by Greg King
MARY
FREIIN V. VETSERA
GEB. 19 MÄRZ 1871
GEST. 30 JÄNNER 1889
WIE EINE BLUME SPRIEST DER MENSCH AUF
UND WIRD GEBROCHEN (MAN COMETH UP LIKE A FLOWER AND IS CUT DOWN)
JOB 14:2.42
Not content to stop with the grave, Helene commissioned a Romanesque-style marble memorial chapel in the cemetery. A large stained-glass window above the altar depicted the Virgin Mary; Helene originally asked that her face be modeled after Mary’s, but officials vetoed this proposed bit of effrontery, nor would they allow any mention of the Vetsera name. Instead artisans worked Mary’s features, and those of her brother Ladislaus, who had perished in the 1881 Ringtheater fire, onto the faces of angels kneeling on either side of the Virgin. Denied use of the family name, the Latin inscription on the chapel’s memorial plaque read:
IN PIOUS MEMORY OF
LADISLAUS AND MARY,
HER SWEETEST CHILDREN SNATCHED AWAY PREMATURELY,
THE GRIEF-STRICKEN MOTHER,
REDEEMING A VOW,
BUILT THIS CHAPEL,
IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1889.43
Helene Vetsera’s provocative actions came amid her ongoing struggle against the imperial court. Since returning to Vienna, she’d deluged the emperor with plaintive letters. Everyone, she complained, knew the truth about Mayerling, and everyone unfairly blamed her daughter. Society had followed the court’s lead, punishing the Vetseras and Baltazzis for Rudolf’s actions. The baroness wanted Franz Josef to issue a statement absolving her of responsibility for the tragedy and warning that her remaining children should not be ostracized.44
Franz Josef pointedly ignored the baroness’s pleas. With no satisfaction forthcoming, Helene decided to take revenge by writing and publishing an account of Mary’s liaison with the crown prince and its tragic denouement, drawing on her daughter’s letters and personal papers. She secretly delivered the manuscript to the Viennese publisher Johann N. Vernay at the beginning of May, and by the end of the month 250 copies of Der Vetsera Denkschrift went out to bookstores and newsagents. Just as quickly, police raided the publisher and news stalls, seizing every copy they found.45
Despite their best efforts, however, a few dozen escaped destruction and were smuggled out of Austria. When the Austro-Hungarian ambassador in London heard that The Times was about to print a translation, he intervened and had the publication quashed. But Le Temps in Paris published extracts on August 26, while both L’Éclair and the Liverpool Daily Post printed the complete memoir on September 3.46 This booklet was, of course, meant to present Mary and her mother in the best possible light. Helene unconvincingly claimed complete ignorance of the affair until a few days before the tragedy; she blamed Larisch for having conspired with her daughter and the crown prince and facilitated the liaison behind her back. Later the baroness’s surviving daughter, Hanna, made a handwritten copy of her mother’s original manuscript, adding details about Larisch’s blackmail schemes that did not appear in the published version.47
The Habsburg court took a dim view of these developments; Helene Vetsera won not imperial compliance but scorn. By July, Franz Josef had enough, and ordered his chief of protocol to reply to the baroness’s constant stream of pleading letters. At first the communiqué seemed conciliatory: “Even from the very first moment,” it assured Helene, “the thought that you might have been an accomplice in this terrible tragedy never entered His Majesty’s head.” But this was the only olive branch extended. The letter went on to chide the baroness for becoming “entangled in the accusations” surrounding Mayerling. She would “have been better advised to have refrained from attempting to excuse [herself] in public” by publishing her memorandum and “taking the law into your own hands.” By doing so she had “compromised [her] own child and flaunted the matter in public.” As such, societal retaliation against the Vetsera family was only to be expected. The emperor was sorry if her maternal feelings had been wounded by Mary’s hasty burial, but the tragedy had demanded secrecy. The baroness would do well to “bear with calm devotion the heavy sorrow that Fate has placed upon you.”48
There the matter rested. Helene Vetsera would be shunned, but she had the satisfaction of knowing that crowds regularly flocked to her daughter’s grave at Heiligenkreuz, tearing away pieces of ivy from the headstone as treasured souvenirs.49 It was a place evocative of tragic romance, at least until the spring of 1945, when Heiligenkreuz came under heavy fire by Soviet artillery as they advanced against the retreating Nazis. One shell landed atop Mary’s grave, smashing through the top of the coffin.50 Occupying Soviet troops spent the next year ransacking the cemetery and pilfering graves. Using a garden hoe, they hacked away at Mary’s casket, smashing in the top and sides, severing her skull from the body in the process, and searching the remains for jewelry and valuables. The grave was left open to the elements, Mary’s bones in disarray, her skull thrown to one side of the coffin, and the hoe haphazardly tossed in before the soldiers abandoned their quest.51
Authorities at Heiligenkreuz could do nothing until the Soviets left. In 1948 the grave was sealed with a new stone slab; then, in 1959, an Italian lady heard of the terrible state of Mary’s grave and volunteered to pay for a new coffin. The grave was exhumed on July 7, 1959. When the stone slab was lifted, it revealed the shattered bronze coffin beneath, its lid dented and awry.52 Water had filled the casket, and it was impossible to raise it; the gravedigger Alois Klein descended, opened the lid, and tried unsuccessfully to bail out the brackish water. Finally Klein simply ripped pieces of the skeleton from the muck and placed them in buckets. Hauled to the surface, the skull, vertebrae, femurs, pelvis, and other disarticulated bones—“all coated with a fine layer of black slime”—were laid out “randomly” in a new metal coffin, along with clumps of hair and the remnants of Mary’s clothing, hat, and shoes.53
In transferring the remains, Klein managed to examine the skull. It was shattered and fragmented, though it was impossible to determine if this dated from Mary’s death or if the Soviets had caused the damage during their clumsy exhumation. Despite its poor condition, Klein thought he “clearly” saw two small gunshot wounds, one on the left temple, the other above the right ear.54 Yet the local physician Gerd Holler later claimed to have seen only a small oval hole, measuring approximately 5 by 7 cm, at the top of the head.55
Holler developed a startling theory: Mary, he suggested, died as the result of a botched abortion, with Rudolf killing himself out of remorse. Larisch, Holler claimed, engaged the services of the midwife Theresia Miller to perform an abortion—at least this is what the midwife’s grandson, Emil Miller, told him. This procedure supposedly took place at the Hofburg on the morning of January 28, when a catheter was inserted into the uterus; this was to be left in place for twenty-four hours, and Rudolf and Mary went to Mayerling so that she could rest. The next night, according to Holler, an unknown woman arrived at the lodge, presumably to remove the catheter. But something went wrong, and Mary bled to death; in despair, Rudolf then shot himself.56 Aside from the fact that serious questions surround some of Emil Miller’s claims, Holler largely ignored troublesome evidence contradicting his theory, including Mary’s suicide letters and the accounts of those who saw the bullet wound to her head.
But the theory only played into larger accusations of conspiracy. Then, in 1991, the story took a truly bizarre turn. Helmut Flatzelsteiner, a middle-aged furniture salesman from Linz, first read Gerd Holler’s book, Mayerling: Die Lösung des Rätsels—Der Tod des Kronprinzen Rudolf und der Baroness Vetsera aus medizinischer Sicht, in 1988 and became obsessed with the case. Flatzelsteiner apparently believed he was in psychic communication with the dead couple.57 One July night in 1991 he crept into the cemetery at Heiligenkreuz and, aided by two confederates, secretly exhumed Mary’s remains. “I had anticipated something pretty,” Flatzelsteiner said of the remains, “but it was all wet, dirty, and smelled awful.”58
After cleaning the skeletal re
mains, Flatzelsteiner said he approached several forensic experts, claiming that the body belonged to a relative who had died a century earlier. He wanted to know if they could determine the cause of death. Professor Dr. Klaus Jarosch at the University of Linz concluded that the remains belonged to a woman approximately eighteen years of age. The skull was incomplete: Portions of the jaw were found in the coffin, but little remained of the cranium from the tops of the eye sockets down. Jarosch couldn’t determine with certainty if there had been a bullet wound—the skull was simply too fragmented. He did, though, believe that it had been subjected to multiple fractures, which might have led to death.59
Thinking that he had a blockbuster mystery, Flatzelsteiner began shopping his story around to journalists. After being approached, though, the writer and historian Georg Markus went to the police with the tale of grave robbing, and authorities quickly seized the remains.60 After examination, Professor Dr. Johann Szilvássy of the Institute of Forensic Science at the University of Vienna agreed that the remains likely belonged to an eighteen-year-old female; she had probably died a hundred years earlier. He agreed that the skull was too fragmented to accurately determine any possible injuries.61 Yet conflicting reports kept the press speculating. A small, semicircular groove in the left temple might have been caused by a bullet, but press reports insisted that it was impossible to make any definitive finding.62
Although the use of DNA as a forensic tool was then still in its infancy, genetic testing could have established that the remains belonged to Mary. Rumor hinted that Vetsera and Baltazzi descendants would donate blood to enable the necessary examinations, yet no genetic testing ever took place.63 This only led to more speculation, including stories that the genetic material was too deteriorated to obtain an uncorrupted sample. An order suddenly came from the family prohibiting further inquiries. “It’s incomprehensible to me,” complained Professor Georg Bauer, who had been examining the remains in Vienna, “why, more than a hundred years after the tragedy, the tools of modern forensic sciences and corresponding investigations are being prevented.”64 In the end the remains were placed in a new coffin and on the morning of October 28, 1993, reburied in Mary Vetsera’s grave at Heiligenkreuz.65
Unlike Mary, the Mayerling controversy refused to rest quietly. Stories that her skull bore no trace of a bullet wound in 1959 had stoked the flames of conspiracy theories: Modern examinations only added fuel to the fire. Was the severed skull found in the coffin really Mary’s, or had the Soviets simply tossed a random head into her grave? And if not, what was the explanation? Was there really no trace of a bullet wound to the skull, or was the small groove at the side of the head evidence that Mary had been shot in the head? Did the extensive fracturing mean that Mary had been killed in an argument with Rudolf? Or, as increasingly popular theories suggested, had Rudolf and Mary been murdered? For more than a century confusing claims have cloaked events at Mayerling; to solve the mysteries it is necessary to return to January 1889 and examine how the seemingly impenetrable layers of rumor first consumed the story.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
What really happened behind those locked bedroom doors at Mayerling? When Rudolf closed them, he and Mary were still alive; the following morning both were dead. The answer seems obvious: Rudolf killed Mary as part of a suicide pact, and then turned the gun on himself. Horrified and humiliated by events at Mayerling, Franz Josef ordered inquiries stopped and Mary’s death at his son’s side concealed, actions that only fed the rumors. The official story changed no fewer than three times in forty-eight hours, and newspapers questioning the facts were seized. Investigation into events at Mayerling was abruptly cancelled and the findings concealed—all giving rise to a widespread belief that something was wrong, something was being hidden from the public.
“I do not believe that it could have been simply a love affair,” wrote Princess Nora Fugger, “because the Crown Prince of a powerful empire has many means at his command to terminate or continue love affairs with young girls as he sees fit.”1 The theories ranged from the plausible to the outrageous, including claims that Rudolf did not die at all. Unlike the famous Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, who was long rumored to have miraculously escaped the execution of her family in 1918, Rudolf supposedly planned his own apparent death to escape an empty life as heir to the throne. In 1937 an obscure book appeared called He Did Not Die at Mayerling. This laid out the theory that Rudolf was involved in a conspiracy against his father; when the emperor confronted his son, Rudolf decided to stage his own death to escape punishment. He supposedly fled to America, where he worked as a lawyer in New York City before dying in the 1950s.2 Or, according to another version, Rudolf actually fled to El Salvador, where he lived under the name Justo Armas until his death in 1936.3
In 1992 the late Archduke Otto, son and heir of Austria’s last emperor, Karl I, said, “I believe most in the version of a double suicide,” but then added enigmatically, “As long as I live, the secret of Mayerling will not be completely solved.”4 To what “secret” was the archduke alluding? This evocative turn of phrase encapsulated a century of suspicions. The imperial court’s shifting explanations undermined its credibility; even when it admitted that Rudolf had shot himself, it concealed Mary’s presence and death at the lodge—something most of Vienna had already learned through pervasive gossip.
Rumor replaced fact in the days after Rudolf’s death. “The truth is that no one knows anything,” declared Le Figaro.5 And the correspondent for Le Temps warned, “I am obliged to convey the rumors, but do so with the utmost reservations, as there is a lot of exaggerated fantasy in the air.”6 This fantasy proved dangerous: On the day of Rudolf’s funeral Viennese police swarmed through cafés, arresting anyone overheard questioning the official version of events.7
Within twenty-four hours of Rudolf’s death, tales of his murder by a vengeful gamekeeper at Mayerling swept Vienna. When the Neue Freie Presse dared mention the rumor on February 1, the government confiscated the edition.8 Unencumbered by imperial censorship, however, The New York Times picked up and elaborated on the tale: “Rumor says that he was shot through the window by a person employed on his estate who afterwards committed suicide,” it reported.9 And the next day, citing a report from Berlin, the paper wrote that the gamekeeper’s corpse had been secretly burned and buried in the woods.10
The French press, similarly free to repeat the prevalent gossip, continued the story: “New information confirms the view that a jealous ranger killed Rudolf,” Le Matin told its readers on February 4. “For some time, this ranger at Mayerling suspected his wife’s relationship with the Prince. The woman is said to be very pretty.” Having shot Rudolf, the gamekeeper then “blew his own brains out.”11 The next day Le Gaulois named the culprit as a forester called Werner. Having discovered his wife’s affair with Rudolf, Werner supposedly attacked the crown prince; Loschek, according to this account, found Rudolf’s body in the snow outside the lodge, “his skull broken and his side pierced; nearby lay the body of gamekeeper Werner, with his rifle—which he had used to commit suicide—by his side.”12 Additional stories in Le Temps speculated that, on returning from his rounds, Werner had seen a mysterious figure climbing out of his bedroom window and fired at him; he shot himself on discovering that he had killed the crown prince.13 Unfortunately for this theory, no man named Werner was ever employed at Mayerling, nor did any member of the lodge staff die at the time.14
Yet the gossip was so prevalent that even Prime Minister Taaffe remarked on it. He dismissed it as nonsense, saying, “An Austrian forester who surprises the Emperor’s son with his wife does not shoot, but starts to sing God Save Our Emperor!”15 Taaffe’s remark was more reflective of wishful thinking than reality, and it did nothing to quiet speculation. According to Bay Middleton, Empress Elisabeth confided that Rudolf had been killed over a love affair, though not with Mary Vetsera.16 Franz Josef’s adjutant Albert von Margutti heard, through a bit of secondhand gossip, that servants had found Rudolf in the
snow outside the gamekeeper’s lodge on the morning of January 30, with his head battered. Some years later Margutti mentioned this to Count Ludwig Apponyi, the Hungarian grand chamberlain at court. Finally Apponyi said, “Well, it’s the solemn truth! But keep it to yourself. We had it straight from a member of the hunting staff at Mayerling immediately after the Crown Prince’s death.” According to Apponyi, Mary had earlier killed herself after Rudolf ended their liaison.17
After the fall of the Habsburg monarchy, Margutti spoke to Rear Admiral Ludwig Ritter von Hohnel, who had served as an adjutant to Franz Josef in 1889. Hohnel repeated the same tale, but claimed he’d learned of it after seeing a letter Hoyos had written to a Hungarian relative detailing the affair. Franz Josef, according to Hohnel, somehow learned of this letter and ordered Hoyos to retrieve and immediately destroy it.18 The story seems to have been popular at court: Franz Josef’s valet Eugen Ketterl repeated the details in his own memoirs, saying he’d learned of them thirdhand.19
Rudolf’s amorous exploits lend the story a certain ring of plausibility, although a more likely object of his affection at Mayerling was his former mistress Anna Pick, who lived on the estate with her husband, Count Reinhard von Leiningen-Westerburg. This makes it theoretically possible that the crown prince continued his amorous relationship with her, but the count certainly didn’t kill himself in the aftermath of Mayerling, nor did he suffer any social stigma.20 Yet if Rudolf was killed by a wronged husband, how to explain his suicide letters? Why would the imperial court and the government conceal the fact, especially if the culprit had then killed himself? Admitting death at the hands of a man bent on revenge would certainly have been far less damning to the Catholic Habsburgs than a cover story that Rudolf had shot himself.