B008AITH44 EBOK (56 page)
Authors: Brigitte Hamann
She took Ludwig’s death in her own way: laments about the sorrows of the world, despair and heated expressions of feeling, frightening to those around her. Archduchess Valerie’s diary gives an account of the evening of the day the news of Ludwig’s death was received.
When I was with Mama in the evening for prayers, she threw herself headlong on the ground—I screamed aloud, for I thought she had seen something, and I grasped her so tightly that finally we could not help laughing. Mama said that she wanted only to beg God’s forgiveness in repentance and humility for her rebellious thoughts, she had cudgeled her brains about
unfathomable
God’s unfathomable decree of retribution in the hereafter through time and eternity—and weary of her fruitless, sinful brooding, she was now determined, whenever doubts arose, humbly to say, “Jehovah, You are great, You are the God of vengeance, of mercy, of wisdom.”
23
As an unusually well-informed correspondent of the Berlin
Tageblatt
later wrote, Elisabeth fell into a deep swoon at Ludwig’s catafalque. “But when she opened her eyes and regained her speech, she categorically demanded that the king be taken from the chapel—that he was not dead at all but ‘was only pretending, so as to be left in peace forever by the world and the insufferable people.’” This newspaper report is entirely plausible, as is the statement, “But from then on, the Empress’s ailment took a sudden and very grave step forward.”
24
Elisabeth’s chamberlain, Baron Nopcsa, even informed Andrássy about the Empress’s alarming mental state. Though she was, “thank God, in good health, unfortunately her mental state is not as I would like to see it. Though there is no reason for it, she is nevertheless emotionally disturbed. Since she lives so utterly alone, she talks herself into it more and more.”
25
Even the Wittelsbachs—that is, Sisi’s closest relations—felt (justifiable) worry about Elisabeth’s mental state during this time. The daughter of Duke Karl Theodor, Amélie, wrote in her diary after Ludwig’s death, “Aunt Sisi is stricken. Often I fear, after her own statements and Valerie’s words about her, that everything is not right with her. It would be so terrible!!!” At a later time, Amélie wrote of Sisi’s “bewildered glance, her gloomy, disturbed expression during these days.”
26
Crown Prince Rudolf came to Munich for Ludwig’s funeral. He sounded worried when he told Valerie that “he found Mama disturbed beyond his expectations and questioned me a great deal.”
27
Only slowly did Elisabeth recover to the point where she could return to writing poetry; it goes without saying that her lines dealt with the death of her cousin. The reproaches the Empress leveled at the Bavarian
government
for having driven the King to his death were merciless. She demanded revenge and retribution. By laying the principal blame for Ludwig’s death (and she never doubted that it was suicide) on Prince Regent Luitpold, Elisabeth was in agreement with popular opinion in Bavaria at the time. For in spite of his eccentricities, Ludwig II was very popular with the common people, and—in spite of undisputed personal loyalty—Prince Regent Luitpold was reputed for years to have unnecessarily interned Ludwig II and therefore to have driven him to his death. (Luitpold never became King of Bavaria but was called Prince Regent all his life because Ludwig’s official successor, his brother Otto, was too mad to rule.) Nor was Elisabeth ever reconciled with Luitpold—a situation that led to some embarrassing moments, for Luitpold was her daughter Gisela’s father-
in-law.
Unlike Elisabeth, Duchess Ludovika took the part of the Prince Regent, causing serious differences between mother and daughter. In Ludovika’s opinion, it was necessary to hope that Ludwig II was mad, “so as not to have to accuse him of the horrifying and sadly neglected responsibility for having brought his blooming land and almost unbelievably loyal subjects so low.”
28
Sisi’s favorite brother, Duke Karl Theodor, who knew Ludwig II very well, and who, as a doctor, had diagnosed some madness in the King as early as the 1860s, was also entirely on the side of the “reason of state” and Prince Regent Luitpold. According to Archduchess Valerie, Karl Theodor continued to assert that “there could be no doubt about the complete madness of the King and attempted to calm Mama [that is, Elisabeth], who is terribly disturbed and in an emotional state that makes me very sad.”
29
His attempts were in vain. Quite the contrary; now Elisabeth was seriously at odds not only with the rest of her Bavarian family, but even with her favorite brother.
Even years later, Elisabeth lamented the death of her royal cousin; she went so far as to work herself into a melancholy quite out of proportion with the extent of her friendship with Ludwig. She, who had seen the living Ludwig only on the rarest of occasions, now made an idol of the memory of the dead “eagle.” In his memory, Elisabeth even went to Bayreuth in 1888 (for the first and last time in her life) to attend a performance of
Parsifal
.
Her response to the music was extremely
sentimental.
“Since then, I feel homesick for it as I do for the North Sea. It is something of which we wish that it would never end, that it continue forever.”
30
Archduchess Valerie: “Mama was so ravished that she wished to see the conductor, Mottl, and the singers [who took the parts] of Parsifal and Amfortas … their unpoetical appearance diminished the illusion somewhat.”
31
The Empress also had a long conversation with Cosima Wagner; they spoke especially about Ludwig. Cosima Wagner later told Elisabeth’s niece Amélie that “she had never yet seen anyone so affected as Aunt Sisi after the
Parsifal.
”
32
Cosima Wagner, too, mentioned the resemblance between Ludwig II and Elisabeth.
*
As Elisabeth’s spiritualist tendencies increased in the late 1880s, Ludwig’s figure assumed greater importance in her imagination. She repeatedly mentioned that he had “appeared” to her and had spoken. In her growing isolation, Ludwig’s destiny seemed to her almost enviable.
Und dennoch, ja dennoch beneide ich dich,
Du lebtest den Menschen so ferne,
Und, jetzt, da die göttliche Sonne dir wich,
Beweinen dich oben die Sterne.
33
[And yet, and yet I envy you, / You lived so distant from men, / And now that the divine sun has evaded you, / The stars above weep for you.]
The Empress drew consolation and even a kind of piety from these spiritualist encounters, as Valerie described in her diary in 1887.
Thank God Mama has struggled through her weltschmerz and her doubts of last year more successfully than I—her faith in Jehovah, into Whose arms she threw herself after the King’s death in order to find rest from the torments that persecuted her, is absolute; she attributes everything to His disposition and guidance, she leaves everything in His hands. I have never known Mama to be so devout as [she has been] since that time—it leads me to believe that her spiritual dealings with Heine and the King are countenanced by God…. Mama’s piety is, however, different from other people’s … extravagant and abstract as her death cult.
34
And shortly thereafter, Valerie wrote, “Since her intense spiritual
dealings
Mama really is … calmer and happier, and in meditating and composing poetry … she has found a satisfying lifework.”
35
Elisabeth’s poems also confirm the fact that her spiritual congress with her dead “royal cousin” brought her comfort and relief.
In this, the Empress was supported by one of the friends of her youth, Countess Irene Paumgarten, in Munich. In a “very confidential” report to Bismarck, Prince Eulenburg revealed what only “a few initiates” knew. “Countess Paumgarten is a so-called ‘writing medium.’ She has the ability of writing ‘automatically,’ which is to say: her hand is guided by ‘spirits’ while she falls into a dreamlike somnambulistic state. When asked
questions,
she writes down the answers given by the ‘spirits.’ The Empress has been in touch with this medium for years. She uses her stays in Munich for ‘sessions,’ but she also sends written inquiries to the Countess when she encounters problems in her life.”
36
Naturally, Elisabeth was not alone in her interest in spiritualism. Séances with table tilting and the most diverse mediums had become the rage among high society. The famous mediums did a thriving business, though now and then one of them was unmasked as a fraud—the medium Bastian, for example, was found out by none other than Elisabeth’s son, Crown Prince Rudolf, during a sensational session in 1884. Rudolf was among the most active opponents of the spiritualist fad, even writing a pamphlet,
Einige
Worte
ü
ber
den
Spiritismus
(A Few Words About Spiritualism), which was published anonymously in 1882. These activities of the Crown Prince’s were indirectly aimed at his mother, though she was, of course, as unaware of Rudolf’s antispiritualist pamphlet as she was of his other writings.
Prince Eulenburg also found nothing unusual in the fact that Empress Elisabeth was a spiritualist. For him (and for the person to whom the report was addressed, Prince Bismarck), the only significant question was whether or not Countess Paumgarten was exerting political influence on the
Empress.
And in this regard, Eulenburg could reassure the chancellor. “I am unable to call the Countess’s automatic writing mischief because she is acting bone fide and her character guarantees her honesty. Nor does the Countess use her influential connections in any way for personal purposes. But that Her Majesty’s belief in the messages from the spirit world can under certain circumstances have great significance can surely not be in doubt.”
Sisi even took Marie Valerie along on one such visit. The practical fifteen-year-old, however, was anything but pleased with the spiritualist conversations and, astonished, wrote in her diary the following exchange between Elisabeth and Irene Paumgarten: Elisabeth begged her friend, “Tonight lay Empress Marianne at our feet” (Empress Maria Anna was the wife of Emperor Ferdinand I; she had died in 1884). Whereupon Irene Paumgarten replied, “Oh, she is still wandering along dark paths.”
37
In her diary (not found to this day but quoted by Marie Larisch), the Empress explained her tendencies.
I do not belong to those whose spiritual senses are closed off. And that is why I hear—or, rather, feel—the thoughts and the will concerning me of my spirit. That is why I see blonde Else of the Rhine and Bubi [her nephew Taxis, who died young], once I also saw Max [Emperor Maximilian of Mexico], but he did not have the strength to tell me what he clearly wished to tell me…. These images come to me in a waking state, just
as memory arouses “phantoms” while we sleep. But what I see in the waking state are not phantoms, not hallucinations, as some people, who lack understanding, claim, and so give a
meaningless
word instead of a logical explanation…. It gives me great satisfaction and deep reassurance in many an hour that I can make a connection with spirits from the beyond. But with very few exceptions, people do not understand that. And whatever ignorant people do not understand, they declare to be nonsense.
38
The Empress tried to receive messages from the other world by every conceivable method. She also tried to fathom the future, and she was highly superstitious. Marie Larisch: “Sometimes … she beat the white of an egg in a glass of water, and together we tried to read portents in the shapes it assumed. Whenever Elisabeth saw a magpie, she bowed to it three times, and when the moon was new, she begged that long-harbored wishes might come true. The Empress firmly believed in the protective power of cold steel and never passed nails or cast horseshoes without picking them up. She had a boundless fear of the evil eye and was afraid of the baneful influence of those who had it.”
39
Elisabeth also believed all prophecies, such as the one about the
legendary
Monk of the Tegernsee, whose damned soul would be released only along with that of the last survivor of the ducal line in Bavaria. Repeatedly the Empress related that the monk had prophesied to her, “Before a hundred years have passed, our line will have died out!”
40
In view of the considerable number of young princes, these words sounded unlikely. (The hundred years have since passed, and the line of the dukes in Bavaria is, in fact, extinct. The current head of the house, Duke Max of Bavaria, comes from the royal line, having been adopted by the last male
representative
of the ducal house and appointed his heir.)
Elisabeth told not only her daughter Valerie, but also Marie Larisch about the “apparitions” of Ludwig II. Once, she said, she had heard a noise like the gurgling of water while she lay in bed.
