Herr Doktor

He is short, balding and middleaged.

He has a wife and six children and lives in a sprawling suburban house outside Munich. He is a lecturer and journalist who wrote his doctoral thesis in social science on agriculture in the Tyrol. But when the way was legally cleared for his return to his homeland for the first time in 44 years, Austria's long-established coalition government trembled last week. For the mustached Herr Doktor is Franz Joseph Otto Ruprecht Maria Anton Karl Maximilian Heinrich Sixtus Xaver Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignaz, Archduke Otto von Habsburg, pretender to the Austrian throne.

Socialist leaders called Otto's projected return a "provocation" that threatened Austria's precarious neutral position as a buffer between East and West.

Electrical workers went on a wildcat strike, plunging one Vienna district into darkness. Left-wing papers roared against "foreign and domestic reactionaries," and Socialist political bosses threatened to pull out of their coalition with the conservative People's Party.

Industrious Ants. Otto was five when Austria rebelled against the Habsburg monarchy and overthrew his father, Emperor Karl, in the aftermath of World War I. The new republican government exiled the royal family and passed a "Habsburg Law," which banned their return to Austrian soil until they renounced all claims to the throne and formally embraced the democratic constitution. Karl regally refused, and after his death in 1922 the royal family settled in Spain, where the Empress Zita set up a modest court.

Zita insisted that Otto be accorded the full privileges of his rank, rose and curtsied when he entered a room, and called him "Your Imperial Highness." A thoughtful, scholarly youth, Otto studied at Belgium's Louvain University, by his serious demeanor stood off phalanxes of eligible European princesses. When one young, attractive Hungarian countess came to pay homage, Otto strolled silently with her for some minutes in his garden until he suddenly asked: "Have you ever thought how industrious ants are?"

Finally in 1951, at 38, he married Germany's Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen. Settling outside Munich in the village of Pocking, Otto traveled often to Spain, where he was honorary president of the Franco-backed European Documentation and Information Center, an organization founded in 1952 to bring politically isolated Spain into closer relations with the rest of Europe. His membership in this society and his friendship with Franco convinced Austrian Socialists that his ultimate aim was the re-establishment of an auto cratic monarchy in Austria.

"The Idea Matters." In his writing and lectures, Otto sounded far from autocratic, sought to define "monarchy's place in the atomic age." Said he: "The new form of monarchy might well be elective-from the judiciary, perhaps. Its primary duty would be the maintenance of the rule of law. It is the idea that matters, not the people who once were kings." But Otto had little sympathy with the leveling influences of socialism. "We have arrived at a bureaucracy of welfare and insurance against everything, which may well turn reason into nonsense," he wrote. "There is a danger of a new caste arising out of a classless societ-those in power."

Two years ago, Otto suddenly announced his willingness to abide by the provisions of the Habsburg Law and sought to re-enter Austria. But Austria's coalition government, balanced between the 81 parliamentary seats held by the conservative People's Party and the 76 seats held by the Socialists, refused to act on the petition in the face of vehement Socialist protests that Ot to's political ideas were "fantastic" and that his declaration of loyalty was inadequate. Otto's attorney took the case to the Administrative Court, which fortnight ago upheld the legality of his declaration over the government's rejection.

Pushbutton. The People's Party, while far from eager to see Otto back home, was willing to abide by the court ruling. Not so the Socialists. "This court has replaced the parliamentary organ," said Socialist Foreign Minister Bruno Kreisky. Socialist leaders hinted a nationwide rail and electrical strike if Otto tried to cross the border into Austria. "All we have to do," said Kreisky, "is push a button."

In Parliament, the Socialists joined with the eight-man delegation of the splinter right-wing Liberal Party and forced a resolution demanding that the government prepare a bill that could return ultimate judgment on all Habsburg Law cases to Parliament. The Liberals lent their support to the Socialists, however, only on the condition that the bill not be retroactive and that Otto would not be barred from returning home.-

The crisis imperiled the 18-year coalition between the People's Party and the Socialists, who kept threatening to freeze out their old partners by forming a new coalition with the Liberals. Even if the old coalition survives, the betting was that enough trouble had been stirred up to require new national elections soon. While most Austrians retain mellow feelings toward the Habsburgs, they would just as soon not be bothered by Otto's problem. "Why should we go back to where we finished 40 years ago?" asked Helmut Qualtinger, famed Vienna cabaret satirist. "I think that as a matter of taste, Otto would not want to come back-not if he loves his country."

*Also unsettled is the question of the Habsburg fortune in Austria, which amounts to some $30 million, mostly in estates. The lands are now held in trusteeship by the Austrian Republic.

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