Love, death, mental illness, pain, violence and more death encompassed the tragic life
of Sisi, Empress Elisabeth of Austria; right up to her grim assassination at the hands
of an anarchist in 1898.
She was a woman who had everything including wealth, stunning beauty and the enviable life
of a queen yet she was shy and introverted by nature, prone to anxiety and she often
thought of suicide.
She was revered worldwide for her exquisite beauty; so much so that her drive to remain
thin and beautiful throughout her lifetime, became an obsession.
Netflix has a 6 part series called, The Empress, that begins with the history of Sisi was she
falls in love and marries the Emperor of Austria; and is thrust into a suffocating court life
for which she is thoroughly unprepared.
Here are the tragic occurrences that clouded the life of the sensitive and beautiful Empress
of Austria.
1.
She grew up in an unconventional household with a doting father and reclusive, unloving
mother.
Elisabeth Amalia Eugenie was born on December 24th, 1837 to the royal household of Duke
Maximilian Joseph and Ludovika of Bavaria.
Her father was from an old German dynasty and her mother was the half sister of King
Ludwig I of Bavaria.
Her early childhood may have looked idyllic from the outside with it's wealth and opulence
but the family story is much darker than all that.
Her mother was very private (to the extreme) and had a deep fear of public duties (traits
that would not serve Sisi well as the future empress.)
Her mother ignored Sisi for the most part, giving all her love and attention to an older
sister, named Helene; proclaiming that Sissi was plain and had “no single pretty feature.”
Ironic since Sisi grew up to be renowned for her beauty.
Sisi's Father, on the other hand, adored her and directed her interests to those more suited
to a son rather than a daughter including long hikes in nature and an odd fondness for
circuses.
As a child, she was not well schooled but rather learned to swim and ride and sit a
horse so much so that later in life, these activities became necessary to her mental
well being.
Second on our list of tragic occurrences in the life of Sisi, Empress of Austria is that
she suffered a series of deaths of people she loved.
When Sisi was barely a teenager, she fell deeply in love with a man named Count Richard.
Her parents found out about her schoolgirl crush and sent the count away but her parents’
disdain for Count Richard only strengthened her emotions.
So much so that upon news of his death, she locked herself in her room for days, crying
endlessly and writing poems of her intense, early love.
The death of her first child Sophie, whom Sisi adored, impacted Sisi her whole life.
The child died from scarlet fever only three years after Sisi had wed Emperor Franz Joseph
the first of Austria.
Sisi's mother-in-law, Princess Sophie of Bavaria, blamed Sisi for taking the child with her
on a state visit to Hungary; and went out of her way to ensure that Sisi had little
contact with any other children she would bear.
The death pushed Sisi who was already prone to bouts of melancholy, into periods of heavy
depression which would haunt her for the rest of her life.
She subsequently turned away from her other daughter Gisela, and began neglecting her,
causing a rift in their relationship that never healed.
Then when she was thirty, Elisabeth's brother-in-law, the handsome and talented Archduke Maximilian
I of Mexico was executed by a firing squad in Mexico by rebels who didn't appreciate
being ruled by a foreigner.
The tragic and enigmatic passing of Elisabeth's cousin, the rumored "crazy" King Ludwig II
of Bavaria, was another devastating event in Sisi's life.
Ludwig was much like Sisi in her difficulty with pomp and circumstance and preferred the
seclusion of the Bavarian highlands where he constructed what could be called fantasy
castles.
He died a mysterious death claimed to be suicide by apparently drowning in the cold and dark
waters of the Starnberg Lake, near the castle of Berg; but speculation remains that Ludwig
was shot & murdered by his enemies within the Bavarian government.
Another theory suggests that Ludwig died of natural causes (such as a heart attack or
stroke) brought on by the cool water of the lake.
Regardless, Sisi who had been very close to her cousin before his untimely death, began
to see recurring visions of the tragic King that her religious zeal could not banish.
If all of that death wasn't enough, when Sisi was 52 in 1889, her only son, the handsome
and talented heir to the throne, Crown Prince Rudolf, murdered his beautiful seventeen year
old mistress, Baroness Maria Vetsera, at his hunting lodge of Mayerling, south of Vienna,
and then shot himself.
There are several theories as to why he committed this terrible deed, but much of the evidence
was destroyed on instructions from Sisi's husband, Franz Joseph I of Austria.
After this horrendous event, Sisi lost all will to live and her life began to deteriorate.
She lacked the strength to attend Rudolf's hurriedly planned burial but the next night,
she went to his grave by herself and in a complete mental breakdown, shouted out his
name in an unsuccessful attempt to bring him back from the dead.
Forever in mourning, Sisi wore black for the rest of her life and even began to wish for
her own death which came nine years in 1898 later at the hands of an Italian anarchist
in Geneva, Switzerland.
Third on our list tells the story of Sisi's legendary love for her prince charming which,
in truth, only brought her sorrow.
Romantic notions of a great love between Sisi and her husband, Franz Joseph I of Austria
are repeated throughout popular literature (including the 2022 Netflix series, The Empress
as well as previous films about Sisi).
The emperor falls in love with a beautiful young princess and takes her back to his palace
to wed; but such is the stuff of fairytales.
This idea of the fairy tale romance between Sisi and Franz , can largely be attributed
to a 1929 German language biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, by Austrian journalist
and writer Karl Tschuppik (you can get this ebook free with the download link in the community
tab of my channel).
The reality is that Franz was already a man about town by the age of 23 when he met 16
year old Sisi.
During his teen years, his mother would entertain with scandalous balls where he was given carte
blanche to choose any woman he liked and spend the night with her which seems to have been
a practice that had long been customary in the Imperial House.
Franz's queen mother thought it merely a matter of practical good sense to guide her son’s
first footsteps into that mysterious domain.
These women were humorously called, the hygienic ladies, and they were specially selected to
(quote) teach the young men love.
The ladies so named were very respected at the Viennese court.
Although they were, for the most part, not from the ranks of nobility, they were healthy
widows, with the right disposition, (if you know what I mean), who taught gentlemen the
things they should know in order to produce the hoped for heir.
When he was just 14, it is said that prince Franz Joseph fell in love for the first time
with Berta von Marwitz, a lady-in-waiting of his aunt Queen Elise of Prussia.
Then when he was 18 he was sure that he loved Elisabeth Countess of Ugarte but she was a
married woman.
And just before meeting Sisi when he was 23, Franz had been desperately in love with 16
year old Princess Anna of Prussia and wished to propose to her.
The princes mother was all for it but Anna was already engaged which put a kink in the
works so that didn't happen.
Added to that, he had several mistresses during his marriage to Sissi, including the wealthy
noblewoman Countess Patowka, Anna Nowoffski who another married woman, and the Austrian
actress Katarina Schrahtt, as well.
Another mistress was Katharina Abel, an opera singer.
And in 1850, Franz Joseph is said to have had a love affair with Helene Baltazzi, the
mother of the woman who his son Rudulph had murdered before he committed suicide.
As for Sisi, at the early stage of their marriage she felt something like love towards Franz,
however, the “rigid system” of the royal court and the interference of her domineering
mother-in-law did not let any natural feelings of love develop between the imperial couple.
Later in a poem Sisi dedicated to her husband, she describes their love as a cadaver yet
their mutual respect as a garland of fresh flowers, which pretty much sums up their fairy
tale love affair.
Sisi became ill in 1860, of a lung disease or so the official statement of the imperial
court said.
The truth, however, was a different one.
Sisi had contracted a sexually transmitted disease from her husband, and after that
the couple could no longer be said to have had a married life together
But the good news is that Franz Joseph the first, Emperor of Austria and Sisi, Empress
Elisabeth of Austria, managed to maintain a bond of friendship even with all that they
had gone thru together as the Imperial Couple.
They corresponded often and met regularly right up until her death in 1898.
And because Sisi was such a renowned beauty and because there are so many portraits of
her, I'll end this video with a few of the most beautiful and artistic.
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