The Red Prince by Timothy Snyder7/7/2023 ![]() He wandered Europe at loose ends and in 1931 arrived in Paris, where he apparently indulged in liaisons with fellow aristocrats, furtive late-night visits to homosexual brothels and cross-dressing. ![]() During WWI, Wilhelm led Ukrainian troops and hoped for a role in an independent nation, but by 1922 the Ukrainian National Republic had been split between Poland and Russia. ![]() “Homosexuality, royalty, and the military were closely associated” in central Europe, writes Snyder, mentioning several contemporary scandals. At age 14, he enrolled in a military school in Moravia that novelist Robert Musil (an alumnus) had described only three years earlier as a hotbed of homoerotic activity. Snyder unravels Wilhelm’s story in a straightforward manner, beginning with key moments in his early life. ![]() ![]() Sketches from a Secret War, 2007, etc.), by becoming a Ukrainian prince, “subordinate to the Hapsburg emperor.” The dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian empire after World War I put an end to this notion, but Wilhelm continued to devote himself to the cause of Ukrainian independence. Wilhelm was “raised to protect and enlarge the family empire in an age of nationalism,” writes Snyder (History/Yale Univ. Sympathetic portrait of cross-dressing archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg (1895–1948). ![]()
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