For the Imperial Family, the truth was especially malleable. Just as the Habsburgs’ legal transactions transcended the judiciary, so their spiritual way stations lay high above parish or diocese. The Court Chaplain, Dr. Laurenz Mayer, was not subordinate, like other priests, to the Archbishop of Vienna. He stood directly under the Pope himself. He wielded the independent authority of a cardinal. At the same time he was a member of the Court, ready to do his suzerain’s pleasure. Now his verdict on Rudolf’s burial was grounded on the autopsy report: it granted the Crown Prince obsequies with full ecclesiastical honors. Only at the Emperor’s request did Dr. Mayer go through the additional motion of having his opinion ratified by the Nuncio, and through him by the Holy See.
There was quick growling at this among the Empire’s hierarchs, especially the Archbishop of Prague, Count Schönborn. Rudolf, that liberal free-thinker, had never been a friend to the faith. Nor had he shown any affection or understanding for the hereditary aristocracy, many of whose members were princes of the Church. Why endow this dead libertine with a privilege he had not earned?
Because the Emperor so demanded. Or, to be more precise, because the Emperor had already so decided. On February 1, His Majesty’s Chief Master of Ceremonies presided over a meeting in the Palace attended by the Court Chaplain, the Guardian of the Capuchins in charge of the Imperial Crypt, the Master of the Horse, the Master of the Music, the Chamber and Court Farrier, and the Commander of the Imperial Guards. This meeting, recorded in the official chronicle of Palace events, planned the ceremonial of a church funeral, “as approved of by His Majesty on the previous day [italicsadded].”
This approval is also recorded and dated in the Protocol of Ceremonies. It was given even earlier than “the previous day” which would have been January 31. Franz Joseph approved of, and therefore decreed, a church funeral “on the afternoon of January 30,” more than twenty-four hours before the autopsy and before the “decision” of the Court Chaplain.
Now the sad command must be executed. Now solemnities must unfold, day after day, rising toward the climax of the actual entombment. While still breathing, Rudolf had been a refractory marionette of state. His corpse was a much more obedient object.
Three times it lay in state, on three successive days, in three different places. On January 31, it reposed in his own bedroom for vigils of the Imperial Family alone. On February 1, following the autopsy, its broken skull was sealed with wax; its hair combed; its innards removed, mummified, put in a special vessel and placed, after Habsburg custom, in a special vault under the High Altar of St. Stephen’s Cathedral; after the same custom, its heart, similarly enshrined, joined many ancestral hearts in a little crypt at St. Augustin’s, the Court parish church.
What remained was embalmed and incensed and carried to a bier in a reception room. It was dressed in the white uniform of a general of the Army, the tunic starred with decorations and ribboned with the red-and-green band of the Order of St. Stephen. A cross of white ivory was pressed into the cold fingers. For two days it was displayed here, where incense, candle smoke and flower scents commingled into an unearthly mist. Here members of the Court came to pray, threading their way past kneeling priests, Imperial Guards keeping vigil, and countless wreaths. Hundreds of emperors, kings, presidents, potentates temporal and spiritual, had sent floral tributes through their ambassadors. So had thousands of cities and towns, guilds and corporate bodies throughout the realm, including the journalists’ brotherhood, Concordia, whose wreath was dedicated much more simply than the others, “To the writer Crown Prince Rudolf.”
On February 3, at 9 P.M. a black-robed group appeared. Singing Palestrina’s Miserere, the Court Chapel boys’ choir accompanied the body to yet another lying-in-state. It was moved to the Court Chapel which had been turned into a sacramental black cave. The pews, altar and oratory were draped in black, the floor black-carpeted. On a black-draped pedestal seven feet high, Rudolf’s body floated white on a black cushion under a black canopy. His crown as Imperial Prince, his archducal hat, his Imperial sword and general’s saber, his Order of the Golden Fleece, all lay on black velvet bolsters surrounding the body. Out of an underbrush of still more wreaths rose a forest of black candelabras. Pale flames flickered on candles longer than bayonets. Officers of Rudolf’s regiment, drawn swords at attention, were black-sashed sentinels. From an invisible recess came the sound of dirges, one group of chanters spelling another without cease.
At seven o’clock the next morning, the chapel opened. For the first time the public could view the body. But the public, that is, the whole city of Vienna, had been tiding toward the corpse for many hours. There had been a general convergence through the snow which had begun dropping heavily from a dark heaven: From the inner districts and from the outer suburbs, from Ottakring and Erdberg, groups had been heading for the Palace. They moved in tramways, in carriages and by foot. They came in black. They had shopped the stores clean of black garments. Some had black carnival masks tied adroitly around their arms to look like mourning bands.
But there was nothing adroit about the crowds themselves. All grace of manner had gone from the streets. These crowds trudged heavily on the trampled snow. They were no longer Viennese. They stumbled against one another in the half-dark under massed black banners. Black flags hung so thickly from windows and roofs that some narrow streets looked like sinister tents and others like tunnels. House gates, lanterns, store signs were swathed in black.
Whole families were on the march through the snowy gloom, from grandfathers with canes to tots in prams. Space had been set aside for them around the Palace and along the Ringstrasse. But the area could not contain them. The pressure of their numbers overturned barricades and pushed aside cordons of Palace gendarmes. When the Court Chapel opened there was an oceanic forward crush. Children screamed, women fainted. Whole rows of pews were broken. Police shouted and soldiers tried to form a phalanx. Not till the Cavalry appeared would the crowd move back into more orderly formations. Ambulances had to be called; medical-corps men carried off twenty-odd casualties. A number of women suffered violent sobbing fits and had to be led away for treatment.
Meanwhile the viewing started. Multitudes passed in and out of the Court Chapel. Greater multitudes replaced them. There was no let-up, even toward evening. At 4 P.M. the police announced to the still swelling throng that the chapel would be closed for their own protection. Everyone should go home.
Nobody did. Nobody moved. The crowd stood motionless in the snow that had started melting into a drizzle. Thousands stood wet and immobile as the statues on the Ringstrasse roofs. A low, sepulchral chorus began to spread: “We want to see our Crown Prince…We want to see our Crown Prince…”
After an impasse, police on horseback proclaimed a message: The Emperor himself had intervened. At the All Highest command, viewing would be continued for another three hours.
Franz Joseph intervened everywhere, orchestrating even the minutiae of grief. His wife lay in bed sobbing, devastated. His daughters were in shock, nursed by their ladies-in-waiting. But he, being Franz Joseph, sat at his desk. He was doing his duty. His pen moved over papers. More than ever, he had overcome the personal father in him to turn wholly into all his people’s patriarch; into the all-resilient, all-sheltering archbureaucrat. Rudolf, his successor, had killed himself, but he was at work integrating the death itself into Imperial continuity. In his hands disaster must become ritual; and ritual, a dynastic celebration. He never stopped, writing, summoning, conferring, commanding.
With his First Lord Chamberlain he charted the dimensions of Court Mourning: The first month, Deepest Mourning. The second month, Deep Mourning. The third month, Limited Mourning. Each phase provided different dress rules for different ranks, from the black jewelry of archducal ladies and the black scabbards of lord privy councillors in the first month, to the black visors and white gloves to be worn by Imperial and Royal ambassadors abroad, in the third.
Franz Joseph attended to that. He order
ed the two coffins: the temporary wooden one, and the ornate metal sarcophagus craftsmen would work on for months. He inspected countless condolence telegrams from heads of state around the globe, and he minutely annotated countless acknowledgments drafted by secretaries in his chancellery. The thank-you cable to the King of Greece, for example, had to be corrected; it was not addressed in terms of du (the familiar second person singular). On the other hand the reply to the former Empress Eugenie of France must be redrafted because it did not apostrophize her as “Your Majesty.”
The stampede of events may have overwhelmed his subjects. But Franz Joseph bore his sadness firmly. His overview encompassed not only the sea of messages from crowned chiefs and highnesses abroad but from district governors and little burgomasters throughout his domains, even from myriads of tiny hamlets like the one in southern Hungary which telegraphed its All Highest Lord:
THE HUMBLE INHABITANTS OF A SMALL REMOTE VILLAGE WITH THEIR TEARS SWELL THE SEA OF SORROW.
COMMUNITY OF BÖGÖZ
Franz Joseph saw to it that even such were answered by return wire, but not by himself, of course.
HIS MAJESTY’S THANKS FOR THE TOUCHING PROOF OF SYMPATHY.
PRINCE HOHENLOHE,
FIRST LORD CHAMBERLAIN
Finally a delicate telegraphic maneuver must be brought off. Just about every chief of state in Europe wanted to rush to Vienna for the funeral. They must all be kept away, ceremoniously. The monarch instructed his Foreign Minister to send identical dispatches to all his embassies. Again he supervised the phrasing himself.
UPON ALL HIGHEST COMMAND I INFORM YOU THAT HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR, MOST DEEPLY MOVED AND BOWED BY SORROW OVER THE TERRIBLE MISFORTUNE WHICH HAS BEFALLEN HIM AND HIS FAMILY, HAS DIRECTED THAT THE OBSEQUIES WILL TAKE PLACE IN THE CLOSEST FAMILY CIRCLE AND THAT ALL REQUESTS AND INQUIRIES CONCERNING THE POSSIBLE ARRIVAL HERE OF FOREIGN DIGNITARIES ARE TO BE ANSWERED ON THE LINES THAT HIS MAJESTY IS MOST SINCERELY GRATEFUL FOR ALL PROOFS OF SYMPATHY BUT DESIRES TO HAVE AROUND HIM, AT THIS PROFOUNDLY MOVING CEREMONY OF MOURNING, NONE BUT THE CLOSEST MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY.
In some cases this wasn’t enough. To the German Kaiser, Franz Joseph had to word a bald request in his own name.
YOUR WARM WORDS OF SINCERE PARTICIPATION IN OUR GRIEF HAVE DEEPLY MOVED THE EMPRESS AND MYSELF AND DONE OUR SORROWING HEARTS GOOD. ACCEPT OUR WARMEST THANKS FOR YOUR LOYAL FRIENDSHIP AND ALSO FOR YOUR INTENTION TO COME HERE. IF I ASK YOU NOT TO DO SO YOU MAY JUDGE HOW DEEPLY CRUSHED MY FAMILY IS IF WE HAVE TO ADDRESS THIS REQUEST EVEN TO YOU.
FRANZ JOSEPH
It would have been too much—the Prussian’s muted gloating at Rudolf’s bier. But a crush of other potentates would have been too much as well. The Empress was in no condition to bear the formalities engendered by such presences. Or, for that matter, to endure the low inquisitiveness this death aroused in highborn minds. Franz Joseph, who could endure anything, had another reason for not wanting his peers by his side: The funeral must be of uncluttered opulence, centering on father and son. If Rudolf’s death was a major disruption of Franz Joseph’s reign, his burial must be one of its major pageants, controlled and dominated by the monarch alone.
And that is precisely how it was staged. Thirty years earlier, in 1858, a select audience in the old Court Theater had watched a performance honoring the Crown Prince’s birth. In 1889 a similar audience watched the drama of his death rites in exactly the same spot. On the demolition site of the old theater a gigantic grandstand, draped in black, was erected. Notables of the Empire took their seats here at 3 P.M. of February 5. It was the best place from which to observe the procession.
All around them the masses gathered. They came in even more tremendous numbers than for the lying-in-state. The overflow reached so far to the northern part of the Ringstrasse that Johann Pfeiffer, King of the Birds, had to retreat into a courtyard with his cage. Many in the crowd had been camping on cobbles for days—so important was it for them to catch a last good glimpse of their Crown Prince. They used field latrines put up by the Army. They lived on provisions they’d brought along, or bought sausages from hawkers. Other vendors offered them black-framed drawings of the high deceased, hastily printed booklets with his biography, and crape-edged nosegays of Maiglöckchen, lilies of the valley, his favorite flower.
All the milling and selling stopped on Tuesday afternoon, February 5. The black hats and wan faces which choked the streets all began to turn in the same direction. Every window along the funeral route brimmed with faces. Some young men actually balanced on the staffs from which black flags hung. The sun shone. Yes, after days of wet and snow, the sky had cleared for this crescendo. The sun shone hard, cold and clear. The crowds shuffled; they heaved and waited. Occasionally there were hoof-beats, muffled calls. Mounted police had to keep a path open from the Court Chapel along Michaelerplatz, Josefsplatz, Augustinerstrasse, Tegetthoffstrasse, to the Capuchin Church on the Neuer Markt. Onto these streets a silence dropped, the heavy silence of a multitude.
At four o’clock sharp, the bells of the Court Chapel began to toll, slowly. Slowly, preceded by slow-riding Hussars, the ancient black mourning carriage of the Habsburgs drove out of the inner Palace courtyard, drawn by a pair of black steeds. The Emperor sat inside. For once the sight of him drew no cheers. Thousands of hands removed thousands of hats. Numberless heads bowed in silence, soldiers presented arms. Bells tolled, not only those of the Court Chapel now, but that of the cathedral and of all other churches in the metropolis, all beating together slowly, all in one tremendous, melancholy pulse.
Archducal carriages rode out next, coachmen sitting, footmen standing, in black tricornered hats, black livery, black stockings and black-buckled shoes. Then came a single Lipizzaner with a rider in formal Spanish mourning dress. Then a six-horse carriage occupied by Rudolf’s Lord Chamberlains and the principal officers of his personal Court. And then came the hearse itself, a black baroque sculpture, pulled by six Lipizzaner grays. Under a black canopy held up by fretted black columns, surmounted by Rudolf’s arms in gold, the coffin floated through the ringing of the bells. Bells, bells, they rang slowly from ten thousand and one steeples throughout the realm, from Lake Constance on the Swiss border to the wilds of Transylvania. You were never out of earshot of metal, moaning.
On both sides of the hearse moved burning torches. Pages in feudal dress held them aloft, marching in single file. Riding in single file to their right were six Arciere Honor Guards with white plumes on silver helmets, their crimson coats studded with gold; to the left, six Hungarian Honor Guards on white steeds, in silver-laced red tunics, tiger-striped capes fluttering off one shoulder. Then came, also on horseback, medieval bodyguards with halberds and black panaches. Then came, marching stiffly, a battalion that was a mosaic of the Monarchy’s armed prowess—one company of the Imperial and Royal Army, one of the Austrian Militia, one of the Hungarian National Guard, one of fezzed Bosnian Sharpshooters, and one company of Marines in the uniform of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Then came the lesser figures of Rudolf’s entourage on foot, and finally a rearguard squadron of Hussars.
Yet other presences traveled in the cortege, neither visible nor audible, yet flamboyant in the minds of the staring masses. These were the rumors about the Crown Prince’s true end: that he had been shot by a poacher, knifed by a girl’s outraged brother, assassinated by a foe at Court, fallen victim to a gallant duel…As the bells tolled, the torches flared, the Hussars’ horses pranced, these stories grew beyond scandal. They merged into the pageant, magnifying it. They misted into a heraldic frieze, new embroidery on the old Habsburg myth by which the city had lived for seven hundred years.
And now, as had happened in so many generations, the myth was punctuated once more by a high death; by the halt of an august procession before the small, plain Church of the Capuchins.
Karl Count Bombelles, Rudolf’s First Lord Chamberlain, disembarked from his carriage. With a golden staff he knocked against the simple portal. The dialogue began, ancient and brief
.
“Who is it?” a friar demanded from inside.
“His Most Serene Imperial and Royal Highness, the Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Habsburg.”
“We know him not.”
The door remained closed. Again the golden staff knocked.
“Who is there?”
“The Crown Prince Rudolf.”
“We know him not.”
The door remained closed. Once more the golden staff must knock.
“Who is there?”
“Your brother Rudolf. A poor sinner.”
The door opened. It admitted the casket, which black-clad lackeys had lifted from the hearse. The Emperor entered after it.
Inside, the narrow church was packed with splendor: The Prince Cardinal of Vienna; the Papal Nuncio; the Austrian bishops in their ceremonial vestments; the ambassadors and plenipotentiaries extraordinary accredited to the Court, all in formal dress with swords; the highest aristocrats; the Emperor’s cabinet; the governors-general of the realm’s component states; the chiefs of its great cities, including a giant white-bearded and fezzed grandee, Beg Mustapha Fazli Paschic, the Lord Mayor of Sarajevo.
Franz Joseph walked to his pew in the first row, next to the King and Queen of Belgium, the one royal pair whose coming he had not been able to prevent. They were, after all, parents of the widow. With the others in the church the Emperor listened to the Cardinal’s prayer. He chanted, knelt, crossed himself. And when the service was over he did a thing the Court could not believe. He, the chief ikon of dynastic ritual, broke out of the rite.
This moment came after the footmen lifted the casket. Rudolf’s First Lord Chamberlain was leading it into the crypt to hand over his master’s remains, together with the casket keys, to the perpetual care of the Chief Friar. Ceremonial demanded that the First Lord Chamberlain perform this final act of his office alone—and ceremonial was violated by Franz Joseph himself.
A Nervous Splendor Page 24