Heart of last Austro-Hungarian heir buried

The heart of the last heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Otto Habsburg, was buried in an abbey in Hungary following lavish ceremonies in his honour. An urn holding the heart of Habsburg, who died earlier this month at his Bavarian home aged 98, was buried in a family ceremony at the Benedictine Abbey of Pannonhalma in northwest Hungary, an AFP photographer said. Earlier on Sunday, a mass was organised in his memory at Saint Stephen's Basilica in the heart of the Hungarian capital Budapest, in the presence of President Pal Schmitt and Prime Minister Viktor Orban. On Saturday, political leaders and European royalty paid their last respects to Habsburg as he was buried at Vienna's Imperial Crypt. Thousands of Austrians and tourists lined the streets of the historic city centre for the funeral, after a week of ceremonies honouring Habsburg. Habsburg, who was exiled with his family after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918, was a strong proponent of Europe and served for 20 years as a member of the European Parliament. Known abroad as Otto von Habsburg, he was just Otto Habsburg in Austria, after the state abolished his family's titles in 1919. As well as being fiercely pro-European, Habsburg had a reputation for being an ardent anti-Nazi and anti-Communist. In August 1989 he organised the "Pan-European picnic" near Hungary's border with Austria, during which some 700 East Germans were able to escape to the West, months before the fall of the Berlin Wall.