Authors: Brigitte Hamann
B008AITH44 EBOK (68 page)
Only with Rudolf’s daughter Erzsi, born in 1883, did the Emperor come out of his shell—in contrast to Elisabeth, who spent practically no time with her granddaughter and showed no grandmotherly pride. During a visit to Laxenburg, where the Crown Prince and Crown Princess lived, Franz Joseph allowed little Erzsi to tousle his beard; she was even allowed to play with his medals, as Marie Valerie’s diary noted with admiration for her father.
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The few official family gatherings were overshadowed by quarrels and jealous spite. On Elisabeth’s fiftieth birthday at Christmas 1887, for example, Valerie’s diary lamented the “embarrassing discomfort” aroused by the smoldering family dissension. She held Rudolf responsible for the situation.
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The difficulties which began to show themselves in 1886 in the Crown Prince’s marriage were soon known to all Vienna—to all, that is, except the Emperor and Empress. Countess Festetics: “But in these circles, one is always the last to learn of the important things. That is what is so sad about the lives of the well-born.” But when Elisabeth finally learned of the discord—and she heard about it from Marie Festetics—it never crossed her mind to intervene, to mediate, or to placate. Instead, once more she shifted the blame to her long-dead mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie. “I myself feel that Rudolf is not happy,” she told Countess Festetics. “Sometimes I have wondered what I could do. But I am reluctant to interfere, for I myself suffered so unspeakably under my mother-in-law that I do not wish
to incur the reproach of a similar fault.”
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Elisabeth did not consider that the circumstances were very different in this case. And Countess Festetics was so considerate and so cautious that she did not dare to press further.
Nor did Rudolf’s severe illness in the spring of 1887 give Elisabeth cause for particular worry. (According to the official version, the Crown Prince was suffering from a bladder ailment and rheumatism, but he may have had a severe case of gonorrhea, which continued to spread, affecting the joints and eyes and casting him into a deep depression).
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No one dared to enlighten the imperial mother and father about their son’s increasingly unstable way of life. Only a few people knew the details of his dangerous political dealings during the past two years anyhow.
The paradox was that the son to whom Elisabeth paid so little attention was so like her, whereas the effusively beloved daughter, Marie Valerie, took a very different direction. She had inherited more of her father’s temperament, was calm in judgment, devout, and rational, and like her sister Gisela, she was helpless in the face of her mother’s flights of the imagination. Most significantly, however, this “Hungarian” child, born in the royal castle in Budapest, raised by Hungarian tutors, developed a strong aversion to Hungary when she was still a very young girl. When she was fifteen, for example, she timidly asked her father occasionally to speak with her, not only in Hungarian (as Elisabeth wished), but also in German. She was overjoyed at Franz Joseph’s good-natured compliance.
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Valerie’s
dislike
of Hungary culminated in her dislike of Gyula Andrássy. The gossip about the relationship between him and the Empress, the many suggestive remarks about the “Hungarian child,” could not go unnoticed and of necessity left their mark. Repeatedly, Valerie unburdened her heart to her diary about her feelings toward Andrássy; in 1883, for example, she wrote, “Dinner in honor of Andrássy, it pained me to grant him the triumph of hearing me speak Hungarian.”
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And in 1884, “I held out my hand to him with great brusqueness…. His detestable familiarity makes me so sick that almost involuntarily my voice turns cold, almost scornful…. Surely he hates me as much as I do him, at least I hope so.”
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Of course, Marie Valerie did not dare to reveal her dislike of Hungary and all things Hungarian in the presence of her mother. She continued to speak nothing but Hungarian with the Empress. Her correspondence was carried on in Hungarian as well.
Valerie’s hatred of Hungary and of all Slavic concerns grew over time into an almost militant German nationalism, which went so far as to include some anti-Austrian strains, strange as that might seem for the daughter of a Habsburg emperor.
Valerie’s diary entries sometimes create the impression that Elisabeth agreed with her attitude. But Elisabeth’s poems in no way support such hints. Elisabeth viewed the German problem from the Bavarian and
Austrian
standpoints, with a strong aversion to “the Prussians.” If she was pro-German (but never pro-Prussian), it was only in the sense of 1848—quite unlike Valerie, who longed for a unification of all German nations under the leadership of Berlin and in total disregard of the “Austrian idea.” This view was the opposite of the stance taken by the openly “Austrian” and “anti-Prussian” Crown Prince Rudolf. The young Archduchess used the concepts “Prussian” and “German” almost interchangeably, and she saw the power center of a greater German nation in the new German Empire under Wilhelm II.
To the same extent that Elisabeth and Rudolf were of one mind on ideology, the young Archduchess was of quite another. She was a deeply devout Catholic—in contrast to Rudolf—and all her life remained
zealously
committed to the tenets and dogmas of the Catholic church in every detail. She abhorred any kind of liberalism and worried a great deal about the eternal salvation of the Empress, who boldly developed her own religious views without consideration of church rules—in this, too, the perfect model to her son.
Elisabeth’s excessive maternal love for Marie Valerie, at times
approaching
hysteria, began not only to arouse considerable ridicule among the court society and the Crown Prince’s ardent jealousy, but sometimes also became burdensome to the young Archduchess, especially when it caused conflicts with her deeply beloved father. After one painful scene between her parents concerning her welfare (the Emperor had, as he did in most instances, given in), Valerie wrote, “What I most wanted to do was fall at his feet and kiss his paternal imperial hands, even as I felt—God forgive me—a momentary anger at Mama, since her unbridled love and
exaggerated,
groundless concern place me in such an embarrassing and false position.”
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The fifteen-year-old worshiped her father and was overjoyed when she was allowed to sit silently by while he went over his papers at his desk. Marie Valerie:
For more than an hour I sat next to him, quiet as a mouse, while he worked and smoked. It must have been important, for he looked up only once, and that was to remark, “But you must be terribly bored,” to which, of course, I answered impetuously, “Oh, no, Papa, it is good to be sitting here….” “A pretty
pleasure,” he said and continued working. The poor man! As I saw him sitting so patiently before this pile of papers, without a word of complaint … how every man in the state always pushes the cares and sorrows away, always higher and higher, until finally everything comes to the Emperor—and he, who cannot send it higher, accepts everything and works everything through patiently, personally caring for the welfare of each and every one. How wonderful it is to have such a father.”
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The Empress’s return shortly thereafter broke up this warm relationship: “The ideal coziness of those unforgettable days in Schönbrunn is over—now that Mama is here, I do not dare to cheer him up and to show my love half-furtively, as before.”
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*
Although the Empress never left any doubt that only her love for Marie Valerie still kept her at the Viennese court, she was nevertheless
understanding
when her daughter came of marriageable age and the suitors arrived—among them Friedrich August, Crown Prince of Saxony, and Prince Miguel of Braganza. Marie Valerie was a most reasonable girl, who could clearly distinguish between a purely dynastic match, which she flatly rejected (with Elisabeth’s energetic support), and a marriage for love, which—once again, supported by her mother—she ardently wished for.
In this situation, Valerie had a friend and confidante in her mother. Together they appraised the suitors for Valerie’s hand. Prince Alfons of Bavaria also came to visit in Vienna, and Valerie immediately sensed that he was checking her out “like a cow at the cattle market.” He kept up his part in the conversation by talking about horses, especially about the various ways to harness them, endlessly boring both mother and daughter in his heavy Bavarian dialect. Finally, Elisabeth seized the initiative and set out to trip him up. “Surely you go only to operettas and fall asleep at classical works? But I’m sure you’re always awake at the circus? Don’t you prefer the city to the country? You must think the country is too isolated and boring, isn’t that true?”
Valerie observed this conversation sharply and in her diary made fun of the admirer who was unable to withstand the Empress’s irony. “All unsuspecting, he heartily agreed to all her questions and fell into the trap so completely that it was all … I could do not to burst out laughing. He seems very kind-hearted but does not impress me.”
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Even when there was an end to the games and Valerie fell in love, Elisabeth remained her daughter’s ally. The man Valerie chose was
Archduke
Franz Salvator from the Tuscan branch of the family—a choice that at first made the Emperor uncomfortable, primarily because of the close degree of kinship. Franz was inexperienced, very young, and extremely shy. It was the Empress who brought the couple together, arranging an “accidental” meeting at the Burgtheater.
Franz was too shy to come to the imperial box, but a second attempt, the following night, to bring about the planned meeting succeeded. Marie Valerie captured the scene in her diary.
Ten minutes after seven, Mama and I went down. How jittery I was…. Now Mama quietly sneaks to the archway [of the box] and opens the door. There sits Franz, alone, pressed into a corner, but does not recognize Mama until, beckoning with her finger, she softly says: “Come.” He jumps up—I am
standing
outside behind Mama … he answers all her questions without so much as a glance at me—quite the same as before. … Finally Mama turns to me: “Isn’t that right? Valerie has grown?” “Yes, grown some more,” and shakes hands with me with such a blissful expression that my heart leaps up and I feel that everything is good, terribly good.
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Two more years passed before the young couple became engaged at Christmas of 1888. Elisabeth insisted that Valerie not act hastily: “Once in the lives of most women there comes a moment when they fall in love. That is why I owe it to Franz and myself,” Valerie told her diary, “to get to know other young men, so that I will not encounter the ‘right’ one when it is too late.”
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The Emperor’s reservations about this alliance could be easily countered, since Elisabeth took Valerie’s part wholeheartedly. The Crown Prince, on the other hand, long continued to object to the Archduke, whom he considered too insignificant. It may be that Valerie tended to exaggerate her brother’s qualms. Whatever the case, the relationship between brother and sister was extremely strained during this period. Since for her part Elisabeth was intent on sparing her youngest child every grief and reacted hysterically to every complication, her relationship with her son suffered now irreparable damage. She saw him as the enemy of her darling, and that was the worst that could happen to him. The Empress did not know that during this time, Rudolf had problems quite other than his youngest sister’s affairs of the heart.
Even on the rare occasions when mother and son met, the only topic
was Valerie’s future. One of these encounters occurred at the unveiling of the Maria Theresia Memorial in Vienna on May 13, 1888, which both the Empress and the Crown Prince attended. On the eve of the ceremony, there had been riots against the House of Habsburg and in favor of affiliation of German Austria with the German Reich. The Crown Prince’s carriage happened to become trapped at the center of the demonstration, leaving Rudolf deeply depressed and shaken in his faith for Austria’s future.
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Even the Empress noticed how ill he looked, but her only question was, “Are you unwell?” To which he replied, not mentioning his entanglements, “No, just tired and nervous.”
By this time, the Crown Prince must have realized that his mother was quite unable to help him out of his troubles, or even to understand them. Once again (as happened every time they happened to meet at official events) she spoke to him in her dreamy, unrealistic way of his younger sister’s well-being: “I am Sunday’s child, I have links with the other world, and I can bring good or bad fortune,” she told the seriously ill and severely depressed Rudolf, without paying any attention to him. Rudolf could hardly make any other answer but “I shall never harm Valerie, Mama.”
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The destiny of the Crown Prince, who soon after began to plan his suicide, ran its course unchecked.
Because she did not concern herself with anything but her favorite daughter’s welfare, Elisabeth usually interpreted Rudolf’s seriousness and remoteness as hostility toward Valerie. Mother and daughter worked each other up into a fear of the Crown Prince—and this at a time when Rudolf’s faith in the future of the Danube monarchy and in himself was already long dead.