In 1916 Wilhelm was returned from the frontlines as reaching the age of 21 any member of the Habsburg House automatically were becoming a deputy of the Austria-Hungary parliament. In parliament he came to work closely with Ukrainian deputies to the parliament of the Austro-Hungary and Metropolitan bishop Andrei Sheptytsky and served as a liaison between the Ukrainian community leaders and Austria's emperor Charles I whom Wilhelm knew since childhood and was able to pay him official visit in the beginning of 1917. As the most acceptable course to solve the "Ukrainian issue", for Wilhelm it seemed a creation of autonomous Great Duchy of Ukraine within reformed on federalist principles Habsburg monarchy (see United States of Greater Austria). To that Duchy beside the Eastern Galicia and Bucovina could include Ukrainian lands that at that time belonged to the Imperial Russia and which had to be reconquest.