by Greg King
Count Ladislaus von Szögyény-Marich spent that morning in Rudolf’s Turkish salon, sorting through the contents of his locked desk drawer.24 It is said that he found an onyx ashtray: “A revolver, not poison, a revolver is surer,” Mary had supposedly scrawled on its basin in violet ink.25 The last person to see it was apparently Count Artur Polzer-Hoditz, head of Emperor Karl’s chancellery, when in 1918 he found the ashtray hidden in a leather suitcase stashed away among some official files.26 If this was some kind of suicide note, it was certainly a strange one: Why would Mary write these lines, and how would ink remain unmarred and legible on an onyx surface?
This was not the only discovery. Franz Josef had sent Rudolf Kubasek, court secretary in the lord marshal’s office, to retrieve anything deemed damaging; this included letters from Mary and from Marie Larisch that Rudolf wanted destroyed. Along with a number of other documents, they were seized and handed over to the emperor.27 One envelope bore the inscription “Contents: 100,000 Florins” (gulden) ($639,000 in 2017) in Rudolf’s hand. When opened, though, it contained only 30,000 gulden ($191,700).28 The missing 70,000 gulden had probably gone to pay Marie Larisch’s gambling debts and ensure her silence about her cousin’s affair; in accordance with Rudolf’s last wishes, the remaining 30,000 gulden presumably went to Mitzi Caspar.29 At least one of Larisch’s letters to Rudolf, written in the third week of January, informed him that Mary could meet him in a carriage on the Maximilianstrasse at a certain time.30
Szögyény-Marich also found the four envelopes described by Rudolf in his letter left at Mayerling, addressed to the financier Baron Maurice Hirsch; Mitzi Caspar; Marie Valerie; and to Stephanie. The letter to Hirsch probably concerned the 150,000 gulden Rudolf had borrowed from him to pay for Mitzi Caspar’s house and jewelry.31 The letter to Mitzi was dated June 1888; she later destroyed it, but Szögyény-Marich told Hoyos that the letter was “overflowing with love.”32
The undated letter Rudolf left for Marie Valerie has also disappeared. In her diary Marie Valerie noted only that Rudolf had written “of the need to do what he had done, but gave no reason.” He also warned her to leave the country after Franz Josef’s death, as he feared what would happen to the empire.33 But Ida von Ferenczy, at least according to Empress Elisabeth’s early biographer Corti, recorded that it included the line, “I do not die willingly, but must do so to save my honor.”34 Confusingly, though, in his published work Corti quoted only the first half of this sentence.35
The last letter was handed over to Stephanie that afternoon, two pages filled with crowded writing that sloped off the page:
Dear Stephanie! You are freed henceforth from the torment of my presence. Be happy in your own way. Be good to the poor little girl who is the only thing I leave behind. Give my last greetings to all my acquaintances, esp. to Bombelles, Spindler [Lt. Heinrich von Spindler, chief of the crown prince’s secretariat], Latour, Wowo, Gisela, Leopold, etc., etc. I face death calmly—death alone can save my good name. With warmest love from your affectionate Rudolf.36
“Every word,” Stephanie wrote, “was a dagger thrust in my heart.” She continued:
A storm of indignation and revolt raged within me. What I had foreseen in the quiet, agonizing dread of many lonely hours had now come to pass. My whole personality rose in revolt against the impiety, the wicked frivolity with which a life had been thrown away.… I had dreaded this act of self destruction, had (in veiled terms), warned others that it was imminent and nevertheless on this day when the news came it remained an enigma to me. Again and again I asked myself why he had committed suicide. In this moment of profound loneliness my reasoning powers seemed to have deserted me. Thoughtlessly, cruelly, the man had forsaken me, to whom eight years before I had been handed over as a child. I was wounded to the quick and reacted with all my energy against the monstrous cruelty of the fate that had befallen me after lying in wait for me for years. True, death relieved me from a conjugal life which was full of anxieties, cares and sorrows but at what a cost! My own future and that of the country, for which I had endured so much with unfailing patience, seemed to have been shattered.37
* * *
Not a word about Mary Vetsera had appeared in the press but, as Princess Nora Fugger recalled, “all of Vienna spoke about her, said that she was implicated, and was not among the living.” Princess Fugger was refused entry when she went to the Vetsera Palace early on the morning of January 31; Mary, the doorman insisted, had a bad cold and was indisposed.38 The death of one of Rudolf’s usual amours might have been concealed, but Mary was a member of the nobility. Explaining away her sudden disappearance from the face of the earth would be impossible. But the imperial court would never admit to her presence at Mayerling, or her death with the crown prince.
Hoping to confine any scandal, Franz Josef had ordered Helene Vetsera out of Vienna. She’d left aboard a train for Venice on the evening of January 30, believing that Mary had poisoned Rudolf and then herself and, as she wrote, “without having seen her tenderly beloved daughter after her death, and without being able to fulfill her last maternal duties.” She was “horrified on the journey to think of her daughter’s corpse, and agonized by tortured thoughts, wondered if her daughter had been so insane in her adoration for the Crown Prince that she had murdered him.”39
Early that Thursday morning, as Helene’s train rumbled south, officials in Vienna summoned her brother-in-law Georg von Stockau, husband of her sister Eveline, to a meeting; only then did the family learn that Rudolf had killed Mary and then himself. On no account was this news to be made public. The Vetseras could not publish any notice of Mary’s death: The family must temporarily act as if she were still alive. Mayerling was an imperial residence; as such, Prime Minister Taaffe decided, events there were not subject to governmental or legal jurisdiction. The imperial court would settle all issues.40
Helene Vetsera was still on her way to Venice when a telegram from Alexander Baltazzi rather indiscreetly informed her of these revelations. Suspecting that she’d been deliberately lied to, the baroness abruptly returned to Vienna.41 She arrived at her palace, “expecting to find her daughter’s corpse brought to her house.”42 Instead Stockau told her of the imperial court’s orders that “everything was subject to arrangements made by His Majesty.” Mary was to be quietly and secretly buried in the cemetery attached to the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz near Mayerling; “fearing that otherwise her child might even be buried in secret and without any of her relatives present,” the baroness reluctantly agreed.43 Helene was now handed the envelope, “addressed by the Crown Prince, in his own hand,” containing the letters Mary had written to her, to Hanna, and to Franz.44
When Taaffe learned that the baroness had returned—and suspecting that she would make trouble and expose the conspiracy—he ordered police agents to stake out her palace and shadow her movements.45 That evening an official arrived and asked the baroness to leave again and remain away until after the crown prince was buried. Tired of being toyed with, Helene said she would go only if the order came directly from the emperor; a few hours later Taaffe arrived and, in Franz Josef’s name, again made the request. For the second time in two days, Helene Vetsera departed the Habsburg capital.46
The rights or feelings of the Vetsera family meant nothing to officials. Alexander Baltazzi and Count Stockau would be allowed to escort the body from Mayerling to Heiligenkreuz only under certain conditions: There must be no hearse; her uncles would have to take her body away in a regular carriage. Slatin, along with Police Superintendent Habrda and Inspector Gorup, were sent ahead to convey Taaffe’s orders—orders that, as Slatin recorded, “did not correspond literally to the legal requirements.” Calling on the district governor of Baden, they insisted that Mary’s family wanted her immediately buried at Heiligenkreuz and won his authorization to forgo the legally required inquiry.47
Gorup found Abbot Heinrich Grünböck at Heiligenkreuz less agreeable. “I realized that the Abbot would refuse the Church’s blessing a
nd burial in a Catholic cemetery,” the inspector recalled, “and that it needed all my questionable diplomatic skill to make him change his mind.” As Gorup had feared, Grünböck refused to bury a suicide in his cemetery. The inspector tried again, adding Franz Josef’s name as leverage: The emperor wanted Mary Vetsera immediately buried in this remote spot to avoid any scandal. Grünböck was still unmoved. Finally Gorup confessed the truth: The imperial court had ordered the finding of death by suicide to hide the fact that the crown prince had shot the young baroness. Hearing this, the abbot finally agreed to allow Mary’s burial in his cemetery.48
Baltazzi and Stockau left Vienna for Mayerling early that evening of January 31. A storm raged as their carriage rumbled through the dark forest surrounding Baden, pelted by crashing rain, buffeted by gusts of wind, and accompanied by the howling of distant dogs. Finally a flash of lightning revealed the lodge, still ringed by remnants of a curious crowd and a string of journalists who, the police noted warily, “suspect that the dead Baroness Vetsera is still hidden within.”49 The wooden gates swung open, and the carriage rolled to a stop at the main door. Baltazzi and Stockau had to wait for the arrival of Slatin and Police Superintendent Habdra; when their carriage finally stopped in the courtyard, warden Alois Zwerger, a flickering lantern in his hand, led the men through the silent lodge to a small storeroom and flung open the door.50
Mary’s body had been dumped into a large basket, covered with her clothing, and then ignored. Now, in the dim light, Baltazzi and Stockau saw their niece’s cold, naked corpse, “still in the same state in which it had been found the day before.”51 The scene, Slatin recalled, reminded him of some gothic penny-dreadful.52 Mary’s eyes were “wide open and protruding in a fixed stare, the mouth half open, with a stream of congealed blood having poured from it to cover part of the body.” No one, Helene later complained, “had done anything” to the corpse, “as if she was unworthy of any help from good, human hands.”53
After a shocked Baltazzi and Stockau confirmed their niece’s identity, they likely left the room as the court physician Dr. Franz Auchenthaler examined the body. He found a small wound, measuring 5 by 3 cm, high on the left temple where the bullet had entered the head; the surrounding skin was ragged and the hair was singed, indicating that the gun had only been a few inches away when fired. The bullet traversed the brain from left to right, shattering the skull. When it exited the head some 2 cm above the right ear canal, it blasted out bone and brain tissue, leaving a gaping wound surrounded by protruding splinters of the skull. There were no other injuries.54 Auchenthaler also reportedly later found that Mary was suffering from gonorrhea, presumably after being infected by Rudolf.55
At the end of his examination Auchenthaler washed the body and called in Mary’s uncles. It was up to them to dress the corpse in the same ice-skating ensemble she had worn to Mayerling.56 This horrific task over, the doctor presented Baltazzi and Stockau with his signed report. Mary had been right-handed; she’d been shot in her left temple. It was obvious that Rudolf must have pulled the trigger, but officials had ordered Auchenthaler to rule her death a suicide.57 Baltazzi confronted Court Commissioner Heinrich Slatin, who had come from Vienna to supervise the macabre transfer. Surely, Mary’s uncle argued, the church would refuse to bury a suicide at Heiligenkreuz. But if Mary wasn’t listed as a suicide, Slatin said, judicial authorities would investigate her death, and the imperial court had forbidden any such inquiries; everything had already been settled.58 Hearing this, Baltazzi and Stockau reluctantly signed the protocol.59
Baltazzi and Stockau were ordered to take Mary to their carriage, “and to support the body between you in such a way as to make it appear that the Baroness still lives.” The men were horrified; this “loveless desecration of the corpse,” Helene Vetsera complained, “cruelly injured the family’s feelings.”60 They each took a side and picked up the corpse; Mary’s head fell forward and her body sagged to the floor. This would convince no one: She was obviously dead. Not knowing what else to do, someone fetched one of Rudolf’s walking sticks and rammed it down inside Mary’s jacket to keep her erect. Baltazzi and Stockau again lifted the body, but their niece’s head slumped forward. A handkerchief was tightly wound around her neck and tied to the walking stick to keep Mary’s head from falling to her chest, with her feathered boa used to provide additional support. Finally Baltazzi and Stockau managed to raise the corpse to its feet. It took both of their efforts, half-carrying, half-dragging Mary’s body, to manhandle the corpse into the carriage and onto the rear seat. To keep it from falling over, Baltazzi sat on one side and Stockau on the other, arms wrapped around their niece’s body to prevent it from falling forward.61
Shortly before ten, with Slatin and Auchenthaler leading the way in a separate carriage, the cortege finally left the lodge and disappeared into the dark, wild night. To avoid attracting any unwanted attention, the commissioner decided to take a longer route to the monastery at Heiligenkreuz, along rarely used roadways.62 Wind howled mournfully through the forest; sleet pelted the vehicles, and the windows soon frosted over. Mary’s corpse swayed and jostled each time the horses bolted and the carriage wheels sank into a rut, falling forward, then back, knocking first against Baltazzi and then against Stockau for two hours as the agonizing ride played out.63
The bells at Heiligenkreuz Abbey were just tolling midnight when the carriages finally reached the complex; two monks opened the gates and motioned the procession into the courtyard.64 Inspectors Habrda and Gorup helped Baltazzi and Stockau lift Mary’s body from the carriage and carry it to a small chapel.65 Officials in Vienna had assured Stockau that they would send a coffin to Heiligenkreuz; but no coffin waited, and the men roused the monastery carpenter to hastily knock together a plain pine box. Mary’s corpse was finally laid inside, on a bed of sawdust shavings; Baltazzi cut a lock of his niece’s hair for his sister, and Stockau placed Mary’s folded hat beneath her head as a pillow. Finally they placed a small silver crucifix in her cold hands.66 Mary, her mother complained, “was treated like a criminal.”67
Officials in Vienna had wanted Mary buried under cover of darkness, but the storm made it impossible to dig a proper grave until early the following morning. Shortly before nine on February 1, Father Malachias Dedič read the funeral service over the body, watched by Baltazzi, Stockau, Slatin, Auchenthaler, Gorup, Habrda, and several others. Despite the veil of secrecy imposed by the imperial court, somehow word of the burial had leaked out, and a small crowd stood beyond the cemetery walls, craning their necks and trying to see what was taking place. Rain poured from the gray sky as the quartet carrying Mary’s casket slipped and slid over the muddy ground; the wind whipping through the tombstones made lowering the coffin difficult but finally, at half past nine that Friday morning, Mary Vetsera was buried in an unmarked grave, the earth shoveled in, Stockau complained, “with almost feverish haste.”68
Two weeks after Mary’s death, her mother was finally allowed to publish an obituary in the provincial Illustriertes Grazer Extrablatt, but only after she agreed to the official lie. Mary Vetsera, it was announced, had died suddenly while traveling to Venice; her body had been taken to Bohemia for burial on a Baltazzi estate.69 Then the court-imposed veil of silence descended: As if she had never existed, the name of Mary Vetsera, which had filled the capital’s fashionable periodicals and passed from tongue to tongue by censorious gossips, would never again appear in any Viennese newspaper until after the fall of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The billiard-room windows in Rudolf’s bachelor apartments blazed with light, spilling shadows across the Hofburg forecourt throughout the last night of January 1889. The same storm that enveloped Mary Vetsera’s last journey now fell on Vienna, rattling the palace windows.1 A little after eight, four physicians gathered there to conduct the crown prince’s autopsy: The court doctor Professor Eduard Hofmann, director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Vienna, supervised Hans Kundrath, director of the In
stitute of Forensic Medicine’s Pathology Department, and court physicians Hermann Widerhofer and Franz Auchenthaler. The commandant of the palace, Ferdinand Kirschner, and Nikolaus Poliakowitz, representing the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, stood in a corner, watching as the grim scene unfolded.2
Carried in from his bedroom, Rudolf’s corpse was stripped of its clothing, laid out on his billiard table, and the white bandage removed from his shattered skull.3 The complete autopsy report is missing; what little is known of its findings comes in an excerpt released by the imperial court and published in Vienna’s newspapers on February 2:
Firstly, His Imperial and Royal Highness Crown Prince Rudolf died from a skull fracture and destruction of the front portion of the brain; this fracture was caused by a shot fired against the right anterior temporal area at close range. A bullet fired from a medium caliber revolver would likely produce the injuries in question; the projectile was not found, as it exited through a hole discovered above the left ear; there is no doubt that His Imperial and Royal Highness fired the shot himself and that death was instantaneous. The premature fusion of the sagittal and coronal sutures, the remarkable depth of the skull cavity, and the so-called fossae impressions on the inner surface of the skull bones, with evident subsidence of the brain passages and distention of the ventricles, are pathological circumstances, which experience has shown are usually accompanied by abnormal mentality, and therefore justify the assumption that the deed was committed in a state of mental derangement.4