B008AITH44 EBOK

by Hamann, Brigitte

  Prince Eulenberg also pointed out shared traits.

  The Empress, who had a tendency to be somewhat eccentric and who was very talented, always had more understanding for her cousin than other mortals. Considering that she would work for hours in her salon at the trapeze, wearing a kind of circus costume, or would suddenly—attired only in a long rain skirt over jersey clothing—walk from Feldafing to Munich, a distance of about 50 kilometers (I encountered her once so attired), it is understandable why she found her cousin’s extravagances ‘reasonable’; his worst excesses surely never reached her ears.6

  Both Elisabeth and Ludwig loved learning and read a great deal, especially classical literature. Both were admirers of Schopenhauer. Both were antimilitarist. Both also had felt great assurance in their feelings about the church; Ludwig to Crown Prince Rudolf: “Let the people keep their good Catholic faith, with its soothing promise of a hereafter, its miracles and sacraments; but as you correctly put it, the educated man cannot possibly be satisfied with these antiquated views.”7 Sisi could not talk so well about her mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie, with anyone else as with her “royal cousin,” who considered Sophie an “Ultramontane, deluded woman.”8

  No matter how many puzzles the relationship between Ludwig and Elisabeth presented, one thing was certain: sexuality had no part in it. Ludwig, who liked calling himself “the virgin king,” had homosexual tendencies, though he struggled against them with all his might, always striving for the ideal of chivalric purity. Since, “thank God,” he knew nothing of desire for the female sex, he once wrote, his “adoration for the purity of women” was “all the more deeply felt.”9

  To picture the strange relationship of these two Bavarian relatives, we must always recall Ludwig’s total absence of sexual response to women. It was (in Ludwig’s sense) a “pure”—that is, completely nonerotic—love between the handsome King, who crossed the boundary between normality and madness as early as the 1870s, and the Empress, who, at least as an aging woman, increasingly cultivated odd habits.

  Elisabeth and Ludwig were close, but in a manner that differed from the closeness of a man and a woman. It was the intimacy of two fairy-tale characters who have left reality and “normal people” behind.

  During the 1860s, however, the older and more highly placed Elisabeth was still a person the young King must respect—as she knew only too well. She could afford to scold him in no uncertain terms in 1865, when Bavaria recognized the Kingdom of Italy. In her opinion, Ludwig showed too little Wittelsbach solidarity with the Italian rulers, especially with the King and Queen of the Two Sicilies. Elisabeth to Ludwig II: “I cannot conceal from you that I was very surprised by the recognition of Italy particularly on the part of Bavaria, for each of the banished princely families includes members of the Bavarian royal family, though I imagine that the reasons that have persuaded you to this inexplicable step must be so weighty that my simple view of your attitude cannot even be considered, given the important interests and sacred duties you must espouse.” After these outspoken words, however, she assured the King of the “fervent love with which I cling to my home,” and the “cordial, honest friendship I feel especially for you.”10

  But these were surely the usual court clichés. Sisi’s comments on the appearances of her highly theatrical cousin were usually sarcastic, as when she wrote from Bavaria to Rudolf, sixteen years old at the time, “Yesterday the King paid me a long visit, and if Grandmama had not eventually joined us, he would still be here. He is quite reconciled, I was very well behaved, he kissed my hand so much that Aunt Sofie, who was looking through the door, afterward asked me whether I still had it! Once again he was wearing an Austrian uniform and was heavily perfumed.”11

  The Aunt Sophie mentioned in this letter was Elisabeth’s youngest sister. Because of her beauty and her highly placed relatives in Vienna, there were many aspirants for her hand, and she handed out refusals right and left. In 1867, Sophie became engaged to King Ludwig II. It was love in Ludwig’s style: impassioned, unworldly, without the “sensuality” Ludwig hated. Sophie, who adored Wagner, was extremely musical. She had a beautiful voice and could sing to the King for hours. Most important, she was Elisabeth’s sister and very like her. Even during the brief period the engagement lasted, Ludwig’s letters to the Empress were far more ardent that those to the young bride, whom he always addressed as Elsa. Characteristically, however, Ludwig did not see himself as the loving Lohengrin; his letters to Elsa were always signed Heinrich—that is, he assumed the role of King Henry the Fowler.

  The King spoke less and less of marriage, even though a splendid wedding coach was ready and waiting. Finally, Duke Max laid down the law and gave the vacillating bridegroom an ultimatum. Ludwig, offended in his sense of majestic grandeur, took this as the welcome excuse to break the engagement and to assure his “beloved Elsa” that he loved her “like a precious sister.” “Now I have had time to examine my feelings, to reflect seriously, and I see that now as before, my true, fond brotherly love for you is rooted deep in my soul, but not the love that is necessary to a wedded union.”12

  Relieved, he wrote in his diary, “Sophie written off. The somber picture scattered; I long for freedom, I thirst for freedom, for a return from the tormenting nightmare.”13 He took the sculpted bust of his beautiful bride and threw it out the window. (After only a few months, Sophie was consoled and became engaged to the equally good-looking Duke of Alençon. Ludwig made no further attempts to find a queen.)

  Ludwig’s admiration of Elisabeth, however, was unchanged by the embarrassing incident of the failed engagement. Beginning in 1872, every time Elisabeth stayed in Possenhofen, Ludwig paid her a visit. His arrival always occasioned a great fuss, because the King was unwilling to see anyone except the Empress—not her siblings (not even his former fiancée), not her parents, not the servants. Countess Festetics: “quickly he replaced the cap, which rode precariously atop the beautiful wavy hair, with the shako. He was wearing Austrian uniform and sported aslant across his chest the ribbon of the Great Cross of St. Stephen and over it, going in the opposite direction, the field ribbon. He alighted from the carriage—a handsome man with the mannerisms of a stage king or like Lohengrin in the wedding processions.”

  Contrary to Ludwig’s wish, Elisabeth introduced her lady-in-waiting to the King. In her diary the attendant described Ludwig’s “wonderful dark eyes, which quickly changed expression; dreamily soft, then again, like lightning, a flash of spiteful amusement—and to say it all—the glowing, sparkling eyes grow cold, and a glance, a glow more like cruelty flashes in them!! Then again, he looks melancholy and gentle; what he says shows intelligence; he speaks well and self-confidently.”14 This was the time when Ludwig’s younger brother Otto was already mad; in Ludwig, too, certain character traits became increasingly evident that no longer conformed to normal standards. Even during this visit of 1872, Marie Festetics reacted with compassion to the strange behavior of the Bavarian King.

  The friendship between Ludwig and Elisabeth was not without its tensions. Several times, Elisabeth insisted on bringing along her “only child,” little Valerie, to a meeting. Her excessive maternal love set Ludwig’s teeth on edge. “I really do not know what the Empress is constantly telling me about her Valerie, she wants to see me, but I do not want to see her,”15 Ludwig complained to one of his confidants. Sisi, for her part, wrote her husband in 1874, “If only the King of Bavaria would leave me alone,”16 and she complained to her ladies-in-waiting about Ludwig’s exhausting visits.

  Elisabeth, too, felt “immeasurable compassion” (Festetics) for Ludwig, because “he is not mad enough to be locked up but too abnormal to manage comfortably in the world with reasonable people.” The King’s long and generally taciturn visits tired her, but (to the consternation of Countess Festetics) she kept finding new traits they had in common. “And since he loves solitude and, as he says, ‘is unappreciated,’ she believes that there are similarities between them, and the trace of melancholia in
him is another thread!—God forbid that this similarity is real!”

  The Countess comforted herself with one thought: “That is just one of her ideas, like an excuse, to explain why she too likes to seclude herself. It would be a family trait, which one does not have to account for.”17

  *

  In the early 1870s, it was Crown Prince Rudolf who kept the relationship between Ludwig and Elisabeth alive. The King liked the fifteen-year-old boy, who was lively and very well-read, immensely. He discussed Grillparzer’s plays and Richard Wagner with him. He sent many rhapsodic letters filled with assurances of friendship and many hymns of praise for Elisabeth.

  Though Ludwig’s ties to Rudolf loosened as Rudolf’s intellectual independence grew, the links with the Empress became closer than ever during the 1880s. Both felt unappreciated, felt that they were among the elect, not subject to any human laws and obligations. As a young woman, at the time of her greatest triumphs, Elisabeth had still made fun of the King because of his buffoonery. Now, twenty years later, she too withdrew into herself, was extremely shy of company, and almost reveled in her problems and fears. She rediscovered the advantages of her Bavarian royal cousin. The increasingly close relationship with the mentally ill King proved an enormous risk to the aging Empress.

  All the encounters of the two cousins during this time seem bizarre. In 1881, Sisi took a boat across Lake Starnberg to the Rose Island, where Ludwig II had fled from the affairs of government. She brought along only Rustimo, the blackamoor. On the return trip, the King accompanied her. As they crossed the lake, Rustimo sang foreign folk songs to the guitar, and as a reward, Ludwig placed a ring on his finger. Elisabeth made the scene the occasion for a poem in which she presented herself as a northerr seagull (she happened to be traveling through Holland while writing these lines) and Ludwig as an eagle. In her usual way, she did not mail these verses but left them in Ludwig’s castle on the Rose Island when she paid a return visit in June 1885, while the King was away.

  It was not until September 1885 that Ludwig II found Sisi’s poem. In return, he wrote a poem in an elegiac tone. He attached a letter of explanation. “For years I have not visited the Rose Island, only a few days ago I learned what joy was awaiting me there. At this news, I flew hurriedly to the idyllic island and there found the precious greeting from my seagull! Deepest, most fervent thanks!”18

  Encounters between Elisabeth and Ludwig were nevertheless infrequent By this time, Ludwig II was living sequestered from the world in his fairy-tale castles, sleeping through the days and spending the nights on solitary horseback rides through the mountains. It was especially during this time, when Ludwig was living a totally isolated fantasy life and no longer found support even among his family, that Elisabeth defended her royal cousin. After all, she had always been interested in mental illness, which claimed so many victims in the Wittelsbach family during this period. She felt almost magically attracted to people who had stepped over the boundary between “normality” and “madness.” In 1874, in the company of Queen Marie of Bavaria, the mother of Ludwig II and the mad Otto, Elisabeth visited an insane asylum in Munich. Countess Festetics, who was also present at this visit, reported, “The Empress was pale and somber, but the Queen—God have mercy—who has two mad sons, she was amused and laughed.”

  On the other hand, Elisabeth was so fascinated by this visit that she replicated it as soon as possible—six months later, in London. Marie Festetics cautiously expressed her fears of what was to become of Elisabeth. “Who can say where the dividing line between madness and reason lies? Where order stops in the human mind? Where sense, what is right—between imagined and real woes—between real joy and fictive imaginings, stops and begins?”19

  Elisabeth must have realized the hereditary taint to which she was subject. Ludwig’s and Otto’s disorder presumably came from the maternal line (Queen Marie was a Hohenzollern), to which the ducal branch of the Wittelsbachs was not related. But Elisabeth’s grandfather, Duke Pius of Bavaria, was also mentally disturbed and spent the final years of his life as a recluse, completely cut off from human society. Some of Elisabeth’s brothers and sisters were at the very least unstable; in any case, they gave signs of a strong tendency to melancholia. Her sister Helene, for example, had severe mental disturbances after the death of a son in 1885, and according to Archduchess Valerie, she “often seemed mad in her terrible passion”20—not unlike the youngest sister, Sophie. The “Italian” sisters, Marie and Mathilde, were also depressive as they grew older.

  Elisabeth also assured her Greek reader Konstantin Christomanos of her belief. “Have you not noticed that in Shakespeare the madmen are the only sensible ones. In the same way, in real life we do not know where reason and where madness are to be found, just as we do not know whether reality is the dream or the dream is reality. I tend to consider anyone reasonable who is called mad. What is actually reason is considered to be ‘dangeous madness.’”21

  When events concerning the increasingly strange King came to a head in June 1886, when he was declared insane and removed from government, Elisabeth happened to be in Bavaria, living in Feldafing on the other shore of Lake Starnberg, where Ludwig II met his death by drowning. It was said that the Empress had wanted to help the King to flee and had a carriage made ready for him in Feldafing. These rumors are not confirmed by any of the sources, and in themselves sound unlikely. For Elisabeth hardly had the energy required for such a spectacular abduction under such complicated conditions. It is true that she made an attempt to speak with the interned King, but she abandoned her plan when she was advised against it.22

  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.