B008AITH44 EBOK

by Hamann, Brigitte

  During the Prussian-Austrian negotiations in Vienna, the Empress once again showed only too openly how much she hated public appearances. At one of the official dinners, which Bismarck attended, she even left the room on the pretext of being indisposed. The fact that she did not participate in the subsequent receptions and dinners fueled the gossip. Crenneville: “Everyone believes that she is expecting, others say she has stomach cramps because she takes cold baths after meals and laces herself too tightly, I do not know what is true in all this and only feel sorry for my good master.”74 Once again, Dr. Fischer was summoned from Munich. But Sisi’s illness can hardly have been serious, for Dr. Fischer used his stay in Vienna primarily to shoot stags in the Prater, with the Emperor’s permission.

  Only many years later did the Empress indicate the true cause of her supposed indisposition: She was annoyed at Bismarck. In 1893, she told Konstantin Christomanos, her Greek reader, “It seems to me that Bismarck was also a follower of Schopenhauer; he could not stand women, with the possible exception of his own wife. Mainly, I believe, he despises queens. When I saw him for the first time, he was exceptionally stiff. What he really wanted was to say: The ladies may keep to their rooms.”75

  The Empress’s few official appearances in public aroused enormous notice and steeped the function in question in great solemnity—the inauguration, for example, of the Ringstrasse on May 1, 1865. Seven years had passed since demolition was begun. For seven years, the “capitol and residence” had been one large building site. The old ramparts were torn down and the broad avenue took their place. The munificent new boulevard gave to Vienna an entirely new feeling of spaciousness, breadth, a link with the modern world.

  For the reception of the imperial couple, a fairground with tents, platforms, flags, and flowers had been set up outside the Burgtor. The coach carrying the Emperor and Empress drove across Burgring, Schottenring, and Quai and over the Ferdinandsbrücke into the Prater. Hundreds of flower-trimmed coaches followed in a long procession past hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic spectators, who were eager especially to catch a glimpse of the young Empress.

  We have no indications that Elisabeth took an interest of any kind in the restructuring of the city of Vienna. The construction of the Ringstrasse brought work and (meager) earnings to many of those who had been unemployed; but it was, of course, entirely a concern of the highest society. The demolition of the old city walls and ramparts did create a great deal of space for new housing. But except for public buildings, only splendid mansions for the richest families were put up. The notorious Viennese housing shortage was not relieved—on the contrary: The slums connected to the old ramparts (which, though they placed the poor in indescribable living conditions, nevertheless put a roof over their heads) were torn down and not replaced. The housing shortage was further aggravated by the influx of many thousands of workers employed in the construction of the Ringstrasse.

  In all probability, the Empress was not well informed about social conditions in the capitol and residence (not to mention the provincial cities and the countryside). She was isolated within the court. Her freedom of movement was so restricted by protocol that it would have required great effort to stand outside so as to form a true picture. But after a few failed attempts during the early years of her marriage, Elisabeth became incapable of such efforts. Her energy flagged in proportion as she began to enjoy and exploit the advantages of her position.

  *

  The two children, Gisela and Rudolf, had now outgrown the nursery. While Gisela had a robust constitution and was of average abilities, the Crown Prince became a remarkable figure at an early age. He proved to be unusually intelligent and intellectually precocious. Even as a five-year-old, he could make himself understood, as Archduchess Sophie proudly noted, in four languages: German, Hungarian, Czech, and French. The little boy had a lively imagination and an exuberant temperament, but he also had a delicate constitution and was frequently ill. He was delicate and extremely thin, as well as anxious and in great need of love.

  Franz Joseph had wished for a bold, physically strong son, who would grow into a good soldier. Little Rudolf absolutely did not fulfill these hopes. His intellectual precocity was a cause for worry rather than joy for his august father.

  On the Crown Prince’s sixth birthday, the two children, who had grown extremely close, were separated. Following the Habsburg custom, Rudolf was given his own all-male household, with a tutor who also undertook the Prince’s military training. The separation from the nursemaid and the shared “Aja,” Baroness von Welden, and particularly the separation of the two children from each other were occasions for heart-rending scenes.

  Rudolf had quite obviously inherited his mother’s sensibility. Since living under the strict, even sadistic control of his new tutor, Count Leopold Gondrecourt, he was almost a permanent invalid, suffering from fevers, angina, stomach colds, and similar ailments. Gondrecourt had strict orders from the Emperor to “work extremely hard” with the delicate, overly sensitive boy to make a good soldier out of him: “His Imperial Highness is physically and mentally more advanced than other children of his age, but rather vivacious and nervously irritable, therefore his intellectual development must be sensibly subdued, so that that of the body can keep pace.”76

  Gondrecourt carried out the Emperor’s instructions in his own way: He drilled the anxious, sickly child to the point of exhaustion with military exercises and rigorous physical and psychological “toughening.”

  At this time (1864), the Empress did not yet have enough influence over her husband to be able to prevent this sort of upbringing. Later, she repeatedly complained about the children “who were no longer allowed to be with me—about whose education I was not allowed to have a say—until, with their [that is, the Crown Prince’s household] rough handling and Count Gondrecourt’s educational methods, they almost turned him into an idiot;—to try to turn a child of 6 into a hero through hydropathic treatments and fear is madness.”77

  The martyrdom of the little Crown Prince was nothing extraordinary for the time; rather, it was part of the normal training of a cadet. The only thing that made it worse for Rudolf was that in his case this military toughening started at an unusually early age and that—at the express wish of the Emperor—it was carried out with unusual rigor.

  Archduchess Sophie’s diary gives indications that, after a year of military education, little Rudolf was high-strung and ill, and that the worst—his dying—was feared. But the Archduchess saw no connection with Gondrecourt’s methods, as Elisabeth did; like the Emperor, Sophie placed all the blame on Rudolf’s “delicate constitution.” The idea was that this constitution would be strengthened by further, always harsher toughening, ever more cruel drills.

  The little Crown Prince was much too timid, much too afraid of his father to complain of the cruelties he experienced daily. Finally, one of Gondrecourt’s subordinates, Joseph Latour, began to take an interest in the unhappy child and went to the Empress with his reservations. He, too, did not dare to speak to the Emperor on the matter, for everyone knew that Gondrecourt was only carrying out the Emperor’s orders. At court, it was even said that Rudolf’s old “Aja,” Baroness von Welden, had gone on her knees to the Emperor and begged for more lenient treatment of the child. To no avail.

  In this situation, when nothing less than her child’s life was at stake, Elisabeth took action. Later she related, “when I learned the reason for his illness, I had to find a remedy; gathered up all my courage when I saw that it was impossible to prevail against this protégé of my mother-in-law, and told everything to the Emperor, who could not decide to take a position against his mother’s will—I reached for the utmost and said that I could no longer stand by—something would have to happen! either Gondrecourt goes, or I go.”

  This statement is confirmed by a highly significant document, which has been preserved and which casts a revealing light on the Emperor’s family life during this period. Elisabeth handed the Emperor the foll
owing ultimatum in writing.

  I wish to have reserved to me absolute authority in all matters concerning the children, the choice of the people around them, the place of their residence, the complete supervision of their education, in a word, everything is to be left entirely to me to decide, until the moment of their majority. I further wish that, whatever concerns my personal affairs, such as, among others, the choice of the people around me, the place of my residence, all arrangements in the house etc. be reserved to me alone to decide. Elisabeth. Ischl, 27 August 1865.78

  We must see this document as in the nature of Elisabeth’s declaration of independence. It had taken eleven years for her to find the strength to stand her ground rather than, as before, taking flight into illness or trips abroad. Now she became vigorous—and prevailed.

  Why at this particular time Elisabeth was in such a position of power may be clarified by a remark in Sophie’s diary. In a confidential conversation, Sophie reported, she told her “Franzi” that she wished him a second son; but by expressing this wish she also wanted to draw him out about how matters really stood in his married life. And the Emperor responded amiably. Sophie: “And one word … gave me, praised be God for it a thousand times, almost the assurance that finally Sisi had united herself with him anew.”79

  Five years had passed since Sisi’s flight to Madeira, years filled with cares, illness, refusals, quarrels. Now at last, a move toward a proper relationship seemed at hand—and it was at this very time that Elisabeth threatened to go away if Rudolf’s military upbringing was continued.

  The exceedingly sharp tone of her ultimatum reveals the new method the Empress used to deal with her husband. As recently as two years earlier, she had pined away, had sobbed and wept. Now she made demands—and he, who had earlier treated her like a child, now obeyed, at least in most instances. Archduchess Sophie also retreated more and more, since she could no longer be sure of her son, and she wept on the shoulders of relatives.

  Now, when her beauty was at its height, Elisabeth had become the stronger one. She could put pressure on her husband—with refusal or with the threat of leaving Vienna again. She did not know the meaning of preserving the reputation of the dynasty or the state—which she represented as well. She saw her problems in purely personal terms, though at the same time she knew the extent to which Franz Joseph was aware of and fulfilled his obligations to the state and the dynasty. She knew very well that he would have to give in to her demands when the reputation of the August House was at stake. It was the sheerest blackmail, and Franz Joseph capitulated, because he loved his ever more beautiful and more mature wife—in spite of everything.

  The court officials, especially the ladies-in-waiting who had some insight into the couple’s domestic life, had much material for gossip. They bemoaned the Emperor’s weakness when confronted by his wife. However, Franz Joseph exhibited the same weakness in other instances. Countess Marie Festetics was “often astonished that the Emperor gave in to some urgent strong wish on the part of someone or other among his entourage, although the form in which the wish had been expressed seemed to him indecorous.” The Empress herself explained to the Countess the reason for this behavior. “The Emperor was well brought up and in his youth had a loving entourage. If someone submits a request in a respectful manner and he cannot grant it, he will know how to say no in his gracious way. But if someone approaches him roughly and demandingly, he is so surprised by this unusual manner that he lets himself be intimidated, as it were, and agrees.”80

  Now Elisabeth exploited this weakness of the Emperor without scruple. To the extent that her demands related to Rudolf’s upbringing, they had a beneficial effect. To begin with, Elisabeth saw to it that the Crown Prince was given a thorough medical examination by the new imperial physician, Dr. Hermann Widerhofer. She next decided on the new tutor: Colonel Latour, who had been such an effective supplicant in the cause of little Rudolf and who had, as the future was to show, genuinely taken the boy to his heart. Under his new tutor, Rudolf flourished, regaining his health rapidly. Emotional disturbances, especially nocturnal anxiety attacks, however, stayed with him for years, indeed for the rest of his life.

  Elisabeth had full confidence in Latour. She had known him for a long time; he had been among the courtiers on Madeira. Elisabeth knew that, compared to the rest of the court, he held extremely liberal views. For this reason, he was mistrusted, even hated, at court and was forced to guard against massive intrigues. He was not, after all, an aristocrat like Gondrecourt, and he was a newcomer to the military field as well. He was interested, not in drill, but in education, even for soldiers. Rudolf’s military drill was reduced to the most basic exercises and to riding and shooting. Intellectual training was given precedence over the physical—exactly the reverse of what the Emperor had ordered a year earlier.

  Now the Empress was the only one who determined the guidelines of the new education. It was to be “liberal,” as the new teachers were expressly told.

  Elisabeth also left to Latour the choice of teachers. The only criteria for selection were the educational and scholarly qualifications of the applicants. Thus, Rudolf’s teachers did not have to be military men, members of the clergy, or aristocrats, as had been the custom in court educations. When it came to competence pure and simple (a revolutionary demand), the bourgeois teachers and scholars had an advantage.

  This revolution actually did take place. Aside from the religion tutor, Rudolf’s teachers were all bourgeois intellectuals. Since, like the majority of this class, their politics were unequivocally in the liberal camp, they were also pronouncedly antiaristocratic and anticlerical.

  These teachers formed a foreign body at the Viennese court and were disliked accordingly. Gondrecourt intrigued behind the scenes against his successor, for example with Adjutant General Crenneville. He accused Latour of being capable only of “nursemaiding” his pupil but not of educating him. Furthermore, in Gondrecourt’s opinion, Latour had “neither the desired sense of chivalry nor the uprightness and necessary distinguished deportment … to exert a beneficial influence on the mind and character of the Crown Prince in daily intercourse.”81 He requested Crenneville to intervene with the Emperor.

  Time and again, Gondrecourt stressed the (indisputable) fact that his educational methods had been nothing but an expression of the Emperor’s wishes. “I have the reassuring belief at all times of having done only what His Majesty ordered me to do and do not know how to reproach myself with anything in regard to my system with the Crown Prince. Furthermore, I was happy to see His Majesty approve my views on the education of the Crown Prince at any time.”82

  But the years of intrigues against Latour were without success. Elisabeth was steadfast in her protection of the pronouncedly anticourt upbringing of her son. With these teachers, Rudolf—according to the Empress’s expressed will—became a first-rate and well-rounded, cultured young man, who not only understood, but also approved the democratic ideals of 1848. It was not long before he saw the “basis of the modern state,” not in the aristocracy, but in the middle class. Through his bourgeois teachers, whom he admired and loved, Rudolf became an ardent liberal—and only too soon found himself in a bitter conflict with the court system over which his father presided. All the Empress’s enemies, however (and by now she had a considerable number), unable to prevail against Elisabeth, now agitated against Rudolf, her son who was so like her but much weaker.

  *

  The power struggle over the Crown Prince’s education did not run its course without serious discord. Once again the Empress left the Hofburg in Vienna, this time a scant two weeks before Christmas. Once again an illness was used as a pretext for the public: She was suffering from swollen glands; she was cutting a wisdom tooth. Sisi’s precipitate departure to Munich (officially, to be treated by Dr. Fischer) did not make a good impression in Vienna.

  Archduchess Sophie learned of her daughter-in-law’s departure only through a note that arrived when Elisabeth was already on the
train. The hotel reservation in Munich was also not placed until after the trip had been begun. Clearly, Sisi did not trust herself simply to stay at her father’s Munich palace—mindful of the disagreements during her last visit in Bavaria.

  Once again husband and children were forced to spend Christmas without the Empress; she did not return to Vienna until December 30. The Prussian envoy reported somewhat maliciously to Berlin, “In these sudden travel plans during the current time of year, we might search for some caprice in the exalted beautiful lady, which is nothing unusual in the princesses from the ducal Bavarian line (Queen of Naples, Countess Trani).”83

  With all the understanding for the difficult situation at court, many nevertheless now doubted Elisabeth’s good will. Even Sisi’s favorite daughter, Marie Valerie, would later reproach her mother cautiously but firmly on this score. “How often I ask myself whether the relationship between my parents might not, after all, have turned out differently if in her youth Mama had had a serious, courageous will for it.—I mean, a woman can accomplish anything.—And yet she may be right that, given the circumstances, it was impossible to become more intimately one.”84

  Crown Prince Rudolf, however, was grateful to his mother all his life for the fact that, in this situation, so crucial to his life, she had so rigorously and successfully taken his part.

  Notes

  1. Crenneville, January 29, 1860.

  2. Fürstenberg, Diary.

  3. Grünne, from Possenhofen, August 3, 1860.

  4. Egon Caesar Conte Corti, Anonyme Briefe an drei Kaiser (Salzburg, 1939), p. 132.

  5. Schnürer, p. 300, from Schönbrunn, October 2, 1860.