by Hans Holzer
Eventually, Mary’s mother found out about the meetings, and she did not approve of them. Her daughter was not about to become the crown prince’s mistress if she could help it, and Rudolph became aware of the need to be very circumspect in their rendezvous. Shortly after, he requested Countess Larisch to bring Mary to him at the Imperial Castle. This was a daring idea and Marie Larisch didn’t like it at all. Nevertheless, she obeyed her cousin. Consequently, she and Mary arranged for the visit at the lion’s den.
Dressed in “a tight-fitting olive green dress,” according to Countess Larisch’s own memoirs, Mary was led to a small iron gate which already stood open, in the castle wall. They were received by Rudolph’s valet, Loschek, who led the two women up a dark, steep stairway, then opened a door and stopped. They found themselves on the flat roof of the castle! Now he motioned them on, and through a window they descended into the corridor below. At the end of this passage, they came to an arsenal room filled with trophies and hunting equipment. From there, they continued their journey through the back corridors of the castle into Rudolph’s apartments.
The altar—site where the bedroom stood and the murder took place in 1889
Rudolph came to greet them, and abruptly took Mary Vetsera with him into the next room, leaving his cousin to contemplate the vestibule. Shortly after, Rudolph returned and, according to Countess Larisch’s memoir, told her that he would keep Mary with him for a couple of days. That way Mary’s mother might realize he was not to be trifled with. Countess Larisch was to report that Mary had disappeared from her cab during a shopping expedition, while she had been inside a store.
Marie Larisch balked at the plan, but Rudolph insisted, even threatening her with a gun. Then he pressed five hundred florins into her hand to bribe the coachman, and ushered her out of his suite.
* * *
Evidently Mary Vetsera was in seventh heaven, for the next two weeks were spent mainly at Rudolph’s side. She had returned home, of course, but managed to convince her mother that she was serious in her love for the Crown Prince. Baroness Helen had no illusion about the outcome. At best, she knew, Rudolph would marry her daughter off to some wealthy man after he tired of her. Nevertheless, she acquiesced, and so Mary kept coming to the castle via the secret stairs and passages.
Madonna statue near the foot of the bed site
The Imperial Castle is a huge complex of buildings, spanning several centuries of construction. It is not difficult to find a way into it without being seen by either guards or others living at the castle, and the back door was reasonably safe. Although rumors had Rudolph meet his lady love within the confines of the castle, nobody ever caught them, and chances are that their relationship might have continued for some time in this manner had not the tragedy of Mayerling cut their lives short.
As we approach the momentous days of this great historical puzzle, we should keep firmly in mind that much of the known stories about it are conjecture, and that some of the most significant details are unknown because of the immediate destruction of Rudolph’s documents—those he left behind without proper safeguard, that is.
The accounts given by Lonyay and the historian and poet Alexander Lernet-Holenia are not identical, but on the whole, Lonyay has more historical detail and should be believed. According to his account, on January 27, 1889, at a reception celebrating the birthday of German Emperor William II, Franz Josef took his estranged son’s hand and shook it—a gesture for public consumption, of course, to please his German hosts, with whom he had just concluded a far-reaching military alliance. This gesture was necessary, perhaps, to assure the German allies of Austria’s unity. Rudolph took the proffered hand and bowed. This was the last time the Emperor and his only son met.
* * *
At noon, the following day, Rudolph ordered a light carriage, called a gig, to take him to his hunting lodge at Mayerling, about an hour’s drive from Vienna. He had arranged with his trusted driver Bratfisch to pick up Mary Vetsera at her home in the third district and to bring her to Mayerling by an alternate, longer route. Mary, wearing only a cloak over her negligee, slipped out from under her mother’s nose and was driven by Bratfisch to the village of Breitensee, halfway between Vienna and Mayerling. There she joined her lover, who dismissed his gig and continued the journey with Mary in Bratfisch’s cab.
At this point, reports Lernet-Holenia, the carriage was halted by a group consisting of Mary’s uncle Henry Baltazzi, a doctor, and two seconds, who had come to challenge the crown prince to a duel. In the ensuing scuffle, Henry was wounded by his own gun. This encounter is not of great importance except that it furnishes a motive for the Baltazzis to take revenge on Rudolph—Henry had wanted Mary for himself, even though she was his niece.
As soon as the pair reached the safety of the Mayerling castle walls, Lernet-Holenia reports, the Countess Larisch arrived in great haste and demanded he send the girl back to Vienna to avoid scandal. The mother had been to the chief of police and reported her daughter as missing. Lonyay evidently did not believe this visit occurred, for he does not mention it in his account of the events at Mayerling on that fateful day. Neither does he mention the fact that Rudolph gave the countess, his favorite cousin, a strongbox to safekeep for him.
“The Emperor may order my rooms searched at any moment,” the countess quotes him in her memoirs. The strongbox was only to be handed over to a person offering the secret code letters R.I.U.O.
After the tragedy, this strongbox was picked up by Archduke John Salvator, close friend to Rudolph, and it is interesting to note that Henry W. Lanier, in a 1937 book titled He Did Not Die at Mayerling, claims that Rudolph and John Salvator escaped together to America after another body bad been substituted for Rudolph’s. Both archdukes, he says, had been involved in an abortive plot to overthrow Franz Josef, but the plot came to the Emperor’s attention.
However interesting this theory, the author offers no tangible evidence which makes us go back to Lerne-Holenia’s account of Countess Larisch’s last words with Rudolph.
She left Mayerling, even though very upset by the prince’s insistence that he and Mary were going to commit suicide. Yet, there was no privacy for that, if we believe Lernet-Holenia’s version, which states that immediately after the countess’s carriage had disappeared around the bend of the road, Rudolph received a deputation of Hungarians led by none other than Count Stephan Karolyi, the Prime Minister. Karolyi’s presence at Mayerling is highly unlikely, for it surely would have come to the attention of the secret police almost immediately, thereby compromising Rudolph still further. Lonyay, on the other hand, speaks of several telegrams Rudolph received from the Hungarian leader, and this is more logical.
What made a contact between the Hungarians and Rudolph on this climactic day so imperative really started during a hunting party at Rudolph’s Hungarian lodge, Gürgény. Under the influence of liquor or drugs or both, Rudolph had promised his Hungarian friends to support actively the separation of the two halves of the monarchy and to see to it that an independent Hungarian army was established in lieu of the militia, at that time the only acknowledgment that Hungary was a separate state.
Austria at this juncture of events needed the support of the Hungarian parliament to increase its armed forces to the strength required by its commitments to the German allies. But Karolyi opposed the government defense bill for increased recruiting, and instead announced on January 25 that he had been assured by Rudolph that a separate Hungarian army would be created. This of course turned the crown prince into a traitor in the eyes of Count von Taaffe, the Austrian Prime Minister and father of the defense bill, and Rudolph must have been aware of it. At any rate, whether the Hungarian deputation came in person or whether Karolyi sent the telegrams, the intent was the same. Rudolph was now being asked to either put up or shut up. In the face of this dilemma, he backed down. The telegrams no longer exist, but this is not surprising, for a file known as “No. 25—Journey of Count Pista Karolyi to the Crown Prince Archduke Rud
olph re defense bill in the Hungarian parliament” was removed from the state archives in May 1889, and has since disappeared. Thus we cannot be sure if Karolyi did go to Mayerling on this day in January or not.
But all existing sources seem to agree that two men saw Rudolph on January 29: his brother-in-law, Philip von Coburg, and his hunting companion, Count Joseph Hoyos. Rudolph begged off from the shoot, and the two others went alone; later Philip went back to Vienna to attend an imperial family dinner, while Rudolph sent his regrets, claiming to have a severe cold.
The next morning, January 30, Philip von Coburg was to return to Mayerling and together with Hoyos, who had stayed the night in the servants’ wing of the lodge, continue their hunting. Much of what follows is the account of Count Hoyos, supported by Rudolph’s valet, Loschek.
The Imperial Castle, Vienna. Through this entrance the Crown Prince and Mary went to their rooms.
Hoyos and Coburg were to have breakfast with Rudolph at the lodge at 8 A.M. But a few minutes before eight, Hoyos was summoned by Loschek, the valet, to Rudolph’s quarters. Now the lodge was not a big house, as castles go. From the entrance vestibule, one entered a reception room and a billiards room. Above the reception area were Rudolph’s private quarters. A narrow, winding staircase led from the ground floor directly into his rooms.
On the way across the yard, Loschek hastily informed Hoyos why he had called him over. At 6:30, the crown prince had entered the anteroom where Loschek slept, and ordered him to awaken him again at 7:30. At that time he also wanted breakfast and have Bratfisch, the cab driver, ready for him. The prince was fully dressed, Loschek explained, and, whistling to himself, had then returned to his rooms.
When Loschek knocked to awaken the prince an hour later, there was no response. After he saw that he was unable to rouse the prince—or the Baroness Vetsera, who, he explained, was with the prince—he became convinced that something was wrong, and wanted Count Hoyos present in case the door had to be broken down. Hardly had Hoyos arrived at the prince’s door, which was locked, as were all other doors to the apartment, when Philip von Coburg drove up. Together they forced the door open by breaking the lock with a hatchet. Loschek was then sent ahead to look for any signs of life. Both occupants were dead, however. On the beds lay the bodies of the two lovers, Rudolph with part of his head shot off seemingly by a close blast, and Mary Vetsera also dead from a bullet wound.
An altar near the spot where Mary’s ghost had been seen
Hoyos wired the imperial physician, Dr. Widerhofer, to come at once, but without telling him why, and then drove back to Vienna in Bratfisch’s cab.
At the Imperial Castle it took some doing to get around the protocol of priority to inform the imperial couple of the tragedy. Franz Josef buried his grief, such as it was, under the necessity of protecting the Habsburg image, and the first announcements spoke of the prince having died of a heart attack. After a few days, however, this version had to be abandoned and the suicide admitted. Still, the news of Mary Vetsera’s presence at the lodge was completely suppressed.
Rudolph had been found with his hand still holding a revolver, but since fingerprints had not yet become part of a criminal investigation procedure, we don’t know whose revolver it was and whether he had actually used it. But there wasn’t going to be any kind of inquest in this case, anyway. Mary’s body was immediately removed from the room and hidden in a woodshed, where it lay unattended for two days. Finally, on the thirty-first the Emperor ordered Rudolph’s personal physician, Dr. Auchenthaler, to go to Mayerling and certify that Mary Vetsera had committed suicide. At the same time, Mary’s two uncles, Alexander Baltazzi and Count Stockau, were instructed to attend to the body. Without any argument, the two men identified the body and then cosigned the phony suicide document which had been hastily drawn up. Then they wrapped Mary’s coat around the naked body, and sat her upright in a carriage with her hat over her face to hide the bullet wound. In the cold of the night, at midnight to be exact, the carriage with the grotesque passenger raced over icy roads toward the monastery of Heiligenkreuz, where the Emperor had decided Mary should be buried. When the body threatened to topple over, the men put a cane down her back to keep it upright. Not a word was spoken during the grim journey. At the Cistercian monastery, there was some difficulty at first with the abbot, who refused to bury an apparent suicide, but the Emperor’s power was so great that he finally agreed.
And so it was that Mary Vetsera was buried in the dead of night in a soil so frozen that the coffin could be properly lowered into it only with difficulty.
Today, the grave is a respectable one, with her name and full dates given, but for years after the tragedy it was an unmarked grave, to keep the curious from finding it.
Rudolph, on the other hand, was given a state funeral, despite objections from the Holy See. His head bandaged to cover the extensive damage done by the bullet, he was then placed into the Capuchins’ crypt alongside all the other Habsburgs.
However, even before the two bodies had been removed from Mayerling, Franz Josef had already seized all of Rudolph’s letters that could be found, including farewell letters addressed by the couple to various people. Although most of them were never seen again, one to Rudolph’s chamberlain, Count Bombelles, included a firm request by the crown prince to be buried with Mary Vetsera. Strangely enough, the count was never able to carry out Rudolph’s instructions even had he dared to, for he himself died only a few months later. At the very moment his death became known, the Emperor ordered all his papers seized and his desk sealed.
In a letter to a former lover, the Duke of Braganza, Mary is said to have stated, “We are extremely anxious to find out what the next world looks like,” and in another one, this time to her mother, she confirms her desire to die and asks her mother’s forgiveness. Since the letter to the Duke of Braganza also bore Rudolph’s signature, it would appear that Rudolph and Mary had planned suicide together. But, according to Lonyay, a fragment of Rudolph’s letter to his mother somehow became known, and in this farewell note, Rudolph confessed that he had murdered Mary Vetsera and therefore had no right to live. Thus, apparently, Rudolph shot the girl first but then had lacked the courage to kill himself until the next morning. Many years later, when the Emperor could no longer stop the truth from coming out, reports were made by two physicians, Kerzl and Auchenthaler, in further support of the view that Mary had died some ten hours before Rudolph.
In the letter to her mother, Mary had requested that she be buried with Rudolph, but to this day, that desire has not been honored: Her remains are still at the Heiligenkreuz cemetery, and his are in the crypt in Vienna.
After the deaths, Mary Vetsera’s mother was brusquely told to leave Austria; the daughter’s belongings were seized by police and, on higher orders, were burned.
Ever since, speculation as to the reasons for the double “suicide” had raced around the world. In Austria, such guessing was officially discouraged, but it could hardly be stopped. Lonyay dismisses various reasons often advanced for the suicide: that Franz Josef had refused his son a divorce so he could marry Mary Vetsera; that a lovers’ pact between Rudolph and Vetsera had taken place; or that his political faux pas had left Rudolph no alternative but a bullet. Quite rightly Lonyay points out that suicide plans had been on Rudolph’s mind long before things had come to a head. He also discounts Rudolph’s great love for the girl, hinting that the crown prince simply did not wish to die alone, and had made use of her devotion to him to take her with him. Thus it would appear that Mary Vetsera, far from being the guilty party, was actually the victim—both of Rudolph’s bullets, and of his motives. No one doubts Mary’s intention to commit suicide if Rudolph did and if he asked her to join him.
But—is the intention to commit suicide the same as actually doing it?
Too many unresolved puzzles and loose ends remained to satisfy even the subdued historians of those days, to say nothing of the unemotional, independent researcher of today, who is bent onl
y on discovering what really happened.
The official report concerning the two deaths was finally signed on February 4, 1889, and handed to the Prime Minister for depositing in the Court archives. Instead, Count von Taaffe took it with him to his private home in Bohemia for “safekeeping.” It has since disappeared.
Of course, there was still Loschek, the valet. He could not help wondering why the Prime Minister was in such good spirits after the crown prince’s death, and especially when the report was filed, thus officially ending the whole affair. While the ordinary Viennese mourned for their prince, von Taaffe seemed overjoyed at the elimination of what to him and his party had been a serious threat. And in the meantime Franz Josef now maintained that he and Rudolph had always been on the best of terms and that the suicide was a mystery to one and all.
Dr. Hans Holzer interviewing castle employee who witnessed the apparition of Mary Vetsera
Helen Vetsera wrote a pamphlet telling the family’s side of the story: but it was seized by the police, and so the years passed and gradually the Mayerling events became legendary.
The Austro-Hungarian monarchy fell apart in 1918, just as Rudolph had foreseen, and the Habsburgs ceased to be sacrosanct, but still the secret of Mayerling was never really resolved nor had the restless spirit of the woman, who suffered most in the events, been quieted.