The Mayerling Incident is the series of events leading to the apparent murder-suicide of
Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his lover Baroness Mary Vetsera.
Rudolf was the only son of Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria and Empress Elisabeth, and heir
to the throne of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
Rudolf's mistress was the daughter of Baron Albin Vetsera, a diplomat at the Austrian
court.
The bodies of the 30-year-old Archduke and the 17-year-old baroness were discovered in
the Imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods, fifteen miles southwest
of the capital, on the morning of 30 January 1889.
The death of the crown prince had momentous consequences for the course of history in
the nineteenth century.
It had a devastating effect on the already compromised marriage of the Imperial couple
and interrupted the security inherent in the immediate line of Habsburg dynastic succession.
As Rudolf had no son, the succession would pass to Franz Joseph's brother, Karl Ludwig
and his issue, Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
This destabilization endangered the growing reconciliation between the Austrian and the
Hungarian factions of the empire, which became a catalyst of the developments that led to
the assassination of the Archduke and his wife Sophie by Gavrilo Princip, a Yugoslav
nationalist and ethnic Serb at Sarajevo in June 1914 and the subsequent drift into the
First World War.
Incident
By 1889, many people at the court, including Rudolf's parents and his wife Stephanie, knew
that Rudolf and Mary were having an affair.
His marriage to Stephanie was not a particularly happy one, and had resulted in the birth of
only one daughter, Elisabeth, known as Erzsi.
On 29 January 1889, Franz Joseph and Elisabeth gave a family dinner party prior to leaving
for Buda, in Hungary, on 31 January; Rudolf excused himself, claiming to be indisposed.
He had arranged for a day's shooting at Mayerling early on the morning of the thirtieth, but
when his valet Loschek went to call him, there was no answer.
Count Joseph Hoyos, the Archduke's hunting companion, joined in, with no response.
They tried to force the door, but it would not give.
Finally Loschek smashed in a panel with an axe to find the room shuttered and half-dark.
Rudolf was found sitting motionless by the side of the bed, leaning forward and bleeding
from the mouth.
Before him on the bedside table stood a glass and a mirror.
Without closer examination in the poor light, Loschek assumed that the crown prince had
drunk poison from the glass, since he knew strychnine caused bleeding.
On the bed lay the body of Mary Vetsera, white, ice-cold, and already quite rigid.
The mistaken impression that poison was involved, and even that the baroness had poisoned the
crown prince and then killed herself, would persist for some time.
Hoyos did not look any closer, but rushed to the station and took a special train to
Vienna.
He hurried to the Emperor's Adjutant General, Count Paar, and requested him to break the
appalling news to the Emperor.
The stifling protocol that characterized every movement in the Hofburg swung ponderously
into action; Paar remonstrated that only the Empress could break such catastrophic news
to the Emperor.
Baron Nopcsa, Controller of the Empress' Household, was sent for, and he in turn sent for Countess
Ida von Ferenczy, Empress Elisabeth's favorite Hungarian lady-in-waiting, to determine how
her majesty should be informed.
Elisabeth was at her Greek lesson, and was impatient at the interruption.
White to the lips, Ferenczy announced that Baron Nopcsa had urgent news.
Elizabeth replied that he must wait and come back later.
The countess insisted that he must be received immediately, finally being forced to add that
there was grave news about the crown prince.
This account comes from Ferenczy herself and Archduchess Marie Valerie, to whom Elisabeth
dictated her memory of the incident, in addition to the description in her diary.
The countess entered the room again to find Elisabeth distraught and weeping uncontrollably.
At this point, the Emperor appeared outside her apartments, and was forced to wait there
with Nopcsa, who was visibly controlling himself only with great effort.
The Empress broke the news to her husband in private; he left the room a broken man.
The Minister for the Police was summoned and the national security services sealed off
the hunting lodge and the surrounding area.
The body of Mary Vetsera was interred as soon as possible, without judicial inquiry and
in secret; her mother was not even allowed to attend her burial.
Story On behalf of the Emperor, Prime Minister Count
Eduard Taaffe issued a statement at noon that Rudolf had died "due to a rupture of an aneurism
of the heart".
The Imperial family and court were still under the impression that he had been poisoned and
it appears that even Mary's mother, Baroness Helene Vetsera, initially believed this.
It was only when the court medical commission headed by Dr. Widerhofer arrived in Mayerling
that afternoon that a more accurate cause of death was established, and not until 6
a.m. the following morning, when Widerhofer made his report to the Emperor, that the true
state of affairs became known.
The official gazette of Vienna still reported the original story that day: "His Royal and
Imperial Highness, Crown Prince Archduke Rudolf, died yesterday at his hunting lodge of Mayerling,
near Baden, from the rupture of an aneurism of the heart."
Foreign correspondents descended on Mayerling and soon learned that Rudolf's mistress was
implicated in his death.
This first official version of a heart attack was quickly dropped.
At that stage, the "heart failure" version was amended.
It was announced that the Archduke had first shot the baroness in a suicide pact and sat
by her body for several hours before shooting himself.
Rudolf and the Emperor were known to have recently had a violent argument, with Franz
Joseph demanding that his son end the liaison with his teenage mistress.
Their deaths were the tragic result of the desperate decision of thwarted lovers taken
"while the balance of the Archduke's mind was disturbed".
The police closed their investigations with surprising haste, in apparent response to
the Emperor's wishes.
Franz Joseph did everything in his power to get the Church's blessing for Rudolf to be
buried in the Kapuzinergruft Imperial Crypt, which would have been impossible had the crown
prince deliberately committed murder and suicide.
A special dispensation was obtained from the Vatican that declared Rudolf to have been
in a state of "mental imbalance", and he now lies with 137 other Habsburgs in the Church
of the Capuchins in Vienna.
The dossier on the investigations and related actions were not deposited in the state archives,
as they would normally have been.
The story that Rudolf had violently quarreled with the Emperor over his liaison with Baroness
Vetsera may have been spread by agents of Germany's Chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck,
who had little love for the politically liberal Rudolf.
It was certainly doubted by many of Rudolf's close relatives, who knew the chancellor personally.
The Empress Frederick of Germany noted:
Yesterday Prince Bismarck came.
It was a bitter pill to me to have to receive him [Bismarck] after all that has taken place
and with all that is going on.
He talked a great deal about Rudolf, and said that a scene with the Emperor [of Austria]
had taken place, according to Reuss's account.
Perhaps Reuss [the German Ambassador to Austria] was wrong.
I should think [it] very likely.
[9 April 1889]
She then wrote to her mother, Queen Victoria:
...I have heard different things about poor Rudolf which may perhaps interest you.
Prince Bismarck told me that the violent scenes and altercations between the Emperor and Rudolf
had been the cause of Rudolf's suicide.
I replied that I had heard this much doubted, upon which he said Reuss had written it and
it was so!
He would send me the despatch to read if I liked, but I have declined.
I did not say what I thought, which is that for thirty years I have had the experience
of how many lies Prince Bismarck's diplomatic agents have written him, and therefore I usually
disbelieve what they write completely, unless I know them to be honest and trustworthy men.
Szechenyi, the Ambassador at Berlin, whom we know very well, tells me that there had
been no scenes with the Emperor, who said to Szechenyi: Dies ist der erste Kummer, den
mein Sohn mir macht.
[This is the first vexation my son has caused me.]
I give you the news for what it is worth.
General Loe heard from Austrian sources that the catastrophe was not premeditated for that
day!
but that the young lady had destroyed herself and, seeing that, Rudolf thought there was
nothing else left to him, and that he had killed himself with a Förster Gewehr [brand
of hunting rifle] which he stood on the ground and then trod on the trigger.
Loe considers, as I do, poor Rudolf's death a terrible misfortune.
The Chancellor, I think, does not deplore it, and did not like him!
[April 20, 1889]
Political ramifications Rudolf's death may have brought ruin to his
parents' marriage, changed the imperial succession, and perhaps contributed in a small way to
the end of the ancient house of Habsburg in 1918.
The removal of the liberal Rudolf made Franz Joseph's conservative policies easier to pursue.
The mysterious death of Archduke Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria and Hungary, immediately
caused a dynastic crisis.
Since Rudolf was the only son of Franz Joseph, Emperor Franz Joseph's brother, Karl Ludwig,
became heir-presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but he renounced his succession rights
a few days later in favour of his eldest son Franz Ferdinand.
After Franz Ferdinand's assassination in 1914, Franz Ferdinand's nephew, Karl Ludwig's grandson,
Karl, became the heir-presumptive.
Karl would ultimately succeed his grand-uncle as Emperor Charles I in 1916.
Exhumations and forensic evidence
Mary Vetsera's body was spirited out of Mayerling and interred in the graveyard at Heiligenkreuz.
The official story of murder-suicide went unchallenged until just after the end of World
War II.
In 1946, occupying Soviet troops dislodged the granite plate covering the grave and broke
into Vetsera's coffin in the bombed-out crypt at the village graveyard, perhaps hoping to
loot it of jewels.
This was not discovered until 1955, when the Red Army withdrew from Austria.
In 1959, a young physician stationed in the area named Gerd Holler, accompanied by a member
of the Vetsera family and specialists in funereal preservation, inspected her remains.
Dr. Holler carefully examined the skull and other bones for traces of a bullet hole, but
stated that he found no such evidence.
Intrigued, Holler claimed he petitioned the Vatican to inspect their 1889 archives of
the affair, where the Papal Nuncio's investigation had concluded that only one bullet was fired.
Lacking forensic evidence of a second bullet, Holler advanced the theory that Vetsera died
accidentally, probably as the result of an abortion, and it was Rudolf who consequently
shot himself.
Holler witnessed the body's re-interment in a new coffin in 1959.
In 1991, Vetsera's remains were disturbed again, this time by Helmut Flatzelsteiner,
a Linz furniture dealer who was obsessed with the Mayerling affair.
It was initially reported that her bones were strewn round the churchyard for the authorities
to retrieve, but Flatzelsteiner actually removed them at night for a private forensic examination
at his expense, which finally took place in February 1993.
Flatzelsteiner told the examiners that the remains were those of a relative killed some
one hundred years ago, who had possibly been shot in the head or stabbed.
One expert thought this might be possible, but since the skull was not only in a state
of disintegration, but was actually incomplete, this could not be confirmed.
The crown of her skull showed a large area of trauma, indicating she could have possibly
died from a blow to her skull, which would support the version that Vetsera had not been
shot by Rudolf.
Flatzelsteiner then approached a journalist at the Kronen Zeitung to sell both the story
and Vetsera's skeleton.
That these were Vetsera's remains was confirmed through forensic examination.
The body was re-interred in the original grave in October 1993 and after a court case Flatzelsteiner
paid the abbey some 2000 Euros by way of damages.
In the media The Mayerling affair has been dramatized in:
The 1924 film Tragedy in the House of Habsburg directed by Alexander Korda
The movie Mayerling, directed by Anatole Litvak starring Danielle Darrieux as Mary and Charles
Boyer as Rudolph The movie De Mayerling à Sarajevo, directed
by Max Ophüls The musical Marinka, book by George Marion,
Jr., and Karl Farkas, lyrics by George Marion, Jr., music by Emmerich Kalman
The movie Le Secret de Mayerling, directed by Jean Delannoy
The radio play The Story of Mayerling on Theater of Romance, 1 August 1950.
Mayerling, a 1957 American television production directed by Anatole Litvak starring Audrey
Hepburn as Mary and Mel Ferrer as Rudolph The movie Mayerling, directed by Terence Young,
starring Omar Sharif, Catherine Deneuve, James Mason, and Ava Gardner.
The British television series Fall of Eagles, in the episode Requiem For A Crown Prince
The film Private Vices, Public Virtues, directed by Miklós Jancsó.
Kenneth MacMillan's 1978 ballet Mayerling The radio play on BBC Radio 4, Saturday Night
Theatre 8 February 1986, "Pure Angel" by Eric Docherty; with Anna Cropper and Benjamin Whitrow
The musical Elisabeth, with book/lyrics by Michael Kunze and music by Sylvester Levay;
the incident is dramatized as a very stylized dance sequence.
The Japanese manga Angel's Coffin, by You Higuri.
The German crossover opera Mayerling * Requiem einer Liebe by Siegfried Carl and Ricardo
Urbetsch The musical Rudolf by Frank Wildhorn, Jack
Murphy, Phoebe Hwang and Nan Knighton that had its premiere at the Operett Színház
in Budapest on 26 May 2006, where it plays winters in alternation with outdoor performances
in Szeged during the summers.
The Japanese musical Utakata no Koi, produced by the Takarazuka Revue and performed occasionally
from 1983.
Kronprinz Rudolf, a 2006 Austrian TV film directed by Robert Dornhelm, starring Max
von Thun and Vittoria Puccini, and featuring a cameo appearance by Omar Sharif.
The 2006 film The Illusionist, directed by Neil Burger, starring Edward Norton with Rufus
Sewell as Prince Leopold, fictionalizes the circumstances surrounding the Crown Prince's
death.
In the 2011 film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the Mayerling incident is referenced
on Sherlock Holmes's web diagram of suspicious deaths tied to Professor Moriarty, implying
that Moriarty may have arranged the two deaths as part of his plot to engineer a war and
profit from it.
See also Prince Leopold Clement of Saxe-Coburg and
Gotha, Rudolf's nephew, murdered by his mistress who then committed suicide.
Nepalese royal massacre Elvira Madigan
Ludwig II of Bavaria, whose death, allegedly by drowning, remains unsolved.
References
Further reading Barkeley, Richard.
The Road to Mayerling: Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria.
London: Macmillan, 1958.
Franzel, Emil.
Crown Prince Rudolph and the Mayerling Tragedy: Fact and Fiction.
Vienna : V. Herold, 1974.
Graves, Armgaard Karl.
The Secrets of the Hohenzollerns.
Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, Ltd., 1915.
Judtmann, Fritz.
Mayerling: The Facts Behind the Legend.
London: Harrap, 1971.
Lonyay, Károly.
Rudolph: The Tragedy of Mayerling.
New York: Scribner, 1949.
Markus, Georg.
Crime at Mayerling: The Life and Death of Mary Vetsera: with New Expert Opinions Following
the Desecration of Her Grave.
Riverside, Calif.: Ariadne, 1995.
Victor Wolfson.
The Mayerling Murder.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.
External links Mayerling tragedy
Mayerling mystery