Scion of the Habsburg dynasty dies at 98

OTTO von Habsburg - the eldest son of Austria-Hungary's last emperor -died yesterday aged 98.

Habsburg died in his sleep at his home in Poecking in southern Germany, where he had lived since the 1950s, with his seven children nearby, his spokeswoman said.

He used his influence in a vain struggle to keep the Nazis from annexing Austria before the Second World War, then campaigned against the Soviet empire in the decades after that.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, he used his seat in European Parliament to lobby for expanding the European Union to include former Eastern bloc countries.

"My father was a towering personality," Habsburg's eldest son, Karl Habsburg-Lothringen, said. "With him we lose a great European who has influenced everything we do today beyond measure."

Born in 1912 in Austria, Habsburg witnessed the family's decline after the empire was dismantled and Austria became a republic following the First World War. .

He had been an MEP for the conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union in southern Germany.