The Successor to the Mayerling Murder

Dominic Sandbrook (0:08)

Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Rest Is History. Now, I hope you've been enjoying our little series about the Mayerling incident. And when we were researching it, Tom pointed out to me that Baron Nopcsa, who was Cece's first Lord Chamberlain, the person who took the responsibility of breaking the news of Crown Prince Rudolph's death to the Empress, and then stood there barring the way to the Emperor when he wanted to get into his wife's apartments. Tom pointed out that this bloke's nephew and godson was insanely interesting and that he was worthy of a podcast in and of himself. Now, I'm a skeptic by nature, so I didn't believe this, but then when I looked into it, I realized that not for the first time, Tom was absolutely right. You were right, Tom, well done.

Tom Holland (0:55)

Amazing scenes.

Dominic Sandbrook (0:57)

You're going to tell us all about this mad story of this guy who, among other things, there was talk of him taking the Albanian throne, there's espionage, there's hijacking, there's a bonkers end to the story with very Mayerling echoes. So crucially, he's interested in dinosaurs like you.

Tom Holland (1:16)

That's how I know about him. So he's the namesake of the original Baron Nopcsa, so Franz, and he was a largely self-taught hunter of dinosaur fossils. He became a very, very distinguished paleontologist for reasons that we will come to. And in his lifetime, because he was a bit of an amateur, he never held an academic post, he was slightly looked down upon by those who were academic specialists in paleontology. But he's now seen, I think, by paleontologists as one of the most influential and groundbreaking dinosaur experts in the whole history of paleontology.

And as I say, this is how I came to know about him. But it has to be said, he is, I think, one of the most remarkable and fascinating figures of the early 20th century in the Balkans. And Dominic, I hope to persuade you of this because I know that you are a great lover of early 20th century Balkan history.

Dominic Sandbrook (2:11)

I am.

Tom Holland (2:12)

Baron Nopcsa, the younger, fits into this absolutely perfectly. Bit of background for him. So he is, he's Hungarian, but his family's lands were centred in Transylvania, which they had held since the 14th century, originally under Ottoman rule. And then when the Habsburgs come in, take over Transylvania at the end of the 17th century, they acknowledged the Habsburg emperor as their overlord. And from that point on, the Nopca dynasty had been very loyal servants to the Habsburgs. And that's why our Nopca, his uncle had been C.C.'s first lord chamberlain. So they're very trusted. They're very kind of eminent figures in the Habsburg court. Franz Baranopca the Younger was born in 1877, and he's raised in the family home in Transylvania, a place called Sackle Castle. And this has a very prisoner of Zender vibe. It's simultaneously very Balkan, set them up this stunning Transylvanian landscape. But there is also more than a hint of the British about it. So there are Persian rugs, a piano, a grand staircase, and the Nopca children have an English nanny in the form of Miss Stevenson. And Nopca therefore grows up speaking, as well as Hungarian and Romanian. He grows up speaking English and he grows up speaking French.

And he is the apple of his parents' eye. He is the eldest child. He has a younger brother, and he has a little sister called Ilona, who is six years younger than him. And Ilona is important in this story because she is the person who first comes across dinosaur bones in the hills that surround the Nopca estate. It's part of the lands that the Nopcas own. And she's 12 when she makes this discovery. She kind of comes back bringing this little bit of dinosaur bone, and shows it to her older brother Franz, who by this point is around 18 and about to go to university in Vienna. And Franz, we'll call him Nopca, immediately realizes what Ilona has found. He's incredibly excited. And in the weeks before he has to go to Vienna, he goes up into the quarries, up onto the kind of the mountainside, chisels out a fair number of fossils. And when he goes to Vienna, in his luggage are fragments of these dinosaurs, and he takes them to Vienna.

And when he gets there, he takes them to a very distinguished scholar, the professor of geology at Vienna University, who's a guy called Edward Strauss. And it is amazing how almost everyone in Vienna in this period appears to be called Strauss.