*24.12.1837 Munich, Germany  -  †10.09.1898 Geneva, Switzerland

Empress of Austria

Queen of Hungary

Princess of Bavaria

Elisabeth, known as ‘Sisi’, a much-admired beauty of her time, was the daughter of Duke Max in Bavaria and Ludovika, the daughter of King Max I of Bavaria.

Her life had begun romantically and bohemianly at Possenhofen Castle, but changed fundamentally in 1854 when she married

Franz Joseph, who was seven years her senior.

She was unwilling to submit to the strict court protocol. She initially avoided her representational duties and maternal responsibilities by travelling, feigning illness, practising extreme equestrian sports, pursuing a fanatical beauty regime and immersing herself in literature. Heinrich Heine, William Shakespeare and Lord Byron were among her favourite poets, and she herself secretly wrote verses:

‘In my great loneliness

I write little songs;

My heart full of grief and sadness

Weighs down my spirit.’

With the help of psychoanalysis, Elisabeth's life can easily be interpreted today as an attempt at self-discovery, escape, but also denial. Her liberal way of thinking, her free spirit, but also her insecurity, lack of commitment and helplessness are probably indications of her identity crisis, but they also correspond to the spirit of the times – the echoes of late Romanticism and the fin de siècle.

Her behaviour was characterised by a need for solitude, a preference for folk culture and increasing shyness. A hereditary tendency towards depression and the suicide of her only son Rudolf overshadowed the last years of her life.

Her only political activity was in the reconciliation of the Emperor with the Magyars.

On 9 September 1898, Elisabeth checked into the Hotel Beau Rivage in Geneva under the pseudonym Countess von Hohenems. The next day, at 1:38 p.m., she and her lady-in-waiting, Countess Irma Sztáray, were about to board the liner to Montreux a few steps away from the hotel when 24-year-old anarchist Luigi Lucheni stabbed the empress in the chest with a sharp file. She sank to the ground, then walked to the ship, where she collapsed a second time and lost consciousness.

On 15 September, her body arrived at what is now Westbahnhof station – formerly Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Bahnhof. The funeral procession made its way through Mariahilfer Straße, which was draped in black flags, to the Hofburg.

Elisabeth's wish to die quickly, painlessly and without long days of grief for her family had been fulfilled, but not her wish to be buried ‘by the sea, preferably on Corfu’. 

‘And when I must die, lay me by the sea,’ was one of her verses, and she repeatedly told Countess Szatáray that Lake Geneva was ‘the colour of the sea, just like the sea’.

Of her funeral it is said that ‘(...) the Capuchin Church was unable to accommodate all the people who crowded in to pay their last respects to the noble woman.’