B008AITH44 EBOK (70 page)
Authors: Brigitte Hamann
For the moment, the Crown Prince was laid out in state in his Hofburg apartments. Elisabeth visited her dead son on the morning of January 31 and kissed his lips. Archduchess Valerie: “He was so handsome and lay there
so peacefully, the white sheet pulled up to his chest and flowers strewn all around. The narrow bandage on his head did not disfigure him—his cheeks and ears were stilll rosy with the healthy glow of youth—the restless, often bitter, scornful expression that was often characteristic of him in life had given way to a peaceful smile—he never seemed so beautiful to me before—he seemed to be asleep and calm, happy.”
At dinner in the same room where the unusually warm family scene had occurred as recently as Christmas, the Empress lost her composure (“for the first time,” as Valerie reported) and began to weep bitterly. Rudolf’s widow and his five-year-old daughter were also of the party. Shared misfortune did not ease the strain between Elisabeth and Stephanie. On the contrary; both Elisabeth and Valerie placed a share of the blame for Rudolf’s death at the Crown Princess’s door. Stephanie, for her part, “kept asking all of us again and again for forgiveness, for she must surely have felt that her lack of devotion contributed to driving Rudolf to this horror.”
The Empress gave free rein to her abhorrence of her daughter-in-law, saying “she was ashamed of her before the people. If one comes to know this woman properly, one must excuse Rudolf for looking elsewhere for distraction and a narcotic to ease the emptiness of the heart in his own home. It is certain: Things would have been otherwise had he had a different wife, one who understood him.”
Two years after the tragedy of Mayerling, the Empress flung harsh words at Stephanie: “You hated your father, you did not love your husband, and you do not love your daughter!”
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Elisabeth’s accusations may have been true. As usual, she saw only the faults of others, never her own. For in setting up this balance sheet of blame, Elisabeth did not consider that the unhappy Rudolf had lacked love, not only from his wife, but also from his mother.
Rudolf left behind several farewell letters, but they did not give the reason for his suicide. The longest of the letters was to Elisabeth. In it, Rudolf confessed himself “not worthy of writing to his father,” as
Archduchess
Valerie reported. It also described Mary as a “pure angel …, who accompanies him into the hereafter” and stated his wish “to be buried next to her in Heiligenkreuz”
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—a wish that was not honored.
Ida Ferenczy, one of the few who was familiar with the letter, related that Rudolf had “taken the girl along as companion on the gruesome journey only out of fear of the gruesome unknown, she gave him courage, without her he might not have dared, he did not do it because of her.”
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(The exact wording of the letter was never made public. The letter itself
was among the papers Ida Ferenczy destroyed on the Empress’s instructions after Elisabeth’s death. Nor did Archduchess Valerie’s notes record the exact wording.)
Rudolf wrote a short letter to his younger sister. “On the day Papa closes his eyes forever, things will grow very uncomfortable in Austria. I know all too well what will follow, and I advise you to emigrate.”
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He, who had so markedly defended the value of Austria-Hungary to his mother and sister, agreed at the end with their somber prognosis. Marie Valerie commented in her diary, “It is odd that only the other day he told Mama that if Franzi [that is, the next heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke whose assassination led to World War I] ever assumes the throne, things could not go on.” Like Elisabeth, it seems, Rudolf had given up hope in a future for the Danube monarchy—surely one of the many reasons why his life ended in despair and guilt.
Elisabeth expressed herself even more clearly. As Marie Valerie wrote in her diary, “Mama believes that Austria will no longer be able to assert herself after Papa, who unites all contradictions by sheer force of
impeccable
character and self-sacrificing goodness…. Only the love for Papa, she says, holds the peoples of Austria back from confessing openly how much they long to be back with the great German fatherland, from which they are banished.”
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Within the imperial family, an apocalyptic mood prevailed. With Rudolf’s death, Austria-Hungary’s future seemed to have died. As a heavy storm raged the night after the Crown Prince’s body was brought to the Hofburg, shaking the windows “so that the old castle creaked and groaned at every joint,” twenty-year-old Marie Valerie noted, “Mama is right—it has outlived itself—by which she meant not only the Hofburg, but also the entire Danube monarchy.
Marie Valerie’s diary captured the Emperor’s and Empress’s different responses to Rudolf’s death. “Papa’s resignation—unearthly, devout,
without
complaint, Mama’s rigid anguish, with her belief in predestination, her grief that it was her Bavarian blood that rose to Rudolf’s head, all this is so unspeakably bitter to watch.”
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A church funeral for the suicide required an affidavit from the doctor that Rudolf was mentally
unbalanced.
This certificate was a consolation to Emperor Franz Joseph but a source of new pain for Elisabeth. For her, the risk of insanity was always near; she had to feel personally affected. When she met Karl Theodor before Rudolf’s interment, she heaped reproaches on herself: “If only the Emperor had never set foot in her family home, if only he had never seen her! What would he and she not have been spared!”
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On the other hand, the rationalization that Rudolf had not been in his right mind when he committed the terrible act reassured the Emperor because it lessened Rudolf’s guilt. The imperial family physician, Dr. Widerhofer, who saw both bodies in Mayerling, did everything to
reinforce
this version. Marie Valerie: “Widerhofer says that he [Rudolf] simply died of insanity, as someone else dies of a disease. It is this thought, I believe, that keeps Papa from collapsing.” But even Marie Valerie doubted this explanation, comfortable though it was. “I do not believe that this is the whole truth about the entire misfortune.”
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Rudolf’s death was followed by serious differences with the Bavarian family. For it turned out that Elisabeth’s favorite niece, Countess Marie Larisch (the daughter of her brother Ludwig) had acted as go-between for the Crown Prince and Mary Vetsera. There were scenes in Vienna between the Empress and her brothers. Marie Larisch was banished from court. In spite of her fervent pleas to be allowed to explain herself, she was no longer received.
It was Andrássy, already seriously ill, who loyally stood by the Empress. At her request, he visited Countess Larisch to learn the circumstances of the tragedy. Elisabeth could not believe that love was all there was to it. Though a political reason was suspected (and Andrássy questioned the Countess about this as well), no one could provide facts.
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The Crown Prince’s political activities had been absolutely covert, and then again Elisabeth had never—literally, not once—taken an interest in the problems of her son after his childhood. Rudolf had been a stranger in the imperial family, a solitary figure, desperate in his complete isolation. The only explanation, and the simplest one, for his devastating end was the doctors’ statement that in a condition of mental confusion he had done away with the girl and with himself.
Though Elisabeth had comported herself with remarkable courage in the first few days after the news of the death, her bearing deteriorated in the spring of 1889. The German ambassador reported to Berlin that
Elisabeth
“abandons herself to incessant brooding, reproaches herself, and attributes to the inherited Wittelsbach blood the mental confusion of her poor son.”
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She felt born to misfortune.
Rudolf’s death thus receded more and more into the background. The suicide—of which Elisabeth never learned the true motives—became still another occasion for her to brood about her own life, and to
despair.
The circumstance that a different Habsburg line now became heir to the throne was seen by Elisabeth as a further, even the greatest, triumph of the
world of Vienna, which she hated so passionately. Elisabeth to Valerie after Rudolf’s interment: “And now, all these people who, from the hour of my arrival here, have said so many bad things about me will have the satisfaction after all of seeing me pass on without leaving a mark on Austria.”
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Nor can it have remained a secret from the Empress that both the court and diplomatic circles found new reasons to criticize her. Countess de Jonghe: “This time, the first lady of the land bears the principal blame. If she had thought less of herself and more of her obligations, this recent catastrophe would not have occurred.”
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Count Alexander Hübner’s diary probably correctly pinpointed the general attitude: “there is not the least doubt that the public is deeply concerned for the Emperor’s grief, caring little for the tears of the Empress and nothing at all for those of Archduchess Stephanie.”
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As if to invalidate these accusations, Emperor Franz Joseph chivalrously made a public
declaration
of his gratitude to Elisabeth. “How much I owe to my dearly beloved wife, the Empress, during these difficult days, what a great support she has been to me, I cannot describe nor express warmly enough. I cannot thank Heaven enough for having given me such a helpmate,” he wrote in acknowledgment of the declaration of condolence from the national diet.
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And five days after Rudolf’s death, Franz Joseph wrote to Katharina Schratt, “How can I think of the sublime sufferer, the truly great woman, other than with a prayer of thanks to God, Who has granted me such great fortune.”
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After Rudolf’s death, Elisabeth’s spritualist tendencies hardened. Only a few days after his interment, she tried to establish contact with him. One evening, she secretly went to the Kapuzinergruft—the family crypt.
Archduchess
Valerie:
She dislikes the crypt, and she was not at all eager to descend to it, but she had a sense that an inner voice was calling her, and she did it in the hope that Rudolf would appear to her and tell her whether he was unwilling to be buried there. For this same reason, she sent away the friar who had unlocked it for her, shut the iron door to the crypt, which was lit only by some torches around Rudolf’s coffin, and knelt down by it. The wind groaned, and the flowers that had fallen off the wilted wreaths rustled like soft footsteps, so that she kept glancing around—but nothing appeared to her.
Elisabeth’s comment on the spirits that did not materialize in the crypt: “They can only come when great Jehovah permits it.”
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Elisabeth continued her efforts to establish spiritual communications with her son so that she might learn from him the reasons for his deed. These attempts remained no secret in Viennese society and caused still more gossip. As late as 1896 (according to Bertha von Suttner), Vienna was saying “various things about Empress Elisabeth. Among others: Spirit messages (presumably in spiritualist séances) had been received that the place where Crown Prince Rudolf resides is worse than hell and that no praying can help him; about this, the Empress in despair.”
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In the critical situation after Rudolf’s death, it became clear how far the Empress had departed from the Catholic faith. Marie Valerie was deeply worried on this account. “Mama is actually merely deistic. She prays to great Jehovah in His destructive power and greatness; but that He hears the pleas of His creatures she does not believe because—she says—from the beginning of time, everything is predestined and man is powerless against eternal predestination, which is based, simply, on Jehovah’s
inscrutable
will. In His sight, she is equal to the most insignificant gnat—how could He care anything about her.”
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One night, the Empress and her daughter visited the observatory in Vienna and philosophized about man’s puniness and insignificance in the face of the universe. Marie Valerie: “Understand Mama’s view that the individual is nothing in the eyes of the Lord, who has created these countless worlds … but she is too bleak and too different from
Christianity.”
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Elisabeth to Valerie: “Rudolf’s bullet killed my faith.”
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According to Valerie, the Empress “from childhood on, had felt, and now it has become a certainty for her, that great Jehovah wanted to lead her into the wilderness, where she should spend her last days wholly dedicated to Him, in contemplation and worship of His divine majesty.”
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Elisabeth also declared to Amélie, her niece, that she could not “believe according to the Church. If she did, she would have to think that Rudolf was damned…. The happiest person, she said, was the one who had the most illusions.” Amélie replied that “happiness lies in actions which benefit one’s fellow man.” Elisabeth’s response to this remark was characteristic of her: “Aunt Sisi thinks this is all very well, but people interest her too little for her to find happiness in this. That may be the key to many things that otherwise seem puzzling in Aunt Sisi.”
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