by Greg King
The Danube Basin and the surrounding Vienna Woods lent the city an almost provincial feel despite its cosmopolitan exterior. Until the 1850s rampart-topped walls and picturesque gateways arose from grassed-over moats, wrapping the narrow, cobbled streets in a protective embrace. Then the new Ringstrasse had swept the medieval aside in imitation of Second Empire Paris, creating magisterial squares, broad gardens, and appropriately grand avenues for Habsburg ceremonials. Here, too, aristocratic Vienna—and would-be aspirants—drove in crested carriages and promenaded each afternoon, proudly displaying the latest Parisian and Viennese fashions, a “gay, well dressed, talkative mass of people rushing both ways,” recorded a visiting Julia Dent Grant, granddaughter of the former American president, “getting tangled up and untangling themselves.”1
Vienna had always carried a whiff of the exotic, standing as it did between East and West. Twice soldiers had successfully repelled the invading Turks; when the sultan’s army fled in 1683, they left behind bags of what soon became one of Vienna’s enduring symbols: coffee. Now, on this January evening, the city’s coffeehouses were—as always—surging with gossip, news, and philosophical talk. Sitting beneath wispy clouds of blue smoke curling from cigarettes, a few of the intellectuals absorbed newspapers and journals from Budapest, Paris, London, Berlin—even from New York—that offered tantalizing talk of growing nationalism and spurred debate.2 The Habsburgs, it was true, ruled with a parliament, but theirs was a conservative, often reactionary rule, and an undercurrent of avant-garde ideas simmered just beneath Vienna’s outwardly genteel surface. True radicalism was a rarity, however. Unlike St. Petersburg, where bomb-wielding nihilists potentially lurked behind every potted palm, Vienna’s would-be revolutionaries channeled their frustration into artistic, intellectual, and cultural radiance as the city saw the rise of composer Gustav Mahler, architect Otto Wagner, artist Gustav Klimt, and Sigmund Freud.
Much of Vienna, or so it often seemed to observers, lived in a protective cocoon of leisurely, cheerful gaiety. It was better to ignore unpleasant reality than to fight: Most Viennese, recorded the British diplomat Lord Frederic Hamilton, seemed “quite content to drift lazily down the stream of life, with as much enjoyment and as little trouble as possible.”3 Amiability was favored over raw ambition; comfort and charm were more useful in daily life than ostentatious display and haughty manners. “The people of Vienna seem to any serious observer to be reveling in an everlasting state of intoxication,” Austrian politician Franz Schuselka aptly wrote. “Eat, drink and be merry are the three cardinal virtues and pleasures of the Viennese. It is always Sunday, always Carnival time for them. There is music everywhere. The innumerable inns are full of roisterers night and day. Everywhere there are droves of fops and fashionable dolls. Everywhere, in daily life, in art and in literature, there prevails that delicate and witty jesting. For the Viennese the only point of anything, of the most important event in the world, is that they can make a joke about it.”4
Ostensibly there was less gaiety that January 1889 than usual. The emperor’s father-in-law had recently died, and royal mourning meant that the usual round of court balls and dinners had been canceled, although private entertainments continued. And so it was this January 27. The day had come and gone, but nightfall saw a burst of activity at Vienna’s Hofburg, the rambling imperial palace whose disparate wings and jumbled facades had metastasized over the centuries around innumerable cobbled courts. Restless horses clopped hooves against uneven pavements as liveried grooms harnessed them to carriages painted black on top and bottle green on the underside, with gold-rimmed wheels to distinguish the occupants as members of the ruling house.5 Soon enough the line of carriages was in motion, a contingent of bodyguards in gold, silver, and green liveries galloping alongside beneath the swirling snow.6
Though it was a Sunday, a few lights still burned in the neo-Gothic Rathaus, or City Hall, with its lofty tower; lighted the Renaissance-style Burgtheater; shone against the massive marble columns and ornate neoclassical pediments of the Reichsrat, the Austrian Imperial Council; and shimmered across the Opera House’s Renaissance loggia—none of the buildings more than thirty years old but wrapped in a variety of historical patinas meant to convey the permanence of the Habsburg empire. Most of the capital, though, was quiet as the line of imperial carriages rumbled toward the Italianate facade of 3 Metternichgasse. Behind windows flooded with light, the ballroom of the Imperial German Embassy pulsed with a colorfully clad, vibrant crowd of privileged guests moving in and out of the banked flowers and forest of potted palms. Court mourning had been set aside, at least in this extraterritorial bit of Germany, to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had come to the throne when his father, Friedrich III, succumbed to cancer the previous June. Much to Austria’s annoyance, Prussia had become the dominant force in Europe. However, Vienna’s military alliance with Berlin demanded that the ruling Habsburgs demonstrate some modicum of honor for the event, even though most despised both their Germanic rival and the brash young kaiser.
The German ambassador, Prince Reuss, scion of a family that confusingly named all male members Heinrich and numbered them accordingly, waited to receive his guests. The ambassador was Heinrich VII. For this soiree he’d filled his ballroom with an impressive array of Austria’s insular aristocracy. Most lived in isolated splendor, intermarrying for generations to prevent the introduction of unwelcome outsiders into their closed circle. A mere two hundred families—Auerspergs, Liechtensteins, Metternichs, Schwarzenbergs, Esterházys, and the like—occupied the highest level of society.7 Their intense charm, oppressively mannered courtesies, and taste for polished living carried—like Vienna itself—more than a whiff of studied theatricality. “No one,” wrote Julia Grant, “asked them to be intense or intellectual or ambitious, and they never were.”8 It was a common complaint. “Viennese society is pervaded by a great moral indolence and a want of energy and initiative,” recorded Walburga, Lady Paget, wife of the British ambassador, Sir Augustus Paget. “Politics, religion, literature, art, and sciences are hardly ever alluded to in general talk.”9
On this particular night the aristocratic elite and members of the diplomatic corps ringed the edges of the ballroom—a sea of brocade and velvet gowns, sparkling diamonds, and handsome uniforms in a kaleidoscope of reds, greens, and blues bedecked with sable- or fox-trimmed dolman jackets and gold braid. A space was left at the center of the room; a flutter of fans and the rustle of silk floated over the crowd. The ambassadors of Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Bavaria, Russia, France, and Turkey waited expectantly, sipping Champagne with the Austrian prime minister, Eduard von Taaffe; Cardinal Prince Cölestin Ganglbauer, the archbishop of Vienna; and the papal nuncio, Monsignor Luigi Galimberti.10
In one corner Prince Reuss exchanged pleasantries with Princess Louise of Coburg, while her husband, Prince Philipp, circled the room.11 The Coburgs occupied a position of prominence at court. In 1881 Louise’s sister Stephanie had married Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary and come to live in Vienna. Rudolf immediately took to his new brother-in-law. The two became constant hunting companions and, it was said, partners in less admirable pursuits as well. Opinion in Vienna, though, always tended to indulge the self-indulgent, and a charming veneer excused much.
A little after ten a signal alerted Prince Reuss that his guests of honor had arrived; excusing himself to Princess Louise, he left the corner to welcome the star attractions. The future of the empire and the glory of the Habsburgs rested on the slim shoulders of Crown Prince Rudolf, now uncomfortably attired in the dark broadcloth dress uniform of Prussia’s 2nd Brandenburg Uhlan Regiment to honor the kaiser. Rudolf was thirty, though he looked far older. His brownish-red hair was distressingly thin, his drooping mustache oddly pointed, and his features creased with worry; dark rings circled pale, restless eyes. His expression, recalled his wife, seemed to hint at “a process of internal dissolution.”12
At her husband’s side, Crown Princess Stephanie appear
ed statuesque, pretty if not beautiful, with a pert nose, an exquisite complexion, and a tangle of frizzed golden hair topped by a diamond tiara. She was, her sister Louise remembered, “beautifully gowned” in a gray silk dress.13 Stephanie appeared to relish the attention, but she often seemed ill at ease—and not without reason: Too proud, much of Vienna thought, too stiff, and damned as so unsympathetic that she had driven her husband from their marital bed. Aware that her critics were always ready to pounce, Stephanie struck one observer as “timid to excess,” with a strained smile and an overwhelming desire, once the official greetings ended, “to try to get into a corner, away from everyone.”14
Fifteen minutes later the orchestra struck up the Austrian national anthem, “God Save Our Emperor,” as Franz Josef I entered the room, attired in the uniform of a Prussian field marshal. At fifty-eight the emperor of Austria and apostolic king of Hungary carried himself as erect as any soldier. Franz Josef had been on the throne since the age of eighteen; few people could remember any other ruler. Tufts of close-cropped gray hair sprouted from his increasingly bald head; bushy mutton-chop whiskers and a mustache cloaked the unsightly traces of an infamous Habsburg jutting lower lip. He gave the appearance of a contented, benevolent, but “altogether magnetic” figure, fully conscious of his own imperial dignity but far too polite to wield it in public.15 Rudolf, it is said, bowed deeply to his father and kissed his hand as he entered the ballroom.16
He entered alone—without his enigmatic wife—but then, as everyone had come to expect, Franz Josef was often alone. Beautiful, aloof, and mysterious, Empress Elisabeth had never succeeded in winning the affections of her husband’s Austrian subjects. Her obvious sympathy for all things Hungarian caused resentment, and she had done much damage by repeatedly running off to Madeira or Corfu claiming poor health, or obsessively riding with the most fashionable hunts in England and Ireland. Her appearances at court diminished with the passing years; even without her father’s recent death, few would have expected to see her at the German reception that evening.
Stephanie was exchanging pleasantries when Rudolf suddenly spotted her sister Louise. Leaving his wife, he crossed the ballroom as if possessed. “She is there!” he quietly hissed to his sister-in-law. Louise knew exactly whom he meant.17 Indeed, many were now openly staring at the slight young girl in the light-blue gown trimmed in yellow who had just entered the ballroom, and whose appearance “aroused universal admiration and attention.”18 A lover’s-knot diamond brooch glittered on her décolletage, shimmering with every breath; a diamond crescent adorned the “artistically arranged coils” of her dark-brown hair; and a sapphire bracelet—a gift from the crown prince—wrapped her wrist.19 “Superb and glowing,” recalled Louise of Coburg, seventeen-year-old Baroness Mary Vetsera looked every inch “the seductress,” certain “of the power of her full and triumphant beauty.”20
Reaction in the ballroom was immediate: Everyone knew that Mary Vetsera was Crown Prince Rudolf’s latest mistress—the Viennese court thrived on gossip—though no one had likely imagined she would be brazen enough to so publicly flaunt the relationship as her dark eyes followed her lover around the room. A few prominent ladies glared at her with disapproval; others seemed to relish the uncomfortable scene unfolding before their eyes.21 Mary boldly walked up to Count Josef Hoyos, one of Rudolf’s favorite companions and frequent hunting partners, and transfixed him with her “dazzling beauty. Her eyes seemed larger than they were, and sparkled mysteriously.” Her efforts at conversation were inconsequential, mostly about Rudolf’s hunting and his lodge at Mayerling, but, Hoyos recalled, “her whole personality seemed to blaze.”22
Rudolf watched in disbelief as his mistress stared at him across the room; a few hours earlier, Mary had coldly confided to a friend that she hoped Crown Princess Stephanie would notice her that evening and be jealous.23 The young baroness had no problem in attracting attention, though her lover was less than enamored of the spectacle. “Oh, if somebody would only deliver me from her!” Rudolf cried to Louise. He was, Louise thought, in a “state of nervous exhaustion.” She tried to draw him out by commenting on Mary’s obvious beauty, but Rudolf seemed uninterested. Finally he turned from his sister-in-law, muttering, “I simply cannot tear myself away from her.”24
The emperor left after an hour, but Rudolf and Stephanie remained, both watching as Mary Vetsera eased her way across the gleaming parquet floor until she stood at the center of the ballroom, delighted that all eyes seemed focused on her. Finally Rudolf went up to her, and they exchanged a few words; onlookers thought that the lovers seemed unusually serious as they spoke.25 The crown prince, thought Walburga Paget, looked “dejected” and “sad,” and could barely fight “back his tears.”26 His unease only increased when he rejoined Stephanie and continued to greet the guests, aware that all eyes were watching him. Flanked by her mother, Baroness Helene Vetsera, and by her sister, Hanna, Mary moved down the reception line, inching ever closer to the crown princess. Finally they came face-to-face, a horrified Stephanie at her husband’s side as he coldly nodded at his mistress. The atmosphere in the ballroom was electric.27
Rudolf was too steeped in etiquette to snub his mistress openly, and he again exchanged a few words with the young lady, who smiled broadly back at him. Then Mary defiantly stared at Stephanie. According to a police report, she stood straight and unbending before the crown princess; seeing what was happening, Helene grabbed her daughter’s arm and quickly jerked her to the floor in a clumsy curtsy.28 No one in the ballroom knew that they had just witnessed one of the final scenes in a high royal drama destined to shock the world: In eighty hours Rudolf and his mistress would be dead.
CHAPTER ONE
Forty years on the throne: Even as he marked the occasion in December 1888, Franz Josef must have worried about the future. He had held his disparate empire together; Viribus Unitis—With United Strength—went the formula he used to describe his rule. That unity was illusory, its complaisant peace constantly threatened by growing nationalism among Franz Josef’s Hungarian, Bohemian, and Slav subjects. How much longer could the old order live on?
Living up to—and preserving—Habsburg tradition ruled Franz Josef’s life. Habsburgs had reigned as Europe’s preeminent Catholic dynasty since the thirteenth century. Military conquest wasn’t really their forte: Instead their influence spread across the continent through propitious marriages—“Let others make war. You, Happy Austria, Marry!”—went the popular saying.1 At the height of their power Habsburgs and Habsburg relations served as Holy Roman Emperors and occupied the thrones of Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Spain, Naples, Milan, France, and the Netherlands. They could boast great rulers—Emperor Charles V and Empress Maria Theresa—as well as some of history’s most pathetic figures, including Maria Theresa’s unfortunate daughter Marie Antoinette. But one by one most of these kingdoms, provinces, and territories had severed ties with Vienna. The fall of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 left the Habsburgs as emperors of Austria and kings of Hungary, Lombardy, and Venice, a motley collection of lands artificially united beneath the yellow-and-black imperial banner and held together by the most fragile of political threads.2
Franz Josef didn’t have a Machiavellian bone in his body, but his resolute mother, Archduchess Sophie, proved that she was made of sterner stuff. One of the daughters of King Maximilian I Josef of neighboring Bavaria, Sophie had arrived in Austria as the bride of Archduke Franz Karl, heir to the unfortunate epileptic and imbecilic Ferdinand I.3 Armed with a belief in her intellectual superiority, Sophie soon dominated her agreeable, unambitious husband. In 1848, when revolution swept across Europe, drove the kings of France and Bavaria from their thrones, and violent demonstrations in Vienna and Budapest forced Ferdinand’s abdication, it was Sophie who most clearly recognized the danger. Thinking that her weak-willed husband couldn’t stomach suppressing the rebels, she persuaded Franz Karl to sign away his rights in favor of their eighteen-year-old son Franz Josef.
Sophie passed up he
r only chance to be empress, but she was merely exchanging one form of power for another. “The only man” at the imperial court, officials called her, as she quickly dominated her son and became his indispensable adviser in all things.4 Believing that his mother’s foresight had saved the throne, Franz Josef blindly followed her dictates—to disastrous effect. A bigoted reactionary, Sophie urged her son to fight growing Hungarian nationalism by subverting the kingdom’s constitution and supporting ethnic minorities to rebel against the dominant Magyars. The parliament in Budapest replied by refusing to recognize Franz Josef as king and in April 1849 named Lajos Kossuth as head of a new Hungarian republic. With his empire on the brink of civil war, Franz Josef relied on Russian soldiers sent by Tsar Nicholas I to ruthlessly crush the revolt.5 When the rebellion was subdued, Franz Josef treated Hungary like a conquered country: In the first five years of his reign the young emperor ordered thousands executed, in keeping with his dictum that “Those who disobey, be they prince or clergy, must relentlessly be pursued and punished.”6 In February 1853 a Hungarian tailor named János Libényi attacked Franz Josef while the emperor was taking his regular afternoon promenade. Libényi’s aim was bad, and the emperor escaped without serious injury. But Franz Josef used the incident to send a clear message to Magyar nationalists: Libényi was publicly hanged as a traitor in Vienna.7
Urged on by his mother, Franz Josef inaugurated his second decade on the throne with an ill-advised war in Austria’s Italian provinces. One by one Lombardy, Naples, Tuscany, Modena, Sicily, and Parma were all lost as a humiliated emperor slunk back to Vienna in disgrace. Protesters mobbed the streets, demanding that Franz Josef abdicate in favor of his younger brother Maximilian; Franz Josef managed to save his throne only by granting his subjects a new constitution in 1861. Still, he retained enormous power: He could write and impose laws when parliament was not in session, could dissolve the body at will, and could fire officials without cause. Even with the constitution, Franz Josef never abandoned his conviction that God had placed him on his throne and charged him with the onerous duty of maintaining order.8