Emperor Franz Joseph I (1830-1916) and Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) (1837-1898)


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Emperor Franz-Joseph: A loving Father

Kaiser Franz-Joseph & eldest children, ArchDuchess Gisela and Crown Prince Rudolf, during the early 1860's.

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A simply stunning Empress






Obvious a great horse-woman :)




Last Portrait: Probably the most famous portrait of Elisabeth. The way we remember her and the way she wanted us to remember her; forever young and beautiful.
 
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Another photo I like a lot:
Franz-Joseph-I_Elisabeth-Sissi_Imperial-Familie_1870_Godollo.jpg


The whole family in Gödöllo Castle, Hungary
 
Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth( Sissi)

:coach:This is an informed thread about the austrian empress. I've just found in the web, that an austrian-italian production is being filming in real places, like the imperial palace in Vienna,and others locations related with her life. Telecinco(Spain) has bought the miniserie (2 chapters). The actress Cristiana Capodonti as Elisabeth (Christmas in love) and David Rott as Franz (Die Rebellin). We'll see the performance: the history in the story,perhars.
 
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Probably the modern equivalent of Eliz today
is Crystal Gale with her long,long hair.

Considering all the work and effort needed to keep hair at that length, washing and grooming etc, its amazing that the Empress kept it so long.... wonder if she ever cut it short ?

Some fab pics have been posted since I started this thread ( but I did nt get e mail notif ! )


Empress Eliz was a superstar back then... an Empress and yet also a real beauty.... crowds flocked to see her wherever she went.
Probably as a Royal historical figure she must rank up there with
Marie Antoinette, they both died violent deaths before their time.
Pity her story is not more widely known here in the UK
I suspect things are very different in Germany and Austria.
(she even has a statue and gardens in Switzerland ! )

But even with all these pics I still suspect there are 1000s more out there hidden away in books and Imperial archives.
... maybe one day they 'll find their way onto the net.......... hope I live that long !
 
Even though everybody wanted to see her (The magic that surrounded her and her not being a public-image), she wasn't loved back then at all.

The myth just started surrrounding her when Romy played Sissi.
 
Did the court fotographers have to re touch old pictures of the Empress as she refused to be fotographed in her later years? And does any one know when her letters and personal items be able to be viewed by the Austrian goverment? Thanks,
 
http://www.bda.at/image/tn450x_689717456.jpg
Can somebody clarify this for me? Apparantely this is Sissi's cocaine box. Did they use that back then?
Cocaine was widely used by physicians at that time as a medicine, even for very simple diseases such as a cold or to treat fever. It was later, at the beginning of the 20th century, whne doctors realised it was very dangerous and higly addictive and its use was restrained. I wonder why Sissi used it. It was of course prescribed then for everyday ailments such as lasting headaches and migraines....
 
The Empress Elizabeth's story is extremely popular among the Japanese. - Japan Today

"Many Japanese women who feel trapped in their families and isolated seem to empathize with the story of Empress Elizabeth," Yamato said. "Sisi fans in Japan often have husbands like Franz Joseph, who work long hours and come home only late at night."
 
Young Franz Joseph in 1853, a year before the wedding

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Here's the Emperor in 1859, five years after the wedding and a year after Rudolf's birth. The mutton chops are forming...

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Archduchess Sophie, Sissi's first child who sadly passed away at age two.

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Archduchess Gisela as a young girl

Gisela-van-oostenrijk_Austria_edit.jpg


Crown Prince Rudolf and his wife, Stephanie
Stephanie+and+Rudolf.jpg


The middle-aged Emperor, mutton chops in full bloom
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Archduchess Gisela
1856%20Gisela.JPG


Marie Valeria, the "Hungarian child"

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Franz Ferdinand (the Emperor's nephew and heir after Mayerling) and family, around 1909
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Franz Ferdinand and Sophie on the day of the assassination

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The old Emperor during World War I, as his world fell apart. The Habsburg monarchy would end two weeks shy of two years after his death.

Franz_Joseph,_circa_1915.JPG
 

Last Portrait: Probably the most famous portrait of Elisabeth. The way we remember her and the way she wanted us to remember her; forever young and beautiful.

I just finished Alam Palmer's Twilight of the Habsburgs (a biography I really liked, but the pace is very quick and there is a lot of politics), and it had several sentences about this portrait:

In October 1864, when Elisabeth thought her beauty in full blossom, she sat for Franz Winterhalter. A famous portrait shows the Empress in a white ball dress studded with embroidered petals and crowned by the elaborately plaited hairstyle, decked on this occassion with diamond stars. Winterhalter succeeded in making her look both magnificently imperial and shyly imperious. But at the the same time Winterhalter painted two more portraits of Elisabeth, each with her hair hanging down over shoulders loosely draped by a simple flowing white gown. These portraits Franz Joseph kept on the wall of his study for the next half-century of his life.

The book also makes the case that Franz Joseph's relationship with Katharina Schratt was not sexual but instead a source of friendly companionship for the Emperor and her "close association with Franz Joseph was actively encouraged by Empress Elisabeth, possibly because she was aware that Katharina gave Franz Joseph a domestic peace which she was incapable of providing."

Though rigidly bound by disciplined codes of behavior himself, [Franz Joseph] was ready to show a generous complaisance towards his wife's moods. And thus, almost casually, he set standards [towards her that were much more lenient than those he applied to others] to which he was to adhere in later years, too. For however much her self-indulgent whims might try his patience, throughout their married life the Emperor loved Elisabeth's individuality so intensely that he never tried in earnest to curb the firebird's flight.
 
Didn't the empress write some nasty poem about Katharina Schratt? Comparing her to a little cat... I remember reading it in a biography of the empress at one point.

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I have read on wikipedia that after the death of the empress, Archduchess Valerie triet to couple her father to his sister-in-law, the countess of Trani. I have never read it anywhere else though. Does anybody know if there is a truth in the story?
 
I've read too that Elisabeth incouraged Franz Joseph's friendship to Katharina Schratt, and this friendship was definitely what he needed; I'm persuaded that it was nothing more than a friendship, at least a purely platonic love.

Considering that Elisabeth had rather a forked tongue, the fact that she wrote nasty poems about Mrs. Schratt doesn't surprise me at all...

I don't know if she hoped for a marriage of Franz Joseph and the Countess of Trani, but it is true that Marie Valerie hoped that her father remarried; despite she was very close to Elisabeth, Marie Valerie understood that her father needed a companion and possibly a male heir (Franz Ferdinand wasn't much liked in Franz Joseph's family...)
 
Another quote from Palmer:

Once back in Austria [in the fall of 1887] the Empress amused her ladies (and mildly embarrassed Valerie) by snide remarks over Katharina's robust figure. The Emperor's devotion to his friend ran deeper than Elisabeth had thought possible during their visit to Angeli's studio [who painted the actress' portrait for Franz Joseph]; and her feelings towards Katharina may have been a shade less generous than is suggested by those open avowals of friendship which her husband found so gratifying. Some verses [of Elisabeth's poetry] have survived which mock Franz Joseph's delight in what Elisabeth implies was a feigned simplicity of manner on the part of the actress. But she, too, needed Frau Schratt--for by mid-October the Empress was off again, sailing down to Corfu. It was good to know her husband would not fret in her absence. Almost every letter from him during this period of separation refers to walks or talks with the "War Minister" (their code name for Katharina) or includes news from the Viennese theatre world. When Elisabeth rejoined him at Godollo [a hunting lodge in Hungary] in time for St. Catherine's Day (25 November) it was she who ordered champagne to drink the absent friend's health on her saint's day. "I was really surprised to see champagne glasses set on the table," the Emperor wrote to Katharina, "We do not usually permit ourselves the luxury of this wine."

http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/franzjosef.htm has an audio recording of the tired old Emperor in 1915, speaking in favour of a military fund established for Austrian widows and orphans. Click the green play button at the top.

The wedding of Archduke Karl (later Emperor Charles I) and Zita of Parma in 1911. Franz Joseph appears at 2:09 and is visible for most of the rest; that's him on the right in the screencap. The man who takes the flowers from the Emperor is Franz Ferdinand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whDQfFyoGEE


Franz Joseph hunting (warning: ANNOYING music)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbdVuoyNUiw
 
What are the names of all the known illegetimate children of Emp. Franz Josef?

By the way, Katherine Schratt's famous grand niece is the actress Shelly Winters, born Shirley Schrift.



AGRBear
 
What are the names of all the known illegetimate children of Emp. Franz Josef?

By the way, Katherine Schratt's famous grand niece is the actress Shelly Winters, born Shirley Schrift.



AGRBear
It´s said that he had a daughter, Helene, with his mistress Anna Nahowski
Anna:Nahowski, Anna
 
It´s said that he had a daughter, Helene, with his mistress Anna Nahowski
Anna:Nahowski, Anna


From Twilight of the Habsburgs, page 220:

Franz Joseph...was in these years deeply entangled in the seamiest personal relationship of his life. One morning in June 1875, soon after returning from Dalmatia, he was taking his customary early exercise in the Schonbrunn parkland when he met a young and attractive blonde, who was standing beside the artificial "Roman ruin" statuary about a quarter of a mile from the palace. It is probable that Anna Nahowski, the newly married sixteen year old wife of a railway official, had every hope of accosting the Emperor: for why otherwise did she, too, decide to take a walk on her own at 6 AM in the vicinity of Schonnbrun, where Franz Joseph was known to be in residence? Her tactics were successful. Throughout the months when Elisabeth was in Bavaria or Greece, France or England or Ireland, the Emperor looked for consolation to the plump, blonde Anna and found it...It is hard to believe that the businesslike Anna, meticulously noting down in her journal thirteen years of visits, kindled flames of passion; at best she offered the comforting warmth of passing sensuality to a middle-aged man isolated from human contacts. Before the end of the decade [the 1880s], she became an embarrasment for him. But there was no public speculation about the affair; discretion, and ready money, kept the secret for a hundred years or more.


Page 235-6.

At Schonbrunn he could at least still seek the company of Anna Nahowski. His visits became especially frequent in 1884 when--still aged only 25--she moved to her spacious new house at Hietzing, opposite to the side gate of Schonbrunn's "Tyrolean Garden." In the welfare of one of Anna's children, Helene (who was to marry the composer, Alban Berg) he took some interest, giving the mother the very considerable sum of 100,000 Gulden when, in 1883, the girl was born. But though Anna might satisfy Franz Joseph's physical desires, she seems to have been a young woman of limited interests: did they ever have a real conversation? There is no doubt that he tired of her and it is probable that, as he grew older, he found the twenty-nine year gap in their ages increasingly exacting, although he did not finally break with Anna until the end of the decade.
 
Thanks, that's great information and just the kind I was hoping for. I wonder how daring the assassination was though if they didn't have any body guards? Maybe body guards for royalty came into being much later. I guess his mother didn't have any body guards either when she was assassinated.

It was my understanding that Kaiserine Elisabeth Eugenia had stepped from a railroad car to the promenade--she presumably had one bodyguard, her lady in waiting, a valet/footman, and a private secretary who accompanied her. If her Imperial Majesty was impatient and even high strung, it would explain why she left the railroad carriage, encountered the Italian nationalist who held a grudge for Field Marshal Radetzky who had led the Austrian army against the forces of King Emmanuel who was attempting to force the Papal Estates away from the Holy See, thwarted by Field Marshal Radetzky's forces, by brillant strategy and effective tactics.

One comment regarding Kaiserine Elisabeth as a mother: Archduchess Sophie, Archduschess Gisele, Kronprinz and Archduke Rudolf, and Archduchess Marie, Sissi had small children to nurture and through selfishness and self-centeredness abandoned being mother of them to the Dowager Empress Sophia. There is absolutely nothing in the record to indicate that Sophia was a battleaxe toward Sissi. Frankly, it would seem that Sissi did not want to be bothered with the care and raising of her children. Kaiserine Elisabeth seemed both neurotic and suffering from postpartem depression and overally concerned with maintaining a belle of the ball appearance long after it should have been apparent, that due to her position as the Imperial Consort, she was the belle of ball.
 
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