at a hunting lodge in Mayerling. The “Mayerling
Incident” became a sensational scandal across
Europe. The death of Franz Josef’s heir plunged
the empire into succession crisis, and the em-
press into a deep depression over the loss of her
son. After Rudolf’s death, Sisi traveled franti-
cally, taking refuge once again in Corfu, where
she had her summer palace, the Achilleion, built.
In the fall of 1898, Sisi visited Geneva, and
on September 10, she walked to the lakeside to
take the ferry to Montreux. Another pedestrian
bumped into her; she felt a sharp pain against
her rib but continued to walk to the ferry. She
had been stabbed in the chest with a homemade
knife. Once on board, the 60-year-old empress
fainted from blood loss and died that same night.
Her murderer, an Italian anarchist called Luigi
Luccheni said in his confession that he person-
ally had nothing against the empress, only that
he wished to kill a royal. Sisi wanted to be buried
on the shores of the Mediterranean, but Franz
Josef overruled her wishes and laid her instead
in the Capuchin Crypt in Vienna. And there she
lies still, at the heart of a city that she never loved
and which never understood her.Elisabeth and Franz Joseph—she
was spirited and cosmopoli-
tan while he was dry and
conventional—had pushed
the couple apart. When in
1885 Katharina Schratt,
an actress from the Burg-
theater of Vienna, be-
came a fixture in the
emperor’s life, Sisi
accepted the rela-
tionship. She felt
no jealousy for her
husband, and rec-
ognized his loneliness
and their incompatibility.
In later years her views on
marriage were forthright: “One
is sold as a child at 15, and one
takes an oath one does not un-
derstand but can never undo.”Violent Ends
Terrible tragedy struck in early 1889: Sisi’s son
and the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Rudolf,
and Marie Vetsera, his 17-year-old lover, had
been found dead in an apparent double suicide
SISI’S COFFIN IS BORNE THROUGH THE
STREETS OF GENEVA ON SEPTEMBER 14,- THE EMPRESS’S BODY WAS THEN
TRANSPORTED BY RAIL FOR BURIAL IN VIENNA.
AKG/ALBUM
A MEDAL OF THE ORDER
OF ELISABETH, FOUNDED
BY FRANZ JOSEF IN 1898 IN
MEMORY OF SISI
ALBUM
70 MAY/JUNE 2019
MARÍA PILAR QUERALT DEL HIERRO IS AUTHOR OF A BOOK (IN SPANISH ), THE
SHADOW OF SISI, WHICH EXPLORES THE IMPACT OF SISI ON THE AUSTRIAN ROYAL FAMILY.