The Postcard
A postcard bearing no publisher's name that was printed in Great Britain. The artwork was by Reg Maurice.
The card was posted in Chichester on Thursday the 4th. July 1935 to:
Miss W. B. Gourd,
Winterfold,
North Street,
Emsworth,
Hants.
The brief message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Scene at Hayling."
Hayling Island is 15 miles from Chichester.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted to Miss Gourd?
Well, on the 4th. July 1935, Ethiopia appealed to the United States to study means of persuading Italy to abandon its warlike actions, and to respect the Kellogg–Briand Pact.
Ethiopia hoped that American public disapproval of Italy's methods would help turn sufficient world opinion against Italy to prevent it from starting a war.
The First Belisha Beacon
Also on that day, the first Belisha beacon became operational, in Wigan, England.
A Belisha beacon is an amber-coloured globe lamp atop a tall black and white striped pole, marking pedestrian crossings of roads in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and other countries historically influenced by Britain, such as Hong Kong, Malta, and Singapore.
The beacons were named after Leslie Hore-Belisha (1893–1957), the Minister of Transport who added beacons to pedestrian crossings, marked by large metal studs in the road surface.
These crossings were later painted with black and white stripes, and thus are known as zebra crossings. Legally, pedestrians have priority over vehicles on such crossings.
The Fall From Grace of Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria
The 4th. July 1935 also marked the death at the age of 66 of Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria.
Archduke Leopold Ferdinand of Austria, who was born on the 2nd. December 1868, was the eldest son of Ferdinand IV, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Alice of Bourbon-Parma.
In 1893 Leopold accompanied Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on a sea voyage through the Suez Canal and on to India and Australia. The relationship between the two archdukes was extremely bad, and their permanent attempts to outdo and humiliate the other one led the Kaiser Franz Joseph to order Leopold Ferdinand to return to Austria immediately.
He left the ship in Sydney and went back to Europe. He was dismissed from the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and entered an infantry regiment at Brno. Eventually he was appointed colonel of the 81st. Regiment FZM Baron von Waldstätten.
Leopold fell in love with a prostitute, Wilhelmine Adamovicz, whom he met for the first time in Augarten - a park in Vienna, having begotten an illegitimate child with another woman only little time before.
Leopold's parents offered him 100,000 florins on condition that he leave his mistress. He refused to do so, and instead decided the renounce the crown in order to be able to marry her.
Leopold's Renunciation of Title
On the 29th. December 1902 it was announced that Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria had agreed to a request by Leopold to renounce his rank as an archduke. His name was removed from the roll of the Order of the Golden Fleece and from the army list.
Leopold took the name Leopold Wölfling after a peak in the Ore Mountains. He had used this pseudonym before in the 1890's when he had travelled incognito through Germany.
On the day of his departure from Austria he was notified that he was forbidden from returning to Austrian lands. He became a Swiss citizen, and was given a gift of 200,000 florins as well as a further 30,000 florins as income from his parents.
Life as Leopold Wölfling
After leaving Austria Leopold fulfilled his earlier imperially- denied wish and studied natural sciences and botanics. In the summer of 1915 he applied as a volunteer for the German Army, but was rejected on the grounds of his Swiss citizenship.
After the Great War Wölfling's allowance from his meanwhile expropriated family stopped, and in 1921 he returned to Austria, desperately searching for a livelihood.
Fluent in German, English, French, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, and Portuguese, he worked for some time as a foreign language correspondence clerk.
After more jobs he opened a delicatessen store in Vienna where he sold salami and olive oil. He also tried his hand as a tourist guide in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna and was very well received by his audiences. Unfortunately, the interest his person awoke in the Austrian capital proved to be too much for the ex-archduke and he fled the city again.
In 1928 a telegram invited him to come to Berlin to comment on the premiere of the German silent film Das Schicksal Derer von Habsburg (English: The Fate of the House of Habsburg). As Leopold was unable to pay his fare, the film company advanced him the money.
So on the 16th. November 1928, Wölfling provided a live commentary to the film in the Primus-Palast cinema on Potsdamer Straße in Berlin, afterwards touring with the film through Karlsruhe, Nuremberg, Düsseldorf, Trier, Cologne and Montreux.
After that Leopold lived in Berlin where he worked in menial jobs. He also acted in a cabaret and wrote his memoirs.
In late 1932 he wrote a series of articles on his life at the Hofburg, published in the Berliner Morgenpost. However, for his first article he chose a subject of highest topicality in Germany. It appeared on the 2nd. October under the headline "Es gibt keine Rassen-Reinheit. Mitteleuropa der große Schmelztiegel" (English: There is no racial purity. Central Europe the great melting pot).
The article confronted the spreading racism and the garbled ideas on racial purity. With such daring theses in the Nazi- poisoned public atmosphere before their takeover, Wölfling reduced his opportunities to publish under their reign.
His third marriage in Niederschöneweide with the Berlin-born Klara Hedwig Pawlowski (1902–1978) was announced in the Berliner Morgenpost on the 11th. April 1933.
His wife tried to defray their livelihood by selling his silverware to a jeweller, who, seeing the monogram, suspected theft and informed the police, only to discover that Wölfling had consented to the sale.
The Death of Leopold Wölfling
Wölfling died impoverished on the 4th. July 1935 in his third-floor flat in the rear wing of Belle-Alliance-Straße 53 (now renamed and renumbered Mehringdamm 119) in Berlin. His grave and that of his widow are preserved in the Protestant Friedhof III der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Leopold's final book appeared posthumously.
