Of course, Marie Valerie did not dare to reveal her dislike of Hungary and all things Hungarian in the presence of her mother. She continued to speak nothing but Hungarian with the Empress. Her correspondence was carried on in Hungarian as well.
Valerie’s hatred of Hungary and of all Slavic concerns grew over time into an almost militant German nationalism, which went so far as to include some anti-Austrian strains, strange as that might seem for the daughter of a Habsburg emperor.
Valerie’s diary entries sometimes create the impression that Elisabeth agreed with her attitude. But Elisabeth’s poems in no way support such hints. Elisabeth viewed the German problem from the Bavarian and Austrian standpoints, with a strong aversion to “the Prussians.” If she was pro-German (but never pro-Prussian), it was only in the sense of 1848—quite unlike Valerie, who longed for a unification of all German nations under the leadership of Berlin and in total disregard of the “Austrian idea.” This view was the opposite of the stance taken by the openly “Austrian” and “anti-Prussian” Crown Prince Rudolf. The young Archduchess used the concepts “Prussian” and “German” almost interchangeably, and she saw the power center of a greater German nation in the new German Empire under Wilhelm II.
To the same extent that Elisabeth and Rudolf were of one mind on ideology, the young Archduchess was of quite another. She was a deeply devout Catholic—in contrast to Rudolf—and all her life remained zealously committed to the tenets and dogmas of the Catholic church in every detail. She abhorred any kind of liberalism and worried a great deal about the eternal salvation of the Empress, who boldly developed her own religious views without consideration of church rules—in this, too, the perfect model to her son.
Elisabeth’s excessive maternal love for Marie Valerie, at times approaching hysteria, began not only to arouse considerable ridicule among the court society and the Crown Prince’s ardent jealousy, but sometimes also became burdensome to the young Archduchess, especially when it caused conflicts with her deeply beloved father. After one painful scene between her parents concerning her welfare (the Emperor had, as he did in most instances, given in), Valerie wrote, “What I most wanted to do was fall at his feet and kiss his paternal imperial hands, even as I felt—God forgive me—a momentary anger at Mama, since her unbridled love and exaggerated, groundless concern place me in such an embarrassing and false position.”35
The fifteen-year-old worshiped her father and was overjoyed when she was allowed to sit silently by while he went over his papers at his desk. Marie Valerie:
For more than an hour I sat next to him, quiet as a mouse, while he worked and smoked. It must have been important, for he looked up only once, and that was to remark, “But you must be terribly bored,” to which, of course, I answered impetuously, “Oh, no, Papa, it is good to be sitting here….” “A pretty pleasure,” he said and continued working. The poor man! As I saw him sitting so patiently before this pile of papers, without a word of complaint … how every man in the state always pushes the cares and sorrows away, always higher and higher, until finally everything comes to the Emperor—and he, who cannot send it higher, accepts everything and works everything through patiently, personally caring for the welfare of each and every one. How wonderful it is to have such a father.”36
The Empress’s return shortly thereafter broke up this warm relationship: “The ideal coziness of those unforgettable days in Schönbrunn is over—now that Mama is here, I do not dare to cheer him up and to show my love half-furtively, as before.”37
*
Although the Empress never left any doubt that only her love for Marie Valerie still kept her at the Viennese court, she was nevertheless understanding when her daughter came of marriageable age and the suitors arrived—among them Friedrich August, Crown Prince of Saxony, and Prince Miguel of Braganza. Marie Valerie was a most reasonable girl, who could clearly distinguish between a purely dynastic match, which she flatly rejected (with Elisabeth’s energetic support), and a marriage for love, which—once again, supported by her mother—she ardently wished for.
In this situation, Valerie had a friend and confidante in her mother. Together they appraised the suitors for Valerie’s hand. Prince Alfons of Bavaria also came to visit in Vienna, and Valerie immediately sensed that he was checking her out “like a cow at the cattle market.” He kept up his part in the conversation by talking about horses, especially about the various ways to harness them, endlessly boring both mother and daughter in his heavy Bavarian dialect. Finally, Elisabeth seized the initiative and set out to trip him up. “Surely you go only to operettas and fall asleep at classical works? But I’m sure you’re always awake at the circus? Don’t you prefer the city to the country? You must think the country is too isolated and boring, isn’t that true?”
Valerie observed this conversation sharply and in her diary made fun of the admirer who was unable to withstand the Empress’s irony. “All unsuspecting, he heartily agreed to all her questions and fell into the trap so completely that it was all … I could do not to burst out laughing. He seems very kind-hearted but does not impress me.”38
Even when there was an end to the games and Valerie fell in love, Elisabeth remained her daughter’s ally. The man Valerie chose was Archduke Franz Salvator from the Tuscan branch of the family—a choice that at first made the Emperor uncomfortable, primarily because of the close degree of kinship. Franz was inexperienced, very young, and extremely shy. It was the Empress who brought the couple together, arranging an “accidental” meeting at the Burgtheater.
Franz was too shy to come to the imperial box, but a second attempt, the following night, to bring about the planned meeting succeeded. Marie Valerie captured the scene in her diary.
Ten minutes after seven, Mama and I went down. How jittery I was…. Now Mama quietly sneaks to the archway [of the box] and opens the door. There sits Franz, alone, pressed into a corner, but does not recognize Mama until, beckoning with her finger, she softly says: “Come.” He jumps up—I am standing outside behind Mama … he answers all her questions without so much as a glance at me—quite the same as before. … Finally Mama turns to me: “Isn’t that right? Valerie has grown?” “Yes, grown some more,” and shakes hands with me with such a blissful expression that my heart leaps up and I feel that everything is good, terribly good.39
Two more years passed before the young couple became engaged at Christmas of 1888. Elisabeth insisted that Valerie not act hastily: “Once in the lives of most women there comes a moment when they fall in love. That is why I owe it to Franz and myself,” Valerie told her diary, “to get to know other young men, so that I will not encounter the ‘right’ one when it is too late.”40
The Emperor’s reservations about this alliance could be easily countered, since Elisabeth took Valerie’s part wholeheartedly. The Crown Prince, on the other hand, long continued to object to the Archduke, whom he considered too insignificant. It may be that Valerie tended to exaggerate her brother’s qualms. Whatever the case, the relationship between brother and sister was extremely strained during this period. Since for her part Elisabeth was intent on sparing her youngest child every grief and reacted hysterically to every complication, her relationship with her son suffered now irreparable damage. She saw him as the enemy of her darling, and that was the worst that could happen to him. The Empress did not know that during this time, Rudolf had problems quite other than his youngest sister’s affairs of the heart.
Even on the rare occasions when mother and son met, the only topic was Valerie’s future. One of these encounters occurred at the unveiling of the Maria Theresia Memorial in Vienna on May 13, 1888, which both the Empress and the Crown Prince attended. On the eve of the ceremony, there had been riots against the House of Habsburg and in favor of affiliation of German Austria with the German Reich. The Crown Prince’s carriage happened to become trapped at the center of the demonstration, leaving Rudolf deeply depressed and shaken in his faith for Austria’s future.41 Even the Empress noticed how i
ll he looked, but her only question was, “Are you unwell?” To which he replied, not mentioning his entanglements, “No, just tired and nervous.”
By this time, the Crown Prince must have realized that his mother was quite unable to help him out of his troubles, or even to understand them. Once again (as happened every time they happened to meet at official events) she spoke to him in her dreamy, unrealistic way of his younger sister’s well-being: “I am Sunday’s child, I have links with the other world, and I can bring good or bad fortune,” she told the seriously ill and severely depressed Rudolf, without paying any attention to him. Rudolf could hardly make any other answer but “I shall never harm Valerie, Mama.”42 The destiny of the Crown Prince, who soon after began to plan his suicide, ran its course unchecked.
Because she did not concern herself with anything but her favorite daughter’s welfare, Elisabeth usually interpreted Rudolf’s seriousness and remoteness as hostility toward Valerie. Mother and daughter worked each other up into a fear of the Crown Prince—and this at a time when Rudolf’s faith in the future of the Danube monarchy and in himself was already long dead.
Valerie even confided to her diary how unbearable it was to know that “beloved Ischl”—that is, the imperial villa—would eventually be Rudolf and Stephanie’s possession. She found the idea “so terrible that I would like to put the beloved villa to the torch.” Elisabeth reassured her by hinting that she had long ago discussed the matter with the Emperor and that not Rudolf but Valerie would inherit the house (as was eventually the case).43
The Empress did everything to secure her daughter’s future even beyond Franz Joseph’s death, demonstrating a great distrust, even dislike, of Rudolf. Valerie: “During a walk in Schönbrunn, Mama and I talk about Rudolf as a person, as the next Emperor, as possible brother-in-law to Franz [Valerie’s fiancé]. Mama thinks that he would hold Franz down, hinder him in his military career.” As a solution, Elisabeth proposed, “If he [Franz] has the character I wish for you … he will not stand for such suppression but will develop his capabilities in German service”—that is, leave Austria. “Mama would like to suggest to Franz the idea that if the war between Germany and France breaks out before ours with Russia, to enter the German army as a volunteer until duty calls him back here. That way he would gain glory…. That would show whether he is a man or merely an archduke.”44
Elisabeth, who never carried on a political conversation with her highly talented only son, asked her daughter’s bridegroom-elect for his political opinion. Valerie’s diary records the following discussion between Elisabeth and the twenty-year-old Archduke Franz Salvator. Elisabeth began by asking “whom he would prefer to take the field against—Germans, Russians, Italians?”
“No matter.”
Mama: “If it goes against the Germans, so sad … brothers….”
Franz: “But one cannot rely on their friendship, I cannot stand the Prussians, calculating, unreliable.”
Mama: “If they seek the advantage for their country and are capable of gaining it, one cannot really blame them for it … and not all Germans are Prussians….”
And then Mama explained how devout and hardworking the Westphalians were, how bright and cultured the Rhinelanders, Badensians, Württembergers, how they learn and discuss things so very differently from us, where conditions are lax and without unity and firm order.
Elisabeth added that it was “such a pleasure to fight the Russians, for I hate them and the Italians as well…. The Italians are false and cowardly”45—a remark hardly calculated to please the Italian-born Franz.
Elisabeth also told the Crown Prince about the young couple’s plans to emigrate. Rudolf was horrified at the idea that the son-in-law of the Austrian Emperor might enter the service of Germany because the Empress of Austria felt conditions in her own country to be too unfavorable. Rudolf to Valerie: “Papa will never allow it, and it would have the most disastrous effect on the whole army.” If study abroad was considered absolutely necessary, then he, Rudolf, would recommend the artillery college in Woolwich.46 At this suggestion, however, the bridegroom-elect fell into real despair, since he could not speak English.
Elisabeth’s mind became set on Valerie’s emigration. The logic of this fixed idea is difficult to reconstruct today. It serves to show, however, the depth of Elisabeth’s antipathies for Austria. On May 5, 1888, Archduchess Marie Valerie’s diary captured one of Elisabeth’s typical reactions. “Franz talked about the deterioration of conditions here,” it reads. “Of course, this made Mama very happy.”
Marie Valerie, who drifted more and more into German Nationalist waters, interpreted Elisabeth’s ideas in her own way and urged the irresolute bridegroom on with the following arguments, astonishing in the daughter of a Habsburg emperor. “First we are Germans, then Austrians, and only in third place Habsburgs. The welfare of the German fatherland must be the first thing in our hearts—so long as it flourishes, it does not matter whether under Habsburgs or Hohenzollerns…. That is why you are wrong to say that in the service of Emperor Wilhelm, you would be in foreign service.—German is German, and the fatherland comes before family.”47 Given these views, any last chance of arriving at an understanding with her brother was gone; he was an emphatic, even fanatical Austrian, and to him Wilhelm II was the archenemy.
*
But the Empress did not make Valerie’s life easy once the engagement was announced. Now she complained that “she hated people in general, and men in particular, more than ever,” wrote Marie Valerie. And shortly thereafter: “Mama said, if I ever marry she will never be glad to see me again, she is like some animals who abandon their young as soon as someone touches them.”48
In her conversations with her future son-in-law, Elisabeth repeatedly expressed thoughts of death. “You must not believe, as many people do, that I want to see Valerie married to you so as to keep her near me. When she marries, it does not matter whether she goes to China or remains in Austria—she is lost to me in any case. But I trust you, your character, your love for her, and if I were to die today, I could die in peace only because I entrust Valerie to you.”49
All fears based on Rudolf’s supposed hostility vanished when Elisabeth brought him the news of Valerie’s engagement in December 1888. As Valerie described it:
he was not at all unfriendly, and so I felt encouraged for the first time in my life to throw my arms about his neck…. Poor brother, so he does have a warm heart in need of love, for he embraced me and kissed me with the full fervor of true brotherly affection—again and again he drew me to his heart, and one could feel that he was pleased at my showing him the love that for so long had been almost stifled by fear and timidity. Mama begged him always to be good to me, to us, once we are dependent on him, and he solemnly swore it, simply and warmly. At that she made the sign of the cross on his forehead and said God would bless him for it and bring him good luck—she assured him of her love, and he fervently kissed her hand, deeply moved. I thanked him and enfolded him and Mama in a single embrace, while I said almost instinctively: “We should be this way always!”50
Countess Festetics described still another emotional scene, which took place on Christmas Eve of 1888. The Crown Prince threw his arms about his mother’s neck “and broke out in long sobbing, which would not stop, and which frightened her deeply.” The ladies-in-waiting and adjutants, who were invited to join the family at the Christmas tree immediately afterward, “found the members of the imperial house still tear-stained and emotional.”51
At this, the final Christmas celebration of his life, the Crown Prince gave renewed proof of his great veneration of his mother. The public outcry attending the plans for a Heine memorial in Düsseldorf (see here.) had erupted. Rudolf—who, like Elisabeth, was attacked by the anti-Semites—believed that in the mother he loved so passionately he had now found an ally, a fellow fighter in the cause of liberalism against German Nationalism and anti-Semitism. Furthermore, in this affair, too, he felt himself to be the opposite number o
f the hated young Wilhelm II, who sided with the anti-Heine faction.
In order to prove that he revered his mother, Rudolf paid an outrageous price in Paris for eleven Heine autographs and placed them under the Christmas tree for the Empress. Elisabeth, however, was so preoccupied with her daughter’s engagement that she did not pay Rudolf’s gift the attention he had expected.
No one took very seriously the thirty-year-old Crown Prince’s frequent mentions of his imminent death. Significantly, he spoke of his feelings not to family members, but to Marie Festetics. She, in turn, was too sparing of the Empress to give her even the slightest hint of them.
When the historian Heinrich Friedjung interviewed the Countess in 1909 and heard the many excuses she was quick to make for Elisabeth, he raised the same objection that must occur to anyone who thinks about the tragedy of Mayerling. Friedjung:
I could not refrain from telling the Countess that, no matter how deeply her statements moved me and filled me with sympathy for the Empress, I could not comprehend how a mother as deeply sensitive as the Empress could remain ignorant of what was disturbing the Crown Prince and how she could not know how far he had strayed. The Countess then repeated emphatically a remark she made several times: You must never forget that persons of high rank live quite differently from other people, that they find out less and that actually they may be called very unhappy because the truth reaches them only rarely and never completely.52
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