Official reports of the deaths of famous people tend to be similar. “Died at such and such a time, of such and such a cause”, they usually say. And that the cause of death is still under investigation, but the deceased probably died of sudden cardiac arrest or something similar. However, the slightest detail or ambiguity that casts doubt on what is supposed to have happened leads to a flood of conjecture and innuendo. That is the way it is today and that is the way it used to be. Today, even after a long period of time, although researchers can still uncover many dark secrets that the official death report has suppressed, many mysteries still remain unsolved.
In such cases, while it is not possible to determine the exact course of events, it is possible to follow a very likely course of events with the skill of a detective, based on existing clues. This forensic search for clues can be exciting and enlightening, and proves that sometimes we learn the wrong things about past events. There have, of course, been more such under-explained deaths in history than there are in our times. Some call such research into past events which, because of their remoteness, can no longer change the course of history, a futile rummaging through the dustbin of history. It may indeed be futile for them, but it is certainly a very interesting read for the ordinary reader.
Fake Tsar?
In 1591, Dimitri, the eight-year-old son of Ivan the Terrible, died under strange circumstances. Twelve years later, a man claimed the Russian Tsar’s crown for himself, claiming that he was Tsarevich Dimitri. Was he really a Tsarevich or just a fraud?
The new century in Russia began with heavy summer rains and an early autumn frost. Two very bad harvests brought the country to the brink of famine, and in the midst of these disasters, Tsar Boris Godunov was told news that shook his reign. In Poland, a man claimed to be the real pretender to the Russian throne, and Boris Godunov was just a power-hungry nobody. This gave new impetus to long-forgotten rumours. Who was this young man who claimed to be Dimitri Ivanovich, the real son of Ivan the Terrible? Was the young Dimitri, who lived with his mother in Uglich in 1591, murdered, or did someone else have to pay for his life with his own? What role did Boris Godunov play in this?
The Polish prince Adam Wosniowiecki lived in Brahin around 1600. He had a servant, a young man of 20. In the autumn of 1603, the two men quarrelled, and the prince ordered the young man to be put to sleep. In anger, the young man said: “If you had known, Prince Adam, who your servant was, you would not have treated me like this. I am Tsarevich Dimitri, son of Ivan the Terrible.”
He then began to tell the astonished prince that Boris Godunov, as his legitimate heir, had been after his life. Warned in time of what was afoot, he went into hiding and another child was put in his place. His mother, the Empress Dowager, entrusted him to a doctor, who travelled with him from convent to convent. Later he settled in Poland and worked as a house tutor for a nobleman before taking a job with Prince Adam.
The news that Tsarevich Dimitrij was alive spread quickly and numerous witnesses came forward to confirm his identity. Prince Adam promised the young Tsarevich his help, as he, like other Polish nobles, was disappointed with Boris Godunov’s rule. Meanwhile, to everyone’s astonishment, Dimitry married the daughter of a Polish duke, Marina Mniszech.
But was Tsarevich Dimitrij telling the truth or not? The key to the riddle lay in Uglich, a town on the Volga River 200 kilometres north of Moscow. It was there that Boris Godunov, after the death of Ivan the Terrible in 1591, banished his widow, Maria Nagaia, and her one-and-a-half-year-old son, Dimitri. On Saturday 15 May 1591, the town bells suddenly rang. The frightened citizens rushed to the palace of the Empress Dowager and saw a terrible scene in the courtyard. On the floor, lying in a pool of blood, was Tsarevich Dimitry, who had been stabbed with a knife, his mother wringing her hands in despair and accusing a certain Bitiagowsky, the son of a financial official and an adherent of Boris Godunov, of the dastardly deed. The enraged crowd immediately beat the alleged murderer to death.
Shortly after this event, Boris Godunov sent a commission to Uglich to find out what really happened. Its report was surprising. Tsarevich Dimitri was said to have been fatally injured during a seizure, and a crowd, encouraged by the Tsarina’s widow, was said to have innocently killed the alleged murderer. As punishment, she was banished to a monastery.
There was more than enough evidence that Tsarevich Dimitri was dead, but some uncertainties remained. After the Tsarevich was found dead, no one paid attention to his body for four days. Thus, no one could confirm that the real Tsarevich had indeed been buried. After his grave was opened in 1606 to prove that Dimitrij was really dead, only the head of the commission that 15 years earlier had established what had happened recognised his well-preserved corpse.
In Moscow, they did not sit idly by either. Accident or murder, it did not matter now. The new Dimitri was a nuisance to be got rid of. But fate was not on Godunov’s side. The powerful noble families of Moscow did not trust him, for in their eyes he was just a small nobleman with Mongol roots. To them, Godunov was not a real Tsar. However, the well-informed could tell that it was all a plot by the exiled Romanov family to get rid of Godunov, who, in addition to Tsarevich Dimitri, had his brother, Tsar Fyodor I, murdered.
Dimitri made good progress in Poland and in 1604 he was received by King Sigismund at the Cracow court. The unchallenged ruler sent out a call for people to join him and soon he had gathered 4000 men under his banner and marched with them to Moscow. Along the way he was joined by many Russians, so that his army grew steadily. The luck of battle was sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, and Dimitri would probably have been hard done by in the end had it not been for the sudden death of Boris Godunov on 13 April 1605. His son, Fyodor II, and his mother as regent did not hold on to power, and the army was divided. In May of that year, a large part of the army defected to Dimitri’s side. But the population of Moscow also rebelled, attacking the Kremlin and assassinating Fyodor II and his mother.
On the 20th of June 1605, Dimitri marched into Moscow to the cheers of the crowds. He immediately went to the grave of his father, Ivan the Terrible, and said to him with tears in his eyes: “Dear father, you left me an orphan in the world, but your prayers helped me to escape persecution and brought me to the throne.”
Now almost no one doubted that Russia had a real Tsar. But some only expressed doubt, and only Ivan the Terrible’s widow and Dimitri’s mother, who had lived in a monastery since 1591, could explain what had really happened. She was summoned to Moscow and Dimitri came to meet her in all his tsarist splendour. A large ceremonial tent had been erected near the village of Taninskoye, and there the mother and son had a long talk. When they came out of the tent, they embraced and kissed in front of everyone. The crowd cheered and everyone was convinced that there was no longer any doubt about Dimitri as the true successor to Ivan the Terrible. But what the mother and daughter really talked about, no one ever found out. Only some people said that Dimitri had threatened to destroy her if she did not recognise him as her son.
On Sunday 21 July 1605, Dimitri was crowned Tsar in the Kremlin Cathedral. One of his first orders was to abolish the court ceremony, and twice a week he received for audience anyone who wished to appeal. But there was still the question of succession to be settled. Dimitri still insisted on marrying a Polish noblewoman, even though she was Catholic and it was not customary for a foreigner to become Russian Tsarina.
The growing number of foreigners, especially Poles, at the Tsar’s court and Dimitri’s luxurious life were not to the liking of the Russian nobles. They began to hatch a conspiracy. On 17 May 1606, the conspirators stormed the palace and quickly overpowered the guards. Dimitri tried to save himself by jumping out of a window, but broke his leg in the process and his life was ended by a bullet from the conspirators. A veritable massacre of Poles ensued and 1700 had to pay with their lives for their stay in the Russian court.
Dimitri’s body was publicly displayed and buried some time later. Shortly afterwards, the superstitious Russians dug him up and burned him at the city gates. The ashes were mixed with gunpowder and shot westwards. The question of whether Dimitri was an impostor, heir to the throne or a monk has remained unresolved to this day. One thing is true, however; Dimitri was always convinced of his tsarist birth.
Buried in a grave for the poor
Sophie Haibel, the youngest sister of Mozart’s wife Constanze, remembered the evil mark for decades. On the first Sunday in December 1791, she stood in the kitchen making coffee. She was thinking about a visit to the seriously ill Mozart. She gazed thoughtfully into the candle flame and wondered what the patient was doing. At that moment, the flame went out as if it had never burned. A shiver ran through her and she quickly went to Mozart. When she arrived, she saw that his life was slipping away. She put cold compresses on his forehead. On 5 December 1791, at five minutes before one in the morning, Mozart breathed his last.
Nobody thought the 35-year-old composer would die so soon. In his last months, he was as strong as ever spiritually and artistically, so it is not unusual to wonder what caused the death of the greatest musical genius of all time. Some of the symptoms of his illness were described in his 1828 biography; swelling of the hands and feet, sudden vomiting and a high fever. A kind of febrile state is also described in the parish register of the dead. It is said to be the result of skin eruptions caused by profuse perspiration due to fever. Could such a disease really cause the death of someone in the prime of life, or was it caused by something else entirely?
Before his death, Mozart confessed to his wife that someone had given him “acquo toffano”, an old poison named after the Sicilian poisoner, which was mixed with arsenic, antimony and lead oxide. This poison causes swelling and vomiting. On 12 December, the Berlin newspaper Musikalischen Wochenblatt reported: ‘Mozart is dead. He died in Vienna last week. As his body was badly swollen, it is possible that he was poisoned.”
But who could hate a musician so much that they would lust for his life? Suspicion immediately fell on Antonio Salieri, an Italian composer and master of the court chapel in Vienna. Salieri wrote his operas in the style of the Italian bel canto, so popular at the time. He soon recognised Mozart’s talent and envied him, even though he seemed to have a secure position at court and could count Beethoven, Liszt and Schubert among his pupils. What was Mozart compared to him, who was only a poorly paid court composer and, in his prime, earned barely half of what Salieri earned. His debts were known to all. However, rumours of Salieri as a possible murderer soon died down.
But decades later, something happened that revived suspicions. In 1823, a pupil of Mozart’s visited a grey-haired and sick Salieri in a Viennese hospital and later told him that Salieri had begged him to believe that it was not true that he had poisoned Mozart. According to another legend, which arose shortly after the composer’s death, Mozart loved life and women. His predilection for the fairer sex is linked to an event that occurred the day after his death. In a fit of rage, Mozart’s friend Franz Hofdemel attacked his young pregnant wife and marked her face, arms and neck for life with a shaving knife. When she was found, she was lying in a pool of blood and her husband had committed suicide in the next room. Magdalena Hofdemel studied piano with Mozart and was adored by her teacher. Later, an English composer gathered material for a biography of Mozart and wrote in it that Mozart only taught piano to those pupils with whom he was in love.
Some claim that he had to say goodbye to life because he gave away some of the secrets of the Freemasons in his opera The Magic Flute, which began to be performed shortly before his death. It is difficult to say how much truth there is in this claim. In this opera he implicitly advocated the ideals of Freemasonry, such as love, fraternity, courage and steadfastness. Nevertheless, the Freemasons were loyal and generous to the dead composer and his widow. In gratitude, after his death, they printed the Little Masonic Cantata and published a speech to be read at the funeral meeting of their lodge.
There are still some details that raise suspicions about Mozart’s death. In particular, the circumstances of his funeral are unusual. On 6 December, the first funeral service was held in St Stephen’s Church, not in the main nave but in a small side chapel. Only a few friends were present. As the widow did not have enough money, only a modest funeral was proposed. Constanza therefore opted for a third-class funeral.
In reality, Mozart was buried in a mass grave in a cemetery on the outskirts of Vienna, which cost nothing and was reserved for the poor and penniless. Only a few people accompanied the funeral procession and his widow Constanze was not among them. Nor was there anyone who attended the funeral service. Some people claimed that they had not gone to the funeral because of the bad weather, although the official weather report that day said that it was only slightly foggy, but otherwise mild. The widow never made clear how she wanted to be buried, nor did she want to place a cross or other marker on the grave.
So what caused the composer’s death? Mozart’s physician later told the court councillor: ‘In the autumn of 1791, Mozart fell ill with a fever that was rampant in this country at the time. The course of the illness was quite normal. Many Viennese had the same problem at that time and we recorded quite a number of deaths.”
Today, we would say that Mozart died of an infection caused by kidney failure, urine poisoning and pneumonia. It is not clear where he is buried, as there are no last witnesses. Incidentally, after seven years, all the mass graves of the poor were dug up and the remains thrown away.
Poison for a Corsican
“I am dying prematurely, murdered by the English oligarchy and its hired thugs.” Three weeks before his death, a very ill Napoleon dictated these words in his will. His physician Francesco Antommarci kept a very detailed diary of his imperial patient’s pain. He gave the cause of death as chronic hepatitis and inflammation of the liver. The autopsy report agreed with this diagnosis. The five British doctors who attended the autopsy agreed: cancer of the bowel.
Napoleon was buried quietly and quickly at Longwood, his modest residence on the island of Saint Helena, where he had lived in exile since October 1815. Soon after his death, however, the first doubts were raised and rumours of poisoning began to circulate. One hundred and forty-two years later, a Swedish physician published a book that would confirm these rumours. The chemical analysis of the Emperor’s hair, carried out in 1960, served as the basis for the poisoning theory. It showed an unusually high amount of arsenic in the hair. Could it be that the English still poisoned their prisoner in cold blood after defeating him and driving him to St Helena? Did Napoleon have a premonition of what was happening, or can his words in his will be interpreted in other ways?
Napoleon’s brilliant career ended with his defeat at Waterloo. He had to resign, and it was only on board an English ship that he learned that he would live the rest of his life on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the remnant of an extinct volcano, thousands of kilometres from Europe and 2,000 kilometres from the African coast. “This is my death sentence”, Napoleon was convinced.
When he set foot on Saint Helena in October 1815, he was not alone. A similar fate befell a handful of his most loyal friends. But intrigue, rivalry and envy soon began to brew in the small Longwood residence, where they were all crammed into a small space.
In exile, a day was equal to a day. Napoleon dictated his memoirs every day, lunch was shared by all, and in the afternoon they played chess or cards. The monotony soon began to affect him badly, and he was plagued by depression. The English also strictly controlled and restricted his movements around the island. The British governor of the island, Hudson Lowe, who was in charge of his supervision, tried to isolate him in every way. The English remembered well his escape from Elba and tightened their surveillance that way. As a result, Napoleon could not move freely around the island, nor could he receive visitors without permission. All his letters were censored and he was banned from reading newspapers. However, soon after his arrival on the island, Napoleon began telling anyone who would listen that the English were making his life miserable.
The theory of murder became deeply ingrained in his brain, even though there was no serious reason for it. For the English, a dead Napoleon was far more dangerous than the exile on St Helena, who was slowly sinking into oblivion. Napoleon’s health was now the only means of pressure on the English that the former Emperor still had at his disposal. Any deterioration in his health was immediately attributed to the English. Governor Lowe, on the other hand, tried to reassure the European envoys sent by governments to Saint Helena to ascertain Napoleon’s state of health by means of false medical certificates.
Napoleon’s personal physician, the Scotsman O’ Meara, was honest and unequivocal: “The Emperor’s quarters are very damp, and the air-conditioning is unhealthy for him, there is no ventilation, and the food is bad. It is not surprising if there is liver dysfunction.” Such frankness ended up costing him his job, as his reports damaged England’s reputation in Europe.
In 1819, Napoleon wrote a complaint about the dismissal of his favourite doctor, in which he also stated his accusations: ‘I have had chronic inflammation of the liver for two years, and it is now a year since they took my doctor away from me. Since then, I have had to overcome several crises that have forced me to stay in bed for 14 to 20 days.” On the recommendation of Napoleon’s family, a Corsican doctor, Francesco Antommarchi, then took over the Emperor’s care.
But the mental problems Napoleon wrote about were more powerful than any poison. In 1820, Napoleon fell seriously ill again; he had difficulty breathing, headaches, bouts of nausea and intestinal problems, no apatite and sensitivity to light. A request to allow him to be treated in Europe was refused by the Convention. The attacks of nausea, however, became more and more severe. In March 1821 he had a severe attack and he has not recovered since. On 15 April he began to dictate his will, and the Corsican doctor took an inventory of his mortal struggle. He vomited more and more frequently and had a high fever. Before his death, he expressed the suspicion that he had bowel cancer like his father.
On 3 May, at the Governor’s order, three more English doctors came to see the patient. They decided that the terminally ill man should take 0.6 grams of mercuric chloride for laxatives. Despite the very large dose, it did not help the Emperor. On the morning of 5 May, he said his last words, and at 6 p.m. the doctors pronounced him dead.
The high dose of mercuric chloride, while not attempted murder, was consistent with medical knowledge at the time. Arsenic was never mentioned, and Napoleon never mentioned it either. But he was so much in control of himself that, while he was still alive, he made all the arrangements for his afterlife. His heart was to be given to his wife in Parma, and his hair was left to members of his family. Whether the arsenic-containing hair that had strangely found its way into the hands of a Swedish doctor was really Napoleon’s could not be conclusively established.
The French have not forgotten their Emperor. The myth that Napoleon took his country to the very top of Europe forced King Leopold of Belgium to bring the Corsican back to France. Nineteen years after his death on St Helena, his body was brought to Paris and reburied with great honours.
The Righteous King
At the age of 18, Ludwig II ascended the Bavarian throne. He was the kind of king the people could only wish for; slim and tall, handsome and proud. At the age of forty, he was declared insane and deprived of his faculties, without ever having been medically examined. Shortly afterwards, it was announced that he had drowned.
When the psychiatrist Dr Gudden and King Ludwig II did not return from their usual walk along the shores of Lake Starnberg at around 8 pm on 13 June 1886, Dr Muller became restless, as he did not suspect anything good. Before they set off on their walk, he offered them the help of a butler, but they refused. It was a beautiful day, but towards evening a light rain began to fall and it was getting dark. There was a scare at Berg Castle. A policeman and two officers went to look for the missing men and the castle park was systematically searched. They found no one and Dr Muller thought, “I think they are both dead”.
At around 11.30 pm, searchers found two hats and a king’s overcoat on the shore of the lake. Dr Muller immediately went out on the lake in his boat and was soon heard shouting. He found two motionless bodies in the water. The King’s clock stopped at 18.54.
Thus ended the life of a king much loved by his people. There is a lot of talk about it being a suicide, but how could such a thing happen? It began on 23 August 1845, when the bells in Munich announced that the heir to the throne had been born. The House of Wittelsbach finally had a male heir. Ludwig spent his youth at Hohenschwangau Castle, where he could admire the fantastic murals of German fairy tales. He often wandered alone in the surrounding woods, as it was difficult for him to get a proper escort.
When his father died in 1864, Ludwig was completely unprepared for his new duty, as he was never allowed to get acquainted with the affairs of state. He preferred to devote himself to his art, and was not interested in court intrigues and power struggles. In the following years, he slowly ceased to be involved in the affairs of the realm. After the Kingdom of Bavaria was more or less forcibly incorporated into the German Reich in 1871, thus losing its sovereignty but still formally retaining its king, Ludwig II withdrew completely into seclusion and devoted himself to his art. His castles were his refuge, where he enjoyed music, especially the operas of Richard Wagner. At Neuschwanstein Castle, he furnished the singing room with motifs from Wagner’s Parsifal, and at Lindenhof he installed the Venus Cave from Tannhäuser. Here, he could ride a gilded boat on an artificial lake at night, past backdrops illuminated with different colours.
For the Bavarians, Louis II, who rarely appeared in public, became a mysterious fairy-tale king, but government officials, who did not know the man’s personal tragedy, saw things differently. In their view, the king had built many castles without a purpose and also without taste. All this cost the Treasury a great deal of money, far more than the King’s annual allowance. In 1885 he owed almost 14 million marks, an incredibly large sum for those times. Nevertheless, he was still building castles and needed another 20 million marks.
The Bavarian government refused to give it to him, so he panicked, because he had to build more and more castles. He couldn’t live without it, and his ideas became more and more bizarre. He tried to get money from various European banks, but in vain. Then his intendant thought he could borrow money from the Rothschilds, pledging the Wittelsbach family for the repayment of the debt. The government shook their heads. A king who wants to pawn Bavarian property for his crazy ideas without a second thought is not in his right mind and cannot sit on the throne.
The evidence of the King’s mental imbalance is said to be more than sufficient. In Munich, it was said that the King used to invite young boys to his castles, and the castle servants could tell that there was a pillar outside the entrance to Lindenhof Castle which the King always hugged tightly when he went out or came home. Louis II is also said to have conspired with Italian criminals to kidnap and imprison the German heir to the throne, Friedrich, and to feed him only with dry bread and water.
The King has also changed on the outside. He became very thin and no longer cared how he dressed. He could suddenly go berserk and the next moment be completely calm. He threw parties for his servants and gave them lavish gifts, even giving a diamond ring to a dragoon. The Bavarian government, which had been kept informed of his unusual behaviour, was convinced that he should be deposed. Ludwig’s brother Otto was similarly dealt with. In 1871 he was put under surveillance for hallucinations and four years later was interned because he was considered mad. More proof that the Wittelsbach family was subject to mental illness.
A successor to Louis II was found quickly. It was his uncle Luitpold, who was immediately ready to take over the regency. All that was needed was an official expert opinion. Dr Gudden, head of the Bavarian Institute for Mental Diseases, prepared it. The 19-page opinion cited paranoia as the cause of the king’s illness, which was only getting worse with age and which was also threatening Ludwig’s ability to work. The report was based only on second-hand information and did not take into account evidence to the contrary. Thus Ludwig’s secretary sent to Munich numerous orders and written instructions from Ludwig, without a trace of mental illness.
Ludwig, who had no idea, was at Neuschwanstein Castle on 9 June. A commission met in Munich to inform him that he had been deposed. However, the commission mistakenly went to Hohenschwangau Castle. Ludwig was not there, of course. It was already late in the evening, so after a hearty dinner, the members of the commission decided to continue their journey to Neuschwanstein Castle the following day. However, at around 3 a.m., someone noticed that Ludwig’s coachman had disappeared, and it was assumed that he had gone to warn his master of what was being prepared.
The Commission set off in haste. They were met by gendarmes outside Neuschwanstein Castle and told to return to where they came from or they would be shot. As no amount of persuasion would help, the Commission returned, and on the way was arrested by the gendarmes and herded back on foot towards Neuschwanstein Castle. On the way, they were scolded, spat at and threatened by the inhabitants. When the commission members arrived at the castle, they were all locked in one room, but the next day they were released and allowed to go back to Munich.
But Louis felt betrayed. He wanted to poison himself, but no one would give him the poison. He was also prevented from jumping off the castle tower because they had hidden the key to his door. He spoke more and more of suicide. “I will not survive being declared insane,” he told his servant.
Now the Commission has gone to see him for the second time. This time, the gendarmes were no longer outside the castle. The guards of the psychiatric clinic held Louis firmly while the chairman of the commission read him the proclamation of dismissal. Ludvik, as if he did not understand what was happening, kept repeating, “So what do you want? Yes, what do you want?”
On 12 June 1886, at 4 a.m., the deposed King was put into a carriage, the doors of which could not be opened from the inside, and taken to Berg Castle, which had already been turned into a kind of home for the mentally ill. All the windows were barred and all the doors were drilled for observation. On 13 June, Ludwig went for a walk by the lake with Dr Gudden. They did not return alive.
As soon as the bodies were discovered, they were examined by doctors. There were no injuries on Ludwik’s face, but Dr Gudden’s face, especially his forehead and nose, showed scratches, his right eye was swollen and blue, as if he had been hit with a fist, and there were bruises on his neck, as if he had been strangled. There were no witnesses, so it is not possible to say for sure what happened. It is likely that Ludwig wanted to escape or commit suicide and Dr Gudden wanted to prevent him from doing so. There was a scuffle and Ludwig, who was a good swimmer, pulled his companion after him into the depths of the lake. When the Empress Elisabeth heard of this incident, she was in despair: “The King was no fool, but a peculiar man living in a world of his own ideas. He could have been treated more considerately and so prevented such a horrible end.”
Tragedy in Mayerling
When the Austrian heir to the throne, the thirty-year-old Archduke Rudolf, told his servant on 29 January 1889 that he could not let anyone in, not even the Emperor himself, he thought he just wanted to spend a restless night with his mistress, Baroness Maria Večera. Only a small number of servants knew that Rudolf had brought the young Baroness to the Mayerling hunting lodge, 28 kilometres from Vienna, the previous evening.
The next morning, when there was no sound from the bedroom despite the knocking, the servant had a bad premonition. He immediately informed Count Hoyos, who was Rudolph’s hunting guest, and his brother-in-law Prince Philip. They decided to break into the room, and a terrifying sight presented itself. Rudolph lay in a pool of blood, leaning over the edge of the bed, and Maria Vecero lay completely still on the bed, her arms folded.
Count Hoyos immediately set off for Vienna in a carriage to report the terrible event. At three o’clock on the afternoon of the thirtieth of January, the official report was issued: “From Mayerling near Baden, where His Highness Archduke Rudolf was on a hunting excursion the day before yesterday, the shocking news has just arrived that His Highness has probably succumbed to a stroke.” In reality, Rudolf had shot Maria Vecero with a revolver six to eight hours before he pointed the revolver at himself. All this time he was sitting alone with the corpse in the room, drinking and gathering courage to commit suicide. The Court was, of course, informed of all this and the campaign to cover up the truth began.
The tragedy of Mayerling was but a sad end to the tragic life of the Habsburg heir to the throne. Archduke Rudolf had been prepared for decades for his duty as future Emperor, as demanded by his father, Emperor Franz Joseph I, who was convinced that the multinational monarchy could only be kept from disintegrating by a strong army. This also influenced Rudolf’s upbringing, which was primarily military. It was only when Rudolf had Joseph Latour von Thirnburg as a teacher, who knew that there were other things in the world besides the army and the court, that his life changed and his view of the world was turned upside down.
He soon realised the stodginess of the Danube monarchy. “The kingdom here is like a mighty ruin, existing from today to tomorrow. As long as the people let themselves be led around by the nose, all is well. Now this role of the monarchy is at an end, the people are free and during the next storm this ruin will sink.” Emperor Franz Joseph was naturally outraged by these words of his own son. Rudolf, however, was merely trying to bridge the gap between the ancient Habsburg monarchy and modern times by his own example.
In the Neue Wiener Tagblat, where his Jewish friend was editor-in-chief, he therefore published his political views under a pseudonym and expressed his doubts about the political direction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was too much in line with the German Reich. Of course, it could not have remained hidden for long who was behind the pseudonyms in this newspaper. Despite his commitment to modern views on the structure of the state, Rudolf soon realised that he had lost the battle. Anti-Semitism was rampant in the country, and Germany was becoming increasingly vocal in its demands for the Habsburg monarchy to be annexed to Germany. Any other thinking was branded as treason. Rudolf had no great levers of power, as his father, Emperor Franz Joseph I, refused to involve him in any way in the conduct of the affairs of state. His son’s ideas seemed subversive to him.
Rudolf was much more successful in the field of love. He had many mistresses until his father married him at the age of twenty-three to a 16-year-old Belgian princess, Stephanie. The young lady could have brought freshness to the Viennese court, but this was a very difficult task for the easy-going Rudolf. In 1886, Elisabeth was born, but this did not deter his father, who was an even more frequent guest in the various perfumed salons of the capital. He contracted a venereal disease and infected his wife with it. The marriage was thus only on paper.
In his search for the meaning of life, Rudolf came across Mizzi Caspar, who was well known in the Viennese pleasure world. Rudolf’s relationship with her therefore only drew derisive smiles. Their relationship went so far that Rudolf suggested they commit suicide together. The attractive lady, of course, refused to accept such an end to her life. In the summer of 1888 Rudolf mentioned several times that he would like to shoot himself and that for some time he had been looking for someone to go with him to his voluntary death.
He finally found that person in the youthful Baroness Maria Večero. She was a lush beauty who exuded eroticism, but otherwise she was of Levantine origin with oriental roots. She was not tall, but she had a perfect figure and long hair that made her appear to be over eighteen. Like many other women, she had fallen in love with Rudolf, so much so that she was already completely submissive to him. When her lover suggested that they commit suicide together, she agreed without a second thought.
On 26 January 1889, Emperor Franz Joseph I summoned Rudolf to his presence. They had a serious quarrel because the Emperor reproached his son for his easy life and neglect of his marital duties. Finally, he reproached him for his friendship with progressive Hungarian noblemen who were campaigning for the independence of their country. “You are not worthy to be my successor”, the Emperor finally said.
Rudolf left his father very upset, his face pale and his hand trembling. On the twenty-eighth of January, he came to Mayerling in a carriage with the Evening Star. The next day he was to attend a family dinner at the Hofburg, where an attempt was to be made to reconcile him with his wife. Rudolf, however, did not even think of such a thing. He only sent a note to Vienna saying that he would not be there because he had a cold. After the tragic event, Count Hoyos rushed to Vienna and first informed Empress Sisi of the tragedy. In his haste, he was not sure what had caused Rudolf’s death and thought that Rudolf had been poisoned. Empress Sisi informed Franz Joseph of their son’s death. The shocked Emperor did not learn the details of the tragedy until the following day, 30 January.
Rudolf wrote several farewell letters; to his wife, sister, mother and Mizzi Caspar. He wrote nothing to his father, the Emperor. In none of his letters did he explain why he had decided to do this. However, he left an undated message to his confidant von Szogyeny before his death: “I must die because it is the only way to leave this world as a gentleman.” And to his wife Stephanie, whom he despised so much: “You will be free from my presence and my torment. I go peacefully to my death, which alone can save my good name.”
His failed political plans and the isolation into which his father forced him undoubtedly played an important role in his decision to commit suicide. Add to this a sexual illness that led to a slow physical decline and an unhappy marriage. All these problems were not in keeping with his role and the idea of heir to the throne of a monarchy.
Rudolf was buried with full honours in the Capuchin tomb in Vienna. Maria Vetsera was secretly buried in Heiligenkreuz, north of Mayerling. The court did not want to attract any attention, so a gruesome scenario was devised for the burial of the unfortunate Baroness. There was to be no coffin and no hearse in Mayerling, so the seated body of Vecher was placed in a carriage and transported to Heiligenkreuz. The later chief of the Vienna police was already waiting there, and he later recounted:
“When the church bell rang midnight, the four-seater finally arrived. Someone called my name and I walked over. My hair stood on end as I looked inside the carriage. Maria Večero was sitting between two relatives, dressed and bloodless-faced, staring at me with glassy eyes. I don’t know who would think of something so horrible. The police had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
On 1 February, in the early hours of the morning, she was buried in the monastery’s cemetery under police supervision. At 10 a.m., a telegram was sent to Vienna: “Everything is arranged.”
The Court initially tried to cover up the affair. First they claimed that Rudolf had suffered a stroke, then that his death was the result of a heart attack. The doctors were asked to prepare a report on the cause of death. It was only when rumours began to spread that the Wiener Zeitung newspaper reported that the heir to the throne had killed himself with a revolver in a moment of emotional confusion. Rudolf’s father-in-law, King Leopold II of Belgium, wrote to his brother: “Suicide and emotional confusion were the only means by which an outrageous scandal, the details of which I do not even dare to record, could have been avoided.” Emperor Franz Joseph I, on the other hand, thought that anything else was better than the truth.
The details of Maria Večero’s death did not come to light until later. Officially, however, the public learned nothing about the Baroness, as she had nothing to do with the death of the heir to the throne. In fact, she did not even exist for the court. Franz Joseph I even demanded that her mother leave Vienna on the day of Rudolf’s funeral, 5 February 1889.
