Mayerling is an Austrian village in the outer suburbs of Vienna. It is also the name of a hunting lodge where, on January 30th, 1889, the archduke heir to Austria Rodolphe, wire of the emperor François-Joseph Ier of Austria and of the Elisabeth empress, known as Sissi, is found died in company of its mistress, the baroness Mary Vetsera.
Protagonists of the drama
The Rodolphe archduke, heir to the throne of Austria
Heir to the thrones of Austria, Hungary and Bohemian, Rodolphe de Habsbourg, as well in his private life as public, multiplies the “incartades”:
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in its private life: Rodolphe is married, in 1881, without love with the princess Stéphanie of Belgium; the couple had only one girl, the Elisabeth-Marie Archduchess (born in 1883 and died in 1963. She will marry successively prince Otto de Windisch-Graetz then Léopold Petznek). Rodolphe moves away quickly from his wife and collects the scandals, the mistresses and the nights of brothel. What is worth to him to contract serious venereal diseases;
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in its public life: held with the variation of the businesses by his father, who is wary of his pusillanimity, it is pricked of Libéralisme and written anonymous articles in a newspaper of opposition. It begins to hope for an evolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire towards more Démocratie and of Fédéralisme. It is of more favorable to a bringing together with France whereas his/her father wishes to maintain his country in alliance with Germany.
This behavior is worth the frequent ones and violent quarrels to him with his/her father.
The baroness Marie Vetsera
Marie Vetsera was born on March 19th 1871 with Vienna.
It is the girl of the baron Albin Vetsera, administrator of the goods of the sultan of Constantinople and Helene Baltazzi. The brothers of Helene Vetsera are the familiar ones of the Court, since they ride a horse in company of the Sissi empress.
She probably meets the archduke with the autumn 1888.
The house of Mayerling
Mayerling is a house depend on the monastery cistercian of Heiligenkreuz ; built around the 14th century, it is ransacked by Turkish then rebuilt. It then is secularized and given up.
The house is acquired in 1887 by the archduke, who transforms it into hunting lodge, while preserving the vault. It is composed then of a large squat masonry, rectangular, on a floor as well as a low wing intended for the housing of the personnel of service, kennels, stables, commun runs.
The unit will be almost completely shaven after the drama, and replaced by a monastery of Carmelite nuns.
The drama
January 30th, 1889, the Rodolphe archduke, heir to the Imperial crown of Austria-Hungary, only sons of, François-Joseph Ier, Emperor of Austria and King de Hongrie, and of the Elisabeth empress, known as “Sissi”, is found died in Mayerling.
According to the official version, it is one of familiar of Rodolphe, the Loschek servant, who discovers the two bodies, that of Rodolphe and its mistress, lengthened side by side on a bed (the exact position of the bodies will be quickly the object of contradictory versions); a few hours later, the news will come from in Hofburg.
François-Joseph makes the impossible one to try to hide the presence of Mary Vetsera at the sides of his son. And the official thesis speaks about “heart attack” or “apoplexy”. What makes laugh all Vienna, more especially as Elisabeth spreads around it the thesis of poisoning.
For lack of serious study of the scene of the crime, fault of the usual police report in the event of crimes (so laconic and vague it is), the Criminologue S, still today, are reduced of it to the assumptions and still today, the mystery remains whole.
The version of the murder followed by a suicide
This version was, during decades, the official version of the drama, propagated by the entourage of the imperial family.
Prematurely aged by the Syphilis, reached nervous disorders (maniaco-depressive Psychosis?), worsened by prohibition to divorce and its sterility (due undoubtedly to a Gonococcie), Rodolphe more and more often thought, with the Suicide. There fearing to be able to only arrive, he would have convinced Mary Vetsera to accompany it in death. He kills it out of a blow of gun before drawing itself a ball in the head.
To preserve the image of the dynasty, François-Joseph will make the impossible one to obtain from the pope Leon XIII that his/her son is buried chrétiennement in the imperial crypt convent of the Capuchins, and not on the variation as the church imposes it of all committed suicide (the rumor of the suicide will be propagated however to Rome where the cardinal Rampolla, Secretary of State of Leon XIII, will try on this base to be opposed to the religious funeral of the archduke).
In the same way, François-Joseph will try it to hide the exact circumstances of the death (in particular the presence of Mary Vetsera).
These dissimulations quickly will feed the rumors on the assumption of a political, passion or even villainous double murder.
The version of the double murder
As of the first days, the assumption is done day according to which the drama takes part of a double murder made by secret services.
Emergence
This version was looked a long time with suspicion, insofar as she were contradicted by the official announcements of the Court of Austria. As of the first days, however, several elements came to throw the doubt about the reality of a double suicide and accredited the assumption of an assassination:
1 - Several witnesses indeed attested that:
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the body of Rodolphe showed signs of a violent confrontation before its death.
- of lacerations had been discovered on several parts of the body.
- its very damaged hands, showed signs of fight (contrary to the uses, the archduke will be buried, its covered hands of black gloves). According to the testimony of the archduchess Gisele, older sister of Rodolphe, the wrists of the archduke had been divided.
- a window of the room had been battered outside.
- the furniture of the room was reversed and crashed to pieces, of broad puddle pools of blood spread on the ground (testimony of the carpenter Frederic Wolf).
- the cranium of the archduke was inserted (testimony of the Marie-Therese archduchess, aunt de Rodolphe).
2 - Of other elements consolidates this thesis:
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on February 9th, 1889, is two months after the facts, in a missive sent to Berlin, the German ambassador in Vienna, brings back a conversation with the Apostolic nuncio, Monsignor Luigi Galimberti, and the chaplain of the court of Habsbourg, Monsignor Lorenz Mayer. “The two prelates, generally quite informed expressed their most serious doubts about the official version of the events at Mayerling (the double suicide). ”
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British the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, will inform quickly the Queen Victoria that the British intelligence services held the proof of a double assassination.
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the revolver used to kill Rodolphe was not that had by the imperial prince, and each of the six balls of it had been drawn.
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In 1959, of the Austrian specialists in the funeral conservation, accompanied by a doctor and a family member of Mary Vetsera, examined the remainders of this one. They discovered a surprising element then: the body of the young woman did not present any trace of dead by firearm but enormous a cranial Traumatism. Obviously, this traumatism could be caused by a heavy and blunt object (brick, canes leaded, fire-dog, hammer…) or by a tool for gardening, but not by a ball.
In short, this assumption, advanced with sorrow of the glosses later (in 1959!!) and not even retained by " mediums usually well informés" , thus nothing the whole proves.
Assertions of the last Empress of Austria
The version of the murder was officially advanced in 1983 by the Empress Zita, widow of the Emperor Charles Ier.
According to the Zita empress thus, the archduke would have been assassinated because he would have refused to take part in a plot against his father, plot which aimed at détrôner François-Joseph and to replace it, on the throne of Hungary by Rodolphe and on the throne of Austria by the archduke Jean of Habsbourg-Tuscany; Rodolphe would have been informed of certain elements relative to this plot and would have been assassinated, so that the instigators are not worried. The Zita Empress does not provide any element allowing to identify these instigators.
This thesis excludes the idea from an assassination financed by François-Joseph, often evoked but the empress Zita thinks that this idea does not have to be retained.
Other versions
According to another version emanating from one does not know exactly who, the silent partner of the assassination would have been the German chancellor Bismarck, anxious of the francophilia of Rodolphe: the archduke, hating Pan-Germanism, projected, once gone up on the throne, to detach Austria-Hungary of Germany and to bind it to France.
Other assumptions give a report on a plot fomented by the mediums related to the catholic hierarchy which would have removed the archduke with the reason that, dependant on mediums attending French radicalism, it would have wished to found in Austria a legislation réfrénant the appetites of the Catholic church more.
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