Muri is a municipality in the Swiss Canton of Aargau, close to the ancient castle of the Habsburg family, and its main attractions are the former Benedictine abbey and the baroque St. Martin Monastery Church. Radbot, Count of Habsburg and his wife Ida of Lorraine founded the Muri Abbey in 1027. The Loreto Chapel has served as the burial place of the Habsburgs since 1971; the heart urns of Emperor Charles I and Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma were also interred here.
After the death of Empress Zita in 1989, a considerable amount of archives was transferred to the monastery, which has been catalogued in recent years. Muri also preserves documents of great interest for Hungarian historical research. The collection is kept by Archduke Simeon von Habsburg, nephew of Otto von Habsburg, while the specialized archival duties are overseen by Josef Kunz.
Our Foundation has already initiated several consultations regarding the documents in the collection. Two years ago, members of the Muri professional staff visited our archives. On 11 June, Gergely Prőhle, Director of our Foundation, and Josef Kunz visited Archduke Simeon in Vaduz, who put a collection of nearly 300 photographs at the disposal of our Foundation for analysis and processing. During the consultation, they discussed the possibilities of further professional cooperation and the intention of the Otto von Habsburg Foundation to make available to the monastery museum of Muri its German-language roll-up exhibition on the life of Emperor Charles. An English-language version of the exhibition was presented in April this year in Funchal, the capital of Madeira, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of the last Hungarian king.
