Twilight of Empire

by Greg King

  Darkness had fallen by the time the seven-member court commission, led by Dr. Heinrich Slatin, court secretary in the lord marshal’s office, arrived at Mayerling from Vienna late that afternoon.22 They crowded into the bedroom, examining the grisly scene. A crystal tumbler on the bedside table still held brandy; a broken coffee cup and two smashed Champagne glasses apparently lay on the floor.23

  Loschek remembered that the gun had been by Rudolf’s side, presumably lying on the bed, something echoed by the official Wiener Zeitung.24 Hoyos, though, wrote that Rudolf still held the revolver in his hand: “It was no longer possible,” he insisted, “to straighten out the right index finger, which was crooked round the trigger.”25 Widerhofer told Larisch that it was still in Rudolf’s hand when he arrived, but other accounts reported that the gun was found on the floor at the side of the bed.26 By the time of the court commission’s arrival, though, someone—presumably Loschek or Widerhofer—had moved the gun; Slatin saw it resting atop a small table or chair to the left of the bed.27

  Slatin also noted that a small hand mirror lay on the table next to the gun.28 Later Slatin learned of Rudolf’s interest in the suicide of the Hungarian sportsman István Kégl using a hand mirror to better adjust his aim. This led Slatin to speculate that Rudolf had used the mirror when he shot himself; if so, it—like the gun—must have been moved after his death, given that the bullet to his brain was instantly fatal and left no time for Rudolf to set the mirror down calmly.29

  The commission found a number of notes and letters in the bedroom. Rudolf had written four. Near the bed was a note addressed to Loschek: “Dear Loschek, Fetch a priest and have us buried together in a grave at Heiligenkreuz. Please hand over my dear Mary’s valuables to her mother. Thank you for your invariably loyal and devoted services throughout the many years you have served me. See that the letter to my wife reaches her by the shortest route. Rudolf.”30 He had added a postscript: “Greetings to Count Hoyos. The Baroness asks him if he remembers what he said to her about Mayerling during the evening reception of German Ambassador Prince Reuss. Hoyos is not to telegraph Vienna, but send to Heiligenkreuz for a priest to come and pray by our sides.”31 Rudolf had also drafted a telegram to Abbot Heinrich Grünböck, prior of the monastery at Heiligenkreuz, asking him to come and pray over the bodies.32

  These notes were obviously written at Mayerling, as was the letter Rudolf left for his mother. The precise wording of the latter remains something of a mystery. Elisabeth later asked her reader and trusted companion, Countess Ida von Ferenczy, to destroy it; what little is definitely known came from the countess and from Marie Valerie.33 In 1934 Egon Caesar Conte Corti published his pivotal biography Elisabeth von Österreich, which appeared in an English translation two years later as Elisabeth, Empress of Austria. Corti consulted Ida von Ferenczy’s papers, which apparently included an extensive transcription of Marie Valerie’s diary.34 This related conversations at the Hofburg, described the scene at the lodge, and gave the wording of Rudolf’s last letters to his mother and to his youngest sister. Subsequent historians, believing that Marie Valerie’s diaries were either lost or inaccessible, have all drawn on these apparent transcriptions, which were partly reproduced in Corti’s book and survived in his personal archive. Yet questions surround the material. Marie Valerie’s actual diary ended up in the Bavarian State Library and was published in 1998. This revealed serious discrepancies between Corti’s version of the diary as recorded by Ferenczy; Marie Valerie’s actual entries related to events at the Hofburg; and the content of Rudolf’s final letters. It is possible that Ferenczy heard the details she recorded from Marie Valerie and mistakenly attributed them to her diary, but the differences suggest that readers employ a degree of caution.

  The letter to Empress Elisabeth thus remains a frustrating mystery. Referring to his father, Rudolf apparently wrote, “I know quite well that I am not worthy to be his son.” According to notes left by Ferenczy, the letter ended with a plea that Rudolf be buried at Heiligenkreuz alongside Mary, whom he called “a pure, atoning angel.”35 In her diary Marie Valerie recorded only that her brother made some reference to “the necessity of his death to save his stained honor.”36 Yet Empress Eugénie of France later recalled that Elisabeth told her the letter began with the words “I no longer have any right to live: I have killed.”37

  The fourth of Rudolf’s letters likewise bore no date; the content suggests it was likely written in Vienna and brought to the lodge. This was addressed to Count Ladislaus Szögyény-Marich, chief of the Hungarian section of the Imperial Foreign Ministry, and written in Hungarian:

  Dear Szögyéni! I must die—it’s the only way to leave this world like a gentleman. Have the goodness to open my desk here in Vienna, in the Turkish Room, where we so often sat together in better times, and deliver the papers as set out in my last will enclosed herewith. With warmest regards and with all good wishes for yourself and for our adored Hungarian fatherland. I am yours ever, Rudolf. Departmental Chief von Szögyény-Marich will please open my writing desk in the Turkish Room in Vienna at once and alone. The following letters to be delivered: 1) Valerie; 2) To my wife; 3) To Baron Hirsch; 4) To Mitzi Caspar. Any money that is found please hand over to Mitzi Caspar—my valet Loschek knows her exact address. All letters from Countess Marie Larisch and the little Vetsera girl to me should be destroyed immediately.38

  A fifth letter was supposedly found in a desk drawer. Allegedly written by Rudolf to an unknown recipient and bearing the date January 30, it read: “Time is running short. I conclude: the Emperor will not abdicate in the foreseeable future. He is heading for decline. Eternal waiting with deeply injurious slights and repeated conflicts unbearable! Aspirations with regard to Hungary magnificent but dangerous. Be watchful! No understanding anywhere for crushing matrimonial relations! Young Baroness chooses the same way because of hopelessness of her love for me. Expiation! Rudolf.”39 Yet this letter has never been seen, and serious doubts surround its authenticity.40

  Mary, too, had written a number of letters. Until recently their content was known only from Helene Vetsera’s privately published booklet on Mayerling. The originals, it has often been said, were destroyed after her death on Helene Vetsera’s instructions.41 But in the summer of 2015, the letters to her mother, sister, and brother were discovered in a bank vault in Vienna, among other papers related to the Vetsera family that had been mysteriously deposited there in 1926.42

  All of Mary’s letters were written at the lodge, on stationery embossed “Jagdschloss [Hunting Lodge] Mayerling,” with a crest of antlers at the top. After her death Rudolf tucked three of these into a single envelope with his crest, and addressed it to Baroness Helene Vetsera. “Dear Mother!” Mary wrote. “Forgive me for what I have done; I could not resist love. In agreement with Him I wish to be buried by his side in the cemetery at Alland. I am happier in death than in life. Your Mary.”43 According to what one of Helene Vetsera’s friends told Hoyos, the letter contained the line, “We are already very curious to know what things are like in the next world.”44 But these lines do not appear in the recently discovered original.

  “We are both going happily into the unknown beyond,” Mary wrote to Hanna. “Think of me now and again, and marry only for love. I could not do so, and as I could not resist love, I am going with him. Your Mary. Do not cry for me. I am going to the other side in peace. It is beautiful out here.” It has been said that this letter contained an additional postscript, asking Hanna to put a gardenia on her grave every January 13, and ensure that their mother provided for Mary’s maid, Agnes Jahoda, “so that she does not suffer from my faults,” though these sentences do not appear in the original.45

  Another letter to Hanna was supposedly found tucked into Mary’s clothing: “Today he finally confessed to me that I could never be his; he gave his father his word of honor that he will break with me. Everything is over! I go to my death serenely.”46

  To her brother Franz, Mary wrote: “Farewell, I shall watch over yo
u from the other world because I love you very much. Your faithful sister, Mary.”47

  Mary wrote two further letters. One, to the duke of Braganza, has never been published. It was, said Hoyos, “cheerful” and concerned a feather boa Mary left Braganza, with the request that he hang it over his bed as a reminder of their time together.48 A week after the tragedy, Le Figaro claimed that Rudolf had written the letter to Braganza: “Dear Friend, I must die. I cannot do otherwise. Farewell, Servus, your Rudolf.”49 This seems apocryphal, but Rudolf did add a postscript to Mary’s letter: “Cheers, Wasser!” This was a reference to Braganza’s nickname of Wasser, or Waterboy, derived from his habit of wearing red scarves like the boys who washed Vienna’s cabs.50

  A final letter was addressed to Marie Larisch. Undated, it was finally shown to the countess some three weeks after Mary’s death: “Dear Marie, Forgive me all the trouble I have caused. I thank you so much for everything you have done for me. If life becomes hard for you, and I fear it will after what we have done, follow us. It is the best thing you can do. Your Mary.”51

  Bodies bathed in blood, skulls shattered, brains spattered against walls, the glinting steel of a gun, aching farewell letters—Mayerling was a tableau of horrors. As the wind whipped against the lodge, Mary’s cold, naked, and bloody body was carried into a storeroom and hastily hidden beneath her clothing. A dozen hours had passed since Rudolf’s death; now Widerhofer carefully wrapped his shattered skull in a length of white cloth, hoping to conceal the terrible wound and prevent more brain tissue from oozing onto the bed. This done, he gently eased the stiffening body back against the crimson-splotched mattress and covered Rudolf with a sheet.52

  Gathered around braziers for warmth, a crowd of curious spectators—their faces illuminated by flickering flames—watched as a squad of police surrounded Mayerling that evening. “Silent, lost in thought, all eyes turned to the white walls of the lodge that conceals a terrible mystery,” reported Le Matin.53 Soon snorting horses appeared out of the dark forest, pulling a hearse that quickly disappeared through a lodge gate. Nothing in nearby Baden had been deemed suitable for the crown prince, and so officials had dispatched a bronze casket by rail from Vienna. It was midnight when the hearse reappeared, now carrying Rudolf’s body past the silent crowd and out into the stormy night.54

  A special train adorned with black crepe bunting waited to carry the crown prince from Baden station back to Vienna. Soldiers loaded the coffin, and at 12:20 a.m. the train finally steamed out of the station. A small crowd ringed Vienna’s Südbahnhof (South Station) as the train arrived; a guard of honor stood in the chilly early-morning air along the platform, presenting arms as four court valets carried the casket, covered in a black pall embroidered with a gold cross, to a hearse drawn by six horses. At half past one the grim cortege set off for the Hofburg; thousands stood in “great silence,” blanketed in fresh snow, as the hearse made its way down the Ringstrasse. Six mounted lifeguards trotted alongside the hearse; behind walked Dr. Laurenz Mayer, chaplain to the imperial court in the Hofburg; Prince Constantine von Hohenlohe; and Rudolf’s Flügeladjutant Baron Artur Giesl von Gieslingen and his ordinance officer, Major Count Maximilian Orsini und Rosenberg.

  The clock in the Schweizerhof was chiming two when the cortege finally reached its destination. A crowd stood in the courtyard; when they caught sight of Rudolf’s coffin, many knelt in the snow. Valets eased the pall-draped casket from the hearse and carried it up the double staircase of honor into the palace.55 Rudolf’s parents were absent: Fearing his wife’s unpredictable emotions, Franz Josef made Elisabeth remain in her rooms.56 In death as in so much of his life Rudolf was alone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Vienna struggled to make sense of its crown prince’s mysterious death. No one knew what to believe. On the evening of January 30, the Neues Wiener Tagblatt reported that Rudolf had been shot in a hunting accident, or that he had died during a drunken orgy.1 When the Neue Freie Presse repeated rumors that a gamekeeper had killed Rudolf after the crown prince seduced his wife, the government confiscated all copies.2 It was a hint of things to come: Over the next few weeks Taaffe ordered more than five thousand newspapers, magazines, and journals seized in a futile effort to suppress unwelcome speculation.3

  “With the deepest sorrow,” Franz Josef had cabled to Stephanie’s parents that Wednesday afternoon, “I must inform you that our Rudolf died suddenly this morning, probably from heart failure, at Mayerling where he had gone to hunt. God give us all strength.”4 The emperor went to bed that night believing that Mary Vetsera had poisoned Rudolf and then herself. By six the next morning, and keeping to his inflexible schedule, he was at his desk when Dr. Widerhofer came to report on his findings at Mayerling.5

  “Tell me everything frankly,” Franz Josef supposedly said to the physician. “I want to know all the details.”

  “I can assure Your Majesty,” Widerhofer replied, “that His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince did not suffer for a moment. The bullet went straight through his temple absolutely straight, and death followed instantaneously.”

  “What bullet are you talking about?” Franz Josef asked in confusion.

  “Yes, Your Majesty, we found the bullet, the bullet he shot himself with,” Widerhofer replied.

  “He did?” the emperor stammered. “He shot himself? That’s not true! Surely she poisoned him! Rudolf did not shoot himself!”6

  Widerhofer now had to break the truth: Rudolf had killed Mary Vetsera first, sat with her body for hours, and finally shot himself. Hearing this, Franz Josef broke into sobs. Finally, he asked, “Did Rudolf leave a letter of farewell?”

  “Several letters,” Widerhofer told him. “But none for Your Majesty.”7

  This last insult from a disillusioned son against a distant father snapped Franz Josef out of his temporary shock. “My son,” the emperor commented bitterly, “died like a Schneider.”8 What did this mean? The word Schneider, or “cutter,” could have been a derisive reference to the Hungarian tailor János Libényi, who had attacked him in 1853. But more likely Franz Josef was thinking of another association. In hunting “Schneider” was used to describe a coward, a stag that hid itself rather than charge forth in challenge.9

  Franz Josef wanted to see his son’s body, but he insisted on changing his clothing first: Etiquette demanded that he pay his respects to an Austrian general by donning the appropriate uniform, complete with ceremonial sword and white gloves.10 “Is he much disfigured?” he asked Rudolf’s adjutant Baron Giesl von Gieslingen.

  “No, Your Majesty,” the baron assured him.

  “Please cover him up well,” Franz Josef said. “The Empress wishes to see him.”11 But he was irritated that the body had not yet been dressed in the uniform of an Austrian infantry general; the baron thought that he wanted to get through the ordeal of seeing his son as quickly as possible.12

  The former Grand Duke Ferdinand IV of Tuscany arrived at the Hofburg shortly before seven that Thursday morning.13 A collateral Habsburg relative, the grand duke was one of Franz Josef’s few trusted friends; he found the emperor “so stunned” that he could only murmur, “Rudolf … Rudolf…,” again and again. Finally Franz Josef took the grand duke’s arm and led him to the bedroom where Rudolf’s body was laid out.14 A blanket had been drawn up to Rudolf’s neck; his face seemed serene, but the top of his head was still shrouded in a white wrapping to conceal his shattered skull. For fifteen minutes Franz Josef stood silently by the bed, head bowed, hand clutching the hilt of his sword.15

  Rudolf’s last act horrified and humiliated Franz Josef. His brother Archduke Karl Ludwig found him “deeply shaken and weeping” when he visited him at the Hofburg.16 The crown prince had not only killed himself but had also committed murder, even if Mary had apparently been a willing partner. His son’s suicide, as Stephanie’s nephew noted, was “a heavy blow to the Emperor’s personal pride, and more especially to his prestige in the Catholic world as Apostolic King.”17 The kings of Saxony and Serbia, new
spapers reported, planned to travel to Vienna to attend the funeral, along with the Prince of Wales and Tsarevich Nicholas of Russia; but Franz Josef, hoping to avoid unwelcome questions, wanted no foreign royal representatives at the funeral.18 “His Majesty,” an official assured inquiring embassies, “is most sincerely grateful for all the proofs of sympathy but desires to have around him at this profoundly moving ceremony of mourning none but the closest members of his family.”19 This was understandable. Less sympathetically, Franz Josef dispatched a cable to Stephanie’s parents on January 31; even though their daughter was still in shock, the emperor asked them to stay away from Vienna. But the king and queen of Belgium ignored the request and left Brussels the following day.20

  Late that Thursday morning Stephanie brought five-year-old Elisabeth to see her father’s corpse. The room was dim: Curtains shielded the winter sun, while a sea of candles cast eerie shadows over the macabre scene; Stephanie, remembered the emperor’s brother Archduke Karl Ludwig, was “weeping bitterly.”21 Elisabeth carried a bouquet of white carnations, rosebuds, and lilies and laid it against the foot of the bed, but she screamed when she saw the bandaged head. “That is not my father!” the little girl sobbed as she hid behind her mother, who quickly led her from the room.22

  Marie Valerie dreaded the ordeal: “I had never seen a dead body,” she wrote. She found Rudolf laid out on his bed, “dead, dead. He was so beautiful and so peaceful, the white sheet pulled up to his chest and flowers ringed around him. The narrow bandage on his head did not disfigure him; his cheeks and ears had a healthy, youthful red glow, and the erratic, bitter expression that he so often had in life had given way to a peaceful smile.… He seemed to be asleep, quiet, and happy.”23