Christoph Schönborn
Austrian Roman Catholic Archbishop of Vienna and Cardinal of the roman catholic church
Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert Schönborn, OP (German: [ˈkrɪstɔf ˈʃøːnbɔrn]; born 22 January 1945) is a Bohemian-born Austrian Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Vienna from 1995 until 2025. He was chairman of the Austrian Bishops' Conference from 1998 to 2020 and was made a cardinal in 1998. He is a member of the Dominican Order.
Schönborn is Grand Chaplain of the Order of the Golden Fleece (Austrian branch), of which he has been a member since 1961. He is also a member of the formerly sovereign House of Schönborn, several members of which held high offices of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church as prince-bishops, prince-electors and cardinals.
Family and early life
Schönborn was born at Skalka Castle, west of Litoměřice in Bohemia (then part of Sudetenland, a Nazi-annexed territory of Czechoslovakia, now part of the Czech Republic), the second son of Count Hugo-Damian von Schönborn (1916–1979), and his wife, Baroness Eleonore Ottilie Hilda Maria von Doblhoff. By birth, he is a member of an ancient German House of Schönborn whose members have historically borne the title of Imperial Count and the style of Illustrious Highness. Several members of the Schönborn family held high offices in the Catholic Church and, since the 17th century, the Holy Roman Empire, including several prince-bishops, cardinals and ecclesiastical prince-electors. One family member was Franziskus von Paula Graf von Schönborn, Cardinal-archbishop of Prague. When aristocratic titles were abolished in the First Czechoslovak Republic, after its independence in 1918, just as in Austria, his father officially lost his title of count, although titles continue to be used privately.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Christoph Schönborn” is austrian Roman Catholic Archbishop of Vienna and Cardinal of the roman catholic church. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Christoph, Schönborn and Austrian, not as a finished interpretation.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q44747. VIAF identifies the subject as 113232459. The Library of Congress control number is n85239633. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945, 1995, 2025 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Christoph Schönborn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.