Heinrich Schwarzenberg was born on the 29^th of January 1903 in Bratislava. After finishing his school career, Heinrich Schwarzenberg studied law at the University of Innsbruck, where he graduated with a doctorate in legal sciences.

After a period of working for the ministry of education of the newly founded Austrian Republic, Dr Heinrich joined his cousin and later adoptive father to assist him in the management of his estates. Following the forced exile of Dr Adolph Schwarzenberg, his adoptive son Heinrich, whom Dr Adolph had made his plenipotentiary, was in charge of the management of the estate. However, due to the family’s well known opposition to the Nazi regime and loyalty to the Czechoslovak cause, the entire estate of Dr Adolph Schwarzenberg within the reach of the Reich was seized by the Gestapo on the 17^th of August 1940. When Dr Heinrich Schwarzenberg tried to intervene against the seizure, he was refused re-entry into the Reich and Bohemia and on direct orders from the Reichsführer SS Himmler, the Gestapo arrested Heinrich Schwarzenberg and sent him to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1944 Dr Heinrich Schwarzenberg was released from Buchenwald and had to work as a forced labourer until the end of the war, but remained active in the resistance.

After the end of the war, Heinrich attempted to return to his native Czechoslovakia, yet was groundlessly barred from entry to the country. Barred from Czechoslovakia Dr Heinrich was able to win the restitution of the property of Prince Adolph Schwarzenberg in Germany and Austria confiscated by the Gestapo in 1940. He then managed this property for his cousin and adoptive father as its general trustee. For his part, Heinrich owned Gusterheim Castle, which he had inherited from his father Felix in 1946.

In 1946 Dr Heinrich Schwarzenberg married Eleonore Schwarzenberg, nee Stolberg-Stolberg. On the first of October 1947 the couple’s only daughter Elisabeth Schwarzenberg was born. Together the family mainly lived in Gusterheim, until Dr Adolph Schwarzenberg died in 1950, making Heinrich his universal heir.

With much effort, on top of managing the family’s extensive interests in Austria and Germany, he managed to rebuild the family’s Vienna Palace, which had been partially destroyed by wartime bombing.

Dr Heinrich Schwarzenberg died on the 18^th of June 1965.