Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria

Works

He wrote a book on insects at the age of 22 and also the nine-volume book Die Balearen (The Balearic Islands).

Background

He was the second cousin of Emperor Franz Joseph, of the ruling House of Habsburg-Lorraine, the fourth son of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. In his youth, he fell in love with Archduchess Mathilde, who was promised to Prince Umberto of Savoy. But she died accidentally; she was bored while watching a parade and tried to smoke a secret cigarette, her clothes caught fire and she literally burnt to death. Ludwig went to Majorca under his title of Count of Neuendorf, arriving in 1867. Falling in love with the clear air, water and dazzling blue skies of Majorca it was to become his base and home for the remainder of his life.

He explored on his steam-yacht the Nixe. He was known for his extreme love of animals and nature.

Archduke Ludwig Salvator never married. When he was young he fell in love with a cousin, Archduchess Mathilde, the daughter the Duke of Teschen. Ludwig wanted to marry her, but she was promised to Prince Umberto of Savoy. On June 6, 1867, Mathilde, then only 18, was getting dressed to attend the theatre. She enjoyed smoking cigarettes, but when her father, who abhorred smoking appeared, she tried to hide the cigarette behind her. Her dress caught fire, and she died in front of her family, sustaining second and third-degree burns. Relationships with women included Catalina Homar. She convinced Ludwig to let her visit Jerusalem and it is believed that it was there that she contracted the leprosy that took her life in 1905. He fathered numerous illegitimate children.

When the First World War broke out, in 1914, the Emperor of Austria ordered Ludwig Salvator to leave Majorca, and in 1915 he died at the family castle of Brandeis-Altbunzlau, in Bohemia. He was buried in Vienna.

Researcher and chronicler of the Mediterranean sea

It was of great importance to Ludwig Salvator to stimulate public interest for landscapes, which he thought were unjustifiably little known rarely traveled. His attention focused less on classical cultural centers, but on small, undiscovered regions, like Collection of costumes and type images of Serbs in the region on the Adriatic Sea between Rijeka and northern Albania by 45 plates with color lithographs based on watercolors Die Serben an der Adria (1870-78), including the islands of Paxos and Antipaxos, Ithaca, Lefkada and Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea and the Aeolian Islands in the north of Sicily, the islands of Giglio, Ustica and Alboran, and especially the then largely unknown Balearic Islands of Mallorca, Menorca, Eivissa (Ibiza) and Formentera. In 1869, there appeared the first volume, dedicated to emperor Franz Joseph, of his massive Die Balearen. In Wort und Bild geschildert (The Balearic Islands, portrayed in words and images); the total work encompasses seven separate volumes extending to approximately 6000 pages. For their first two volumes he was awarded the gold medal of the Paris World Exhibition of 1878. This monograph contains descriptions of animals, plants, meteorology, history, folklore, architecture, landscape descriptions and also detailed descriptions of the population, their customs, songs and poems. In 1897 there was published a two-volume popular edition with the same title that contained the main illustrations and texts. It is located on loan from the Österreichische Geographische Gesellschaft (Austrian Geographical Society) in the Austrian State Archives.