Laureate of the St. Adalbert
Award (Pretium Sancti Adalberti)
for the exceptional contribution of Central European co-operation for
2026 is
LEO VON HOHENBERG
A nobleman, economist, and entrepreneur; great-grandson of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.
The award ceremony took place on the evening on Friday
October 23, 2026,
after which the laureate delivered his laureate address.
ABOUT THE LAUREATE
Austrian economist, manager, and public figure Leo von Hohenberg was born on August 18, 1964,
in Vienna.
He studied business administration at the University of Vienna and Webster University. He possesses international experience in industry and banking, where he focused on controlling, market analysis, investment, and finance. He is also a reserve officer in the Austrian Armed Forces holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (Oberstleutnant). Over the long term, he has established himself as an advocate for peace, personal responsibility, and traditional social values, anchoring his positions in a Christian worldview and his role as a family father.
In his public speeches and writings, he focuses on criticizing the current trajectory of European politics, the centralization of power, and bureaucracy. Regarding European integration and national sovereignty, he consistently emphasizes that decision-making on fundamental issues should remain as close as possible to citizens and national societies, rather than being transferred to supranational institutions.
He also devotes significant attention to the topic of migration, in which he sees a threat to cultural continuity, traditional Western values, and social cohesion. In international relations, he opposes the escalation of military conflicts and criticizes warmongering rhetoric. He repeatedly stresses that state political leadership must not confuse military victory with a genuine solution to conflict, calling attention to the economic motivations of actors who profit from a state of war—in this context, describing war as a potentially extraordinarily lucrative business.
As a champion of the traditional family, Christianity, and the cultural identity of nations, he warns against the consequences of global uniformity, which he argues weakens local traditions and national heritage. He underscores the civic and democratic responsibility of individuals to take an interest in public affairs, independently evaluate information, and refuse to be marginalized in the decision-making processes of supranational structures. He is likewise critical of regulatory instruments in the field of media and technology (such as the Digital Services Act), highlighting the risk of restricting freedom of speech and silencing dissenting views.
He has developed his ideas in a series of prominent public appearances. On November 16, 2024, he delivered an address at Artstetten Castle, drawing attention to the dangers of international tension, which he compared to the atmosphere preceding the First World War. In this context, he introduced the concept of "spiritual warfare" (geistiger Krieg), describing the struggle over public opinion, cultural identity, and education against the pressures of centralized financial and political structures. Subsequently, on November 15, 2025, he served as the presiding host and keynote speaker at the Pax Mundi international conference at Artstetten Castle, which focused on resisting the threat of a third global conflict and was attended by delegations from European nations, the USA, the United Kingdom, and Russia.
LAUREATE SPEECH
LEO VON HOHENBERG:
NATIONS UNIFIED BY CHRISTIAN IDENTITY
CONSTITUTE AN INVINCIBLE FORCE
Your eminence, honorable jury, ladies and gentlemen,
I am in equal measure surprised, touched, honored and humbled to have been considered to receive the Sancti Adalberti award. I am grateful that I can share my thoughts with all of you and that you are willing to listen, especially considering how many exceptional and brilliant personalities are in the room here today. I will try to do my very best to contribute to today's proceedings as a man of faith, as a family man, as an officer, and a man who loves my country.
So, I guess that makes me, what they call, a Christian nationalist.
On a recent trip to visit our son in Vilnius, Lithuania, my wife and I were strolling through the beautiful old town. Many of you probably already know this, but Lithuanian is a very difficult language, you cannot read it, you cannot understand it, so as a tourist you are in your own bubble of discovery and admiration. But as we looked upward to the skyline, as far as the eye could see, against a glorious blue sky, we saw hundreds of church domes and crosses. Suddenly, we felt a sense of familiarity and comfort, we truly felt at home. This was because the presence of Christian symbolism and the reminder of our faith were comforting and reassuring. Despite the differences, the distance, the language, we truly are one under God.
Indeed, nations unified by Christian identity are an invincible force. Because God is the only truth and has the only true power. This is why Liberals and Globalists despise God and the church so much, and this is why God is the first thing that every totalitarian regime attacks.
Christianity is the unifying force on the European continent and beyond. The Christian bond is a formidable force, truly God given. It is so powerful, that all regimes have the destruction of this common bond as their first objective.
The impenetrable iron curtain for example was crushed by the Solidarność-movement and the Catholic Church.
Recently, when the Pope held a mass in France, 800.000 people filled the Champs Elysees and the Place de la Concorde. A few days later, faced with this incredibly powerful event, ANTIFA and the Left organized a brutal distraction in the form of alarmingly violent "Student" Protests.
Our God given nature is so strong, that the enemy has to deploy immeasurable effort to destroy schools, churches, national identity, curtail our freedom of speech, manipulate our thoughts, trash our cultures, and even change our demographics, just to get God out of our life.
The globalist Left wants to replace God with reason and teaches us that the important thing is to be an "ethical upright person" who is committed to "social justice." Now the thing is, "social Justice" is not an absolute and can be interpreted and enforced in any desired way. It allows for different truths depending on current ideological, geopolitical, and economic requirements thereby completely destroying the cohesion of society.
It is important to realize that at the moment of creation, we are instilled with God given desires: such as freedom, self-improvement, achievement, a longing for a better life for oneself and one's family, to leave something behind for the next generation. This is why the Left must replace these God given desires with consumerism, the attainment of material comforts and social prestige. Their God is destruction, transhumanism, consumption, blind obedience, and the cult of death.
Every society needs rules based on their values, so if we do not defend our Christian values and beliefs, alien values will be thrust upon us.
The Christian base of rules which seeks to apply the divine order, of all that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, has until now, been the undisputed basis of Western Christian Civilization.
For this reason, the greatest current challenge that I can see, is the passivity of the church and the infiltration within her of a false concept of tolerance which plays into the hands of the leftist Globalists. This twisted use of the concept of tolerance is based on erroneous guilt and shame, inflicted upon us by the teaching of the new leftist "critical history".
The church needs to awaken from its slumber. The veneration of tolerance and victimhood goes hand in hand with socialism, communism and globalism. The current dangerous path of distorted tolerance is the churches' contribution to the present dilemma, because it focuses on devotion to the human condition, rather than devotion to God and Jesus Christ.
Who among us hasn't seen an LGBTQ-flag proudly waving from the church tower?
And haven't we all heard, that ignoring national borders and societal laws, accepting illegal migration as a moral Christian obligation, while ignoring the existing population's well-being, is the highest form of love and tolerance?
I can have compassion for a murderer because of his background and misguided mental state, but I cannot tolerate his deed or accept him as a member of society to whom I also owe compassion. This shows how easy it is to misuse the concept of tolerance.
Compassion, which is divine in nature, can be limitless, but tolerance, which is worldly, must have limits for the sake of a Christian society.
In order to survive, we can empathize and have compassion, but must never overstep the limits of what we are willing and able to tolerate. Meaning well and virtue signaling are not the same as following Christ's teachings.
It is not the role of the world to set the agenda for the church. When it does, the church becomes all about "social and economic justice" and not about transforming the world through the divine.
Now, I am not a theologian, but I have just enough faith to know, that we need God, we need Christianity, we need the church, we need the cardinals, the bishops, the priests, the theologians and all the Christian faithful, to shift our society away from the limits of reason alone, and back to the teachings of Christ.