Following the Austro-Hungarian Empire's defeat in the war her father was forced to renounce participation in state affairs and subsequently the empire was dismantled and republics were established in Austria and Hungary. In 1919 Adelheid and her family were sent into exile first in Switzerland before later being taken to Portuguese island of Madeira. On 9 March1922 Adelheid was with her brother Otto and father Emperor Charles when he went into town to buy toys for Carl Ludwig's birthday. On the way back they were enveloped by chill mists and her father caught a cold which later developed in pneumonia from which he died on April 1.
In December 1933 she became the first member of her family to set foot in Vienna since the establishment of the republic when she arrived by train from Budapest.2 Adelheid attended the University of Louvain and gained a doctorate in 1938.3 During the Second World War she immigrated with most of her family to the United States to escape the Nazis.
Archduchess Adelheid later returned to Europe and died unmarried in Pöcking, Bavaria.4
