The End Of The Hapsburg Dynasty

The line that gave us most of the Holy Roman Emperors–including Charles V, before whom Luther confessed his faith at the Diet of Worms, who was presented the Augsburg Confession, and who battled the Reformation with the sword–is now extinct.

The eldest son of the last ruler of the Austro-Hungarian empire has died in Germany at the age of 98.

Otto von Habsburg was born in 1912, as the heir to the empire, but it collapsed at the end of World War I and the Habsburg family went into exile.

After World War II, Mr Habsburg became a champion of European unity during its Cold War division.

He served as a member of the European parliament for two decades. He is to be buried in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

Mr Habsburg only officially relinquished his claim to inherit the empire in 1961 and five years later was allowed to return to Austria for the first time since the family fled in 1919.

via BBC News – Habsburg: Last heir to Austro-Hungarian empire dies.

The Hapsburgs, or Habsburgs, ruled the Holy Roman Empire, including through the bloody attempt to exterminate Protestantism in the Thirty Years War, until Napoleon ended that institution. After that, they reigned in the much-reduced empire of Austr0-Hungary, which did not survive World War I. But now that long historic family line is ended. But its historic nemesis, Lutherans, are still in existence.

CLARIFICATION: As commenters have pointed out, there are still Hapsburg descendents. But now that the Austro-Hungarian empire is gone, to which Otto had a claim, there is no longer a claimant to the hereditary throne.