost every one in a family, consisting of several branches, is, through marriage, very closely connected with every other member of the family, and therefore it often becomes difficult to determine just who are the first cousins and who the second cousins, etc.
Kings cannot override the laws of Nature even in the countries in which they are permitted to override the laws of the land; that the price which Nature exacts for exclusiveness is degeneracy; that hardly any royal family anywhere has failed to pay that price. With the exception of Charles V the Habsburgs produced no statesmen of great ability, while several members of the family displayed marked traces of insanity. Nevertheless they secured, and for over 350 years they kept, the first place among the potentates of Europe; a dignity in origin and theory elective becoming in practice hereditary in their house. This position they owe to some extent to the tenacity with which they have clung to the various lands and dignities which have passed into their possession, but they owe it much more to a series of fortunate marriages and opportune deaths.
There had been intrigues which ended in tragedy, and morganatic marriages with actresses and other persons deemed "impossible" in imperial circles; and there was at least one elopement of a Habsburg Princess, who, having failed to live harmoniously with a Crown Prince, found that even a professional pianist could not permanently satisfy her craving for romance. The ordinary comment on these proceedings was: "All the Habsburgs are mad, — all of them except Francis Joseph; and here is another Habsburg proving himself (or herself) as mad as the others, if not madder." The remark is not profound; but it is often, in a rough way, true.
The House of Habsburg furnished the "horrible examples" in two works on the science of Eugenics: L'heredie des Stigmates de Degenerescence, by Dr. Galippe, and L'Origine du Type familial de la Maison de Habsburg, by Dr. Oswald Rubbrecht. The arguments in both cases are based, not only on a study of history, but also on a collation of portraits; and though the writers differ on some points of detail, their general conclusions are identical. For both of them the Habsburgs were "degenerates"; both of them attribute the degeneracy to the same cause. It was, they agree, the cumulative effect of what is technically called "in-breeding" — of a long succession of inter-marriages among comparatively near relatives.
No full account of the manifestations of the madness of Spanish Habsburg rulers, Princes, and Princesses can be given here; they are too numerous, and also too gross for general reading. The briefest of summaries must suffice. Joanna the Mad traveled all over Spain with her husband's coffin, wailing and lamenting, at the top of her shrill voice, whenever the funeral procession halted. Joanna's son, the great Emperor Charles V, lived on the border-line which separates genius from insanity, and was, at any rate, an epileptic, like that Archduke Charles whose campaigns against Napoleon were punctuated by untimely fits. His son, Philip II — known to English history as the husband of Bloody Mary — is described by the historians as "half-mad"; and Philip's brother Charles was notoriously a homicidal maniac. Philip III was comparatively sane; but even he tried to poison his sister. Philip V was, for years, a bedridden imbecile; and Ferdinand VI was a victim of religious melancholia. Charles II was nicknamed "the bewitched," and was so afraid of the dark that three monks had to sit every night at his bedside, in order that he might sleep in peace.
One hears of the physiological law thus violated, whenever the question of a marriage between cousins is mooted. The tendency of such a marriage is to perpetuate and accentuate typical characteristics and weaknesses. A single marriage between cousins may produce no perceptible evil result; and one can cite cases in which it appears to have produced remarkably brilliant results. But a series of such marriages, continued through generation after generation, invariably and inevitably tells. The family in which such unions are the rule, loses vigor and develops peculiarities — a special, readily recognizable, physiognomy, and an unstable mental equilibrium. The transmitted eccentricities — more particularly the mental eccentricities — may skip a generation or leave an individual exempt; but they are always lurking in the background — always to be expected to reappear.
One of the well-known hereditary anomalies is the so-called Hapsburg Lip — protrusion of lower lip and pronounced protrusion of the chin. In addition to the underhung lower jaw and the large lower lip, the Habsburg physiognomy presents the following characteristic features : excessive length, and, sometimes, excessive size of the nose; 'exorbitism,' more or less pronounced, with a forehead often of considerable height. One would say that the head, squeezed in by lateral pressure, had undergone a concomitant vertical allongation, and had been stretched, and pulled up and down at the same time.
The physical characteristics were long ago recognized by the family itself with pride, and by outsiders with a curious wonder akin to envy and admiration. Napoleon so remarked it at the time of his betrothal to Marie-Louise, as M. Frederic Masson relates: — "When" (M. Masson writes) "Lejeune, who had just arrived from Vienna, showed him a sketch of the Archduchess which he had made at the theatre, 'Ah!' he exclaimed in delight, 'I see she has the Austrian lip."'
The Hapsburg type predominates in men: in women it is not so noticeable, it appears plainly from an examination of the Hapsburg portraits. This type, from the end of the fourteenth century on, was continued in many members of this dynasty, in the Spanish as well as in the Austrian branch. Several royal persons who played a big role in the world's history show these characteristic symptoms exceptionally distinctly: among these were Maximilian I, Charles V, Philip II, Leopold I; in others they were less pronounced, or entirely missing. The children of Leopold I (1640-1705), however, broke with tradition, and married into other royal families, which caused a strong decline of these characteristics. When, however, Maria Theresa (1717-1780) married Franz von Lothringen, a descendant of the Habsburgs, again in Leopold II and many of his children the protruding lower lip very pronounced, although Maria Theresa herself did not possess these symptoms, which proves that these facial lines appear in pure type only in the Hapsburg family.
The less pronounced appearance of these symptoms in the female sex and the many intermediate forms, make it probable that here is not only with one certain hereditary factor, but also with homogeneous intensity factors; which also makes it plain that it is possible that the protruding lower lip may appear without prognathism, which is the case with several Habsburgs. Of the marriage of Karl von Steiermark, who exhibited both symptoms clearly, with his cousin Maria of Burgundy, who only possessed the characteristic lower lip, four sons were born and several daughters who possessed all degrees of the lip and chin anomaly.
The less pronounced development of these anomalies on the female side of the Habsburgs can be explained, according to several authors, as a somatic disturbance — for instance, through the internal secretions of the ovaries—which can go so far that nearly all the external symptoms are missing. Margarethe, the daughter of Charles V, possessed this type only in a very small measure, while her son Alexander, whose father was not related to the Habsburgs, again exhibited a very pronounced Hapsburg type. It is certain that the prognathism appears as a dominant anomaly, and therefore follows mainly the plan of a dominant disease.
![Charles II [Carlos II]](images/carlos-ii.jpg)
Charles II [Carlos II], the last Habsburg king of Spain, was mentally, physically, and emotionally defective, and the living embodiment of the Spanish Empire’s decadence, avarice, and irreversible decline. Gonzalo Alvarez, Francisco C. Ceballos, and Celsa Quinteiro wrote that “The kings of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty (1516–1700) frequently married close relatives in such a way that uncle-niece, first cousins and other consanguineous unions were prevalent in that dynasty. In the historical literature, it has been suggested that inbreeding was a major cause responsible for the extinction of the dynasty when the king Charles II, physically and mentally disabled, died in 1700 and no children were born from his two marriages... Charles II, the last king of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty, presented important physical and mental disabilities suffering from a number of different diseases during his life, hence being known in Spanish history as El Hechizado (“The Hexed”). ... He was unable to speak until the age of 4, and could not walk until the age of 8. He was short, weak and quite lean and thin. He was described as a person showing very little interest on his surroundings (abulic personality). He first marries at 18 and later at 29, leaving no descendency.... He looked like an old person when he was only 30 years old, suffering from edemas on his feet, legs, abdomen and face. During the last years of his life he barely can stand up, and suffers from hallucinations and convulsive episodes. His health worsens until his premature death when he was 39, after an episode of fever, abdominal pain, hard breathing and coma.” It was said that Europe waited for him to die so they could get around to the War of the Spanish Succession.
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