by Greg King
This offered the public a summation but few specifics. The revolver had been found; why, some asked, did the autopsy not note the specific type and caliber of the gun that had been used? A number of guns were available to Rudolf, from his 9 mm Gasser-Kropatschek infantry officer’s revolver to the 11 mm revolver used in the army.5 Prince Philipp of Coburg inexplicably claimed that Rudolf somehow shot himself with his hunting rifle, presumably by stepping on the trigger—a bit of highly unlikely gossip Empress Friedrich of Germany picked up and repeated to her mother, Queen Victoria.6
According to Rudolf Püchel, who saw the body, “the entire upper right side” of the skull was shattered.7 It seems likely, however, that Püchel’s memory failed him. Rudolf probably had his head slightly bowed and bent to the right when he shot himself: The bullet entered the right temple and traversed the brain before blowing out the top left side and rear of his skull. But in the absence of hard fact, speculation ran rampant. On February 1, Moritz Szeps’s Wiener Tagblatt reported that Rudolf had aimed the gun against his lower-right jaw and shot upward, blowing out the top of his forehead and skull; Taaffe quickly had the newspaper confiscated.8 A few months later one of the first books on the tragedy measured the entrance wound at 7 cm in diameter and placed it 3 cm above the right ear, while Baron Krauss’s granddaughter asserted that Rudolf had shot himself in the mouth—claims contradicted by both the autopsy excerpt and by witnesses who actually saw the body.9
The autopsy ended at two on the morning of February 1, and the body was embalmed. By tradition Rudolf would lie in state before the public, but his shattered skull presented a problem, and no one knew quite what to do. Officials toyed with the idea of having a sculptor make a model of Rudolf’s head and fit it to a fake corpse, dressed in the appropriate uniform, which could then be displayed.10 This, though, would take too long, and so a mortician was called in to reconstruct the head. It took several hours of work and a copious supply of peach and pink wax before the damage was concealed; as the top of Rudolf’s head had been blasted into pieces, it seems a hairpiece was fitted onto the skull and any remaining holes daubed over with dark brown paint.11 The end result fooled no one: A scar from the torn skin still pocked the right temple, and the face had an unnatural look that led some correspondents to report that it was actually a wax mask.12
For the second time in twenty-four hours, an uncomfortable Widerhofer had to stand before the emperor and deliver a devastating bombshell. But Franz Josef seemed surprisingly receptive to the declaration that his only son had been suffering from mental illness. For the unimaginative emperor, it explained so much: his troubled relationship with Rudolf; his son’s wayward behavior and questionable decisions; and even his death could all be laid at the door of an organic imbalance, absolving Franz Josef of any personal responsibility. “God’s ways are inscrutable,” the emperor said calmly. “Perhaps He has sent me this trial to spare me yet a harder one.”13 Parental grief there certainly was, but the remark also hinted at a certain pragmatic sense of relief that Franz Josef no longer need worry over his son’s eventual rule.
The declaration that Rudolf had been mentally deranged benefited everyone except the empress; the finger of genetic blame inevitably pointed away from the Habsburgs and toward Elisabeth and her eccentric Wittelsbach relatives. “The Emperor should never have married me!” she cried. “I have inherited the taint of madness!”14 Marie Valerie wrote of her mother’s “rigid anguish” in fearing that “her Bavarian blood had risen to Rudolf’s mind.”15 Hysterical sobs alternated with bitter recriminations: Elisabeth blamed Rudolf for not having confided his troubles, refusing to admit that her absences and apparent lack of concern had left him alienated and alone. “Now all the people who spoke such nastiness about me from the first hour of my arrival,” she complained bitterly to Marie Valerie, “will have the consolation that I shall disappear without leaving a trace in Austria.”16
The questionable finding that Rudolf had been mentally deranged at the time of his death owed more to expediency and religious considerations than medical reality. As the historian Baron Oskar von Mitis noted, the examining physicians “had gone to the greatest possible lengths in their judgment on these pathological points.”17 Onerous and humiliating rules imposed by the imperial court had dictated Mary’s secret burial; now the Habsburgs faced a similar dilemma in winning Rudolf his last rites. A crown prince who had murdered his mistress and then killed himself would be denied a Catholic funeral, but the Church accepted mental derangement as a mitigating factor when considering the burial of suicides. And so, on the emperor’s authority, the imperial court issued a new bulletin: “His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty the Emperor wishes to take His People into His confidence about the circumstances that make even more tragic the disaster at Mayerling.” The statement went on to announce that Rudolf had indeed killed himself, while alone and in a state of mental derangement.18 As supporting evidence the excerpt from his autopsy report was released to the press. By the evening of February 1 Vienna’s newspapers published and expanded this newest version of events. The Wiener Zeitung told its readers: “We cannot conceal that several persons in His Imperial and Royal Highness’s closest entourage had, in recent weeks, repeatedly observed signs of a pathological nervous excitement in his exalted person, so that one must embrace the view that this terrible event was the result of momentary confusion of his mind.”19
Many found this explanation too convenient. “The latest news that Rudolf’s death is attributed to suicide has hardly met with belief,” reported one foreign newspaper from Vienna.20 Moritz Szeps took issue with the official announcement in the pages of his Wiener Tagblatt. It was, he loyally insisted, beneath Rudolf’s dignity as a prince to have killed himself. He protested against the declaration of insanity; the facts about Mayerling, he thought, were being concealed.21 “They are still hiding something!” people complained to a French correspondent, who noted that “the most contradictory rumors circulate.”22
Franz Josef had waited some twelve hours after the first official announcement to telegraph word of Rudolf’s death to Pope Leo XIII: “With the deepest sorrow I must inform Your Holiness of the sudden death of my son Rudolf. I am sure of your deepest sympathy in this cruel loss. I offer up this sacrifice to God, to whom I render without a murmur what I have received from him. I beg your Apostolic blessing for myself and my family.”23 The pope was less than sympathetic: According to Vatican Secretary of State Mariano Rampolla, Leo XIII was “greatly offended” that the king of Italy learned of the tragedy first.24
But now the emperor had to appeal directly to a put-out Leo XIII: Having admitted suicide, he needed papal dispensation to have the crown prince buried according to Catholic rites. On February 1 and again the next day, Franz Josef sent two personal letters to the pope.25 Neither has ever surfaced, though they almost certainly raised Rudolf’s alleged mental illness and warned of an unthinkable scandal if the Church objected to a Catholic funeral. What is known of the discussions between Vienna and Rome comes from a diplomatic dispatch Prince Reuss sent back to Bismarck in Berlin. On this point at least Reuss had an impeccable source: Monsignor Luigi Galimberti, the papal nuncio in Vienna and a man squarely in the middle of negotiations with the Vatican. Galimberti, “one of the handsomest, cleverest, most cultivated, and affable men in Europe,” recorded an aristocrat, “enjoyed society immensely” and had a nose for gossip.26 Relying on Galimberti, Reuss reported:
The Papal Nuncio told me of the great embarrassment in which the Pope found himself concerning his consent to the church burial of the Crown Prince. Had this consent not been forthcoming, and had it been necessary to bury the suicide without the blessing of the church, the population of Vienna would undoubtedly have given itself over to the very worst excesses. His Majesty was therefore supremely worried until the autopsy was completed, and the doctors and court officials made the declaration of probable insanity. The Emperor immediately dispatched Kálnoky [the Foreign Minister] to submit a report o
f the official findings to the Nuncio. Monsignor Galimberti reported this by telegram to Rome, and thus dispelled the church’s scruples. In this country, too, the Nuncio has met with many inquiries from bishops as to the attitudes they should adopt. He pointed out that insanity excuses suicide in the eyes of the church. “My official conscience is clear,” the Nuncio added to me. “I only have to believe what the Foreign Minister tells me. Nevertheless, this is probably the first time in history that a Papal Nuncio will attend the funeral of a murderer and a suicide representing the Pope.”27
The declaration of mental derangement won Rudolf his Catholic funeral, but the uproar was immense. Cardinal Rampolla protested, and persuaded the entire College of Cardinals to boycott the Vatican’s requiem for the crown prince. The pope argued that such a public snub would evoke hostile comment and unnecessarily wound Franz Josef’s feelings, but Rampolla remained unmoved.28
At nine on the evening of Sunday, February 3, a black-robed choir sang Palestrina’s mournful Miserere as soldiers carried Rudolf’s coffin through the Hofburg to the Hofkapelle, the royal chapel, where he would lie in state. The white-and-crimson chapel had been transformed into an unrelieved sea of black: Crepe cloaked walls, adorned the little galleries ringing the interior, and draped the altar and the pews; a black carpet covered the floor. Silver-and-gold escutcheons bearing Rudolf’s coat of arms hung on the walls; floral wreaths heavily scented the air. Silver candlesticks circled a seven-foot-high bier, set before the altar and beneath black crepe cascading from a baldachin above. Four soldiers, two Austrians in crimson-and-gold jackets and two Hungarians with leopardskin dolmans draped over their shoulders, stood frozen at the corners, ceremonial swords in hand and silver-helmeted heads bowed. Rudolf rested in an open coffin. He had been dressed in the uniform of an Austrian general: a white tunic with red collar and cuffs adorned with gold stars, over red trousers and shining black boots. The red-and-green sash of the Order of Saint Stephen stretched across his chest; his gloved hands clutched a small ivory cross. Velvet cushions around the bier displayed Rudolf’s princely crown, his archducal crown, his green-plumed general’s hat, his ceremonial saber, and his orders and decorations. The court choir chanted as priests blessed the body and prayed through the night.29
It was a bitterly cold night, but more than one hundred thousand people braved the weather to pay their respects to the dead crown prince when the doors of the Hofkapelle opened to the public at eight on Monday morning. No one had anticipated such crowds: Cold, tired, and anxious to see Rudolf’s body, they pushed through the Schweizerhof attempting to reach the Hofkapelle. The few officers lining the entrance had to draw their swords to prevent a stampede; excited women beat back at them with fists or umbrellas, and a number of people were injured in the crush.30 Although Franz Josef extended the viewing by three hours that evening, and allowed another four the following morning, only thirty thousand of his subjects gained admittance to the small chapel.31
Hidden away behind the Hofburg walls, the imperial family seemed to be in a daze. Franz Josef, Marie Valerie recorded, “was quiet, godly, and sacredly heroic” in his acceptance of Rudolf’s death, but Elisabeth could only sob about predestination and a nagging sense that she had tainted her son with Wittelsbach madness.32 Gisela, who arrived from Bavaria “nervous and anxious,” insisted, “It is impossible that Rudolf is dead!” She was kept from viewing the corpse only with great difficulty.33
Stephanie, too, seemed lost: For the first time the emperor and empress asked her and her daughter to join them for meals, but this proved unnerving as Franz Josef and his wife kept breaking into tears at the sight of their granddaughter.34 But they seemed curiously cold toward Stephanie, who couldn’t escape the feeling that the couple, especially the empress, blamed her for Rudolf’s death. When her parents arrived from Belgium on the evening of February 3, they found their daughter in despair but the emperor and empress “less ill and stricken than we expected.”35 The empress treated the visiting king and queen with the same cold disdain she reserved for her daughter-in-law: Elisabeth had no wish to share her grief with others.36 It got to Stephanie. She was tired of the perpetual blame, the desire that she act contritely, as if her husband’s suicide had been her fault. There was, Marie Valerie noted, a “horrific dinner,” during which “Mama and I could not hold back our tears, while Stephanie, cold and—God forgive me—heartless, spoke of all and sundry.” Elisabeth abruptly interrupted the meal to chastise her daughter-in-law in front of the startled guests, saying that she was ashamed of her behavior.37
Tuesday, February 5, dawned cold and gray in Vienna. An icy wind howled along the Ringstrasse, whipping black mourning banners and bunting stretched across facades into grotesque shapes. Deep crowds lined the streets: That afternoon the funeral procession would travel from the Hofburg to the Kaisergruft, the imperial crypt beneath the Capuchin Church on the Neuer Markt—the traditional resting place of the Habsburgs since the sixteenth century. As the city’s bells began their mournful tolling, a weak winter sun finally broke through the leaden sky, shimmering over tiled roofs still glistening with patches of snow.38
“I have before me the hardest task of all,” Franz Josef wrote that morning to Katharina Schratt.39 Threats had restricted the ability of Mary’s family to grieve openly; nor could the Habsburgs mourn Rudolf without considerations of protocol and appearance. Franz Josef would face the ordeal of his only son’s funeral without his wife. Elisabeth’s mental state was so fragile that, fearing she might make some public outburst, Franz Josef asked her not to attend the service: Instead she remained closeted at the Hofburg with Marie Valerie. Nor could Stephanie bear the condemnatory looks and silent recriminations she feared would come her way. And so Franz Josef entered the Hofkapelle at four that afternoon with his daughter Gisela, followed by a string of archdukes and archduchesses who crowded into the black-draped pews as the court choir sang the Libera Me. Flickering candles surrounding the bier shimmered as Cardinal Prince Archbishop Ganglbauer incensed the coffin and prayed for the dead crown prince.40
At the end of the service, soldiers carried Rudolf’s coffin—now closed and covered with a pall embroidered with his coat of arms—out of the Hofkapelle and into the Schweizerhof, placing it on an elaborate, Baroque-style hearse replete with gilded cherubs and twisted columns supporting an arched canopy topped by a gold crown.41 Instead of the customary black horses, six young gray Lipizzaners caparisoned with fluttering black ostrich plumes pulled the hearse as it took Rudolf from the Hofburg for the last time.42
The clip-clop of hooves, the sharp clicks of regimental boots on the cobbles, and the muffled drumbeats announced the start of the procession beneath a sky growing dim with impending twilight. A detachment of hussars opened the cortege, followed by mounted divisions from the elite Imperial and Royal Guards Regiments. Swaying ranks of priests marched ahead of a contingent of courtiers and state and municipal authorities in black carriages. Franz Josef was barely visible behind the windows of his state carriage as he rode with Gisela; grooms in elaborate mourning liveries and tricorne hats walked in measured pace, leading black horses drawing court equipages filled with Habsburgs and members of Rudolf’s suite and household. Clad in medieval Spanish costume, a rider appeared atop a single Lipizzaner—a visible reminder of the imperial court’s former Iberian ties. Finally the hearse came into view, flanked by pages in medieval liveries holding aloft flaming torches. Six members of the Royal Archer Guard, attired in crimson coats and silver helmets with waving plumes, galloped at one side of the hearse, balanced by six members of the Hungarian Life Guards Regiment in red tunics and fur dolmans draped over their shoulders on the other. Holding shining halberds, a contingent of mounted bodyguards in medieval dress led hundreds of soldiers and sailors drawn from the empire’s military and naval services, marching in tribute to their dead crown prince.43
The procession halted before the door of the inconspicuous sixteenth-century Capuchin Church. Soldiers lifted the coffin from the hears
e and carried it to the closed door, where Karl von Bombelles, armed with his golden staff of office as Rudolf’s lord high chamberlain, stood waiting. Raising his staff, Bombelles rapped loudly against the doorway three times.
“Who is there?” asked a voice from within.
“His Imperial and Royal Highness the Most Serene Crown Prince, Archduke Rudolf of Austria-Hungary,” Bombelles replied.
“We know him not!” the voice declared. Bombelles again knocked three times on the closed door.
“Who is there?” came the query.
“Archduke Rudolf!” Bombelles cried out.
“We know him not!”
Bombelles rapped on the door a third time. “Who is there?” came the question.
“A poor sinner!” Bombelles announced.
“He may enter,” the voice answered, and the doors were flung open to receive the coffin.44
The cardinal prince archbishop of Vienna sprinkled the coffin with holy water and incensed the body, then led the procession to the altar, where another bier waited to receive the crown prince. Franz Josef followed, taking his place in the first pew next to Gisela and Stephanie’s parents. As members of the black-robed court choir intoned the Libera Me, Franz Josef “kept a fixed gaze” and stared stoically ahead.45 With the solemn absolution ended, Franz Josef’s brothers Archdukes Karl Ludwig and Ludwig Viktor; his nephew Archduke Franz Ferdinand; his son-in-law Prince Leopold of Bavaria; Marie Valerie’s fiancé, Archduke Franz Salvator; and Rudolf’s brother-in-law, Prince Philipp of Coburg, followed him as soldiers carried the coffin to the crypt’s entrance.46
By tradition Bombelles was to head the procession below, but at the last minute the emperor stepped forward and led his son to his final resting place. Down the staircase and through the maze of vaulted chambers forming the Kaisergruft, the cortege moved toward a side niche, its shadows illuminated by flickering lanterns. Franz Josef had maintained his mien of studied calm throughout the ceremonies; standing in the crypt and surrounded only by his family, he admitted, “I could endure it no longer.47 He fell to his knees, sobs racking his body as he embraced the coffin and repeatedly kissed its lid.48