Empress of Austria Elizabeth of Wittelsbach (1837-1898) was the wife of Franz Joseph I, ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Made world famous in the cinema in the guise of Romy Schneider, she is represented there as the icon of a Vienna vibrating to the rhythm of the waltz. But the personality of “Sissi” was much more complex. Attracted by classical culture and poetry, Elisabeth of Austria was a fine and lucid mind, who had understood well before those around her that an era was coming to an end. After the tragic death of her son Rodolphe, heir to the Crown, in Mayerling's hunting lodge, she was assassinated by an Italian anarchist on September 10, 1898.
Elizabeth of Wittelsbach, Empress of Austria
Born on December 24, 1837 in Possenhofen, second daughter of the Duke of Bavaria Maximilian II and Ludovica of Bavaria, Elisabeth of Wittelsbach married Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria in April 1854. This marriage had a political significance:it was a demonstration of the Emperor's determination to highlight his status as a German prince and head of the German confederation. (His mother, Sophie of Bavaria, was not only the sister of Duchess Ludovica but also of the Queen of Prussia and two successive Queens of Saxony.)
Elizabeth played a brief political role in favoring the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 which reconciled the ruling elite of Hungary and the king-emperor. His passion for all things Hungarian (Sissi was diligent in learning the Hungarian language and appointed several Hungarians as members of his retinue) reflected his earlier dislike of the rigid protocol of the Viennese court and of the omnipresence of Sophie, her aunt and mother-in-law.
An anti-conformist at the court of Vienna
Accustomed as a child to the relaxed atmosphere of her parents' country residence in Possenhofen on the Starnberger See , infatuated with the romanticism of the poet Heinrich Heine, Elisabeth of Austria was by temperament in a completely different world from her husband, without imagination and preoccupied with his duty; the marriage was happy in the early years, giving rise to three daughters and Crown Prince Rudolph.
In the years that followed, Elizabeth's aversion to court ceremonial caused her to multiply and prolong her absences from Vienna and even from Budapest:towards the end from the 1870s, she developed a passion for hunting with hounds in Ireland; by the late 1880s she had learned Greek and spent much time visiting archaeological and mythological sites, eventually purchasing the Achilleon villa in Corfu.
Her relationship with her husband became increasingly distant as she lost all hope in the monarchy as an institution and moved her personal fortune to Switzerland. The mental instability of his son, who committed suicide in 1889, intensified his melancholy. It was during one of her many trips that she was the victim, in Geneva, of an Italian anarchist who had first intended to assassinate the Count of Paris.
Bibliography
- Elisabeth of Austria, biography of Brigitte Hamann. Fayard, 1985.
- François-Joseph and Sissi, by Jean Des Cars. Perrin, 2017.
- The Poetic Journal of Sissi, by Elisabeth of Austria. Editions du feline, 2009.