Mayerling incident

By 1889, many people at the Imperial Court, including Rudolf's parents and his wife, Stéphanie, knew that Rudolf and Mary were having an affair. His marriage to Stéphanie was not a particularly happy one and had resulted in the birth of only one child, a daughter called Elisabeth, known as Erzsi. Rudolf had infected his wife with gonorrhoea, rendering her unable to have more children. On 29 January 1889, Franz Joseph and Elisabeth gave a family dinner party before leaving for Buda, in Hungary, on 31 January. Rudolf excused himself, claiming to be indisposed. He had arranged for a day's shooting at Mayerling hunting lodge early on the morning of the 30th, but when his valet Loschek went to call him, there was no answer. Joseph Hoyos, the Archduke's hunting companion, joined in, with no response. They tried to force the door, but it would not give. Finally, Loschek smashed in a door panel with a hammer so that he could put his hand through to open the door from the inside. He found the room shuttered and half-dark. Rudolf was found sitting (by some accounts, lying) motionless by the side of the bed, leaning forward and bleeding from the mouth. Before him on the bedside table stood a glass and a mirror. Without closer examination in the poor light, Loschek assumed that the Crown Prince had drunk poison from the glass since he knew strychnine caused bleeding. On the bed lay the body of Mary Freiin von Vetsera, and rigor mortis had already set in. Hoyos did not look any closer, but rushed to the station and took a special train to Vienna. He hurried to the Emperor's Adjutant General, Paar, and requested he break the news to the Emperor. The stifling protocol that characterised every movement in the Hofburg controlled the notification process. Paar protested that only the Empress could break such catastrophic news to the Emperor. Baron Nopcsa, Controller of the Empress's Household, was summoned. He, in turn, sent for Ida Ferenczy, Empress Elisabeth's favourite Hungarian lady-in-waiting, to determine how Her Imperial Majesty should be informed. Elisabeth was at her Greek lesson and was impatient at the interruption. Her lips white, Ferenczy announced that Baron Nopcsa had urgent news. Elisabeth replied that Nopcsa must wait and come back later. Ferenczy insisted that Nopcsa must be received immediately, finally adding that there was grave news about the Crown Prince. This account comes from Ferenczy herself and Archduchess Marie Valerie, to whom Elisabeth dictated her memory of the incident, in addition to the description in her diary. Ferenczy entered the room again to find Elisabeth distraught and weeping uncontrollably. The Emperor appeared outside her apartments and was forced to wait there with Nopcsa, who was controlling himself only with great effort. The Empress broke the news to her husband in private. The Minister for Police was summoned and the national security services sealed off the Imperial hunting lodge and the surrounding area. ==Attempted cover-up==

Eduard von Taaffe, Ministerpräsident (Minister-President) of Cisleithania, issued a statement at noon on behalf of the Emperor that Rudolf had died "due to a rupture of an aneurysm of the heart". The Imperial Family and Imperial Court were still under the impression that he had been poisoned. It appears that even Mary's mother, Helene von Vetsera, initially believed this. The Imperial Court medical commission, headed by Dr. Hermann Freiherrn von Widerhofer, arrived in Mayerling that afternoon and established a more accurate cause of death. Widerhofer made his report to the Emperor at 6 a.m. the following morning. The official gazette of Vienna still reported the original story that day: "His Royal and Imperial Highness, Crown Prince Archduke Rudolf, died yesterday at his hunting lodge of Mayerling, near Baden, from the rupture of an aneurysm of the heart." They attempted to state that Vetsera had died on her way to Venice, having her uncles prop up her body with a broomstick to cover up the double suicide as they left the lodge. Vetsera was quickly buried with other suicides, and the imperial court refused to let Vetsera's mother see her daughter's grave for over two months after the burial. Foreign correspondents descended on Mayerling and soon learned that Rudolf's mistress was implicated in his death. This first official version of a heart attack was quickly dropped. At that stage, the "heart failure" version was amended. It was announced that the Crown Prince had first shot the baroness in a suicide pact and sat by her body for several hours before shooting himself. Rudolf and the Emperor were known to have recently had a violent argument, with Franz Joseph demanding that his son end the liaison with his teenage mistress. The police closed their investigations with surprising haste, in apparent response to the Emperor's wishes. Franz Joseph did everything in his power to get the Church's blessing for Rudolf's burial in the Imperial Crypt. This would have been impossible had the Crown Prince deliberately committed murder and suicide. The Vatican issued a special dispensation declaring that Rudolf had been in a state of "mental imbalance", and he now lies with 137 other Habsburgs in the Imperial Crypt at the Church of the Capuchins in Vienna. However, Rudolf had requested in his farewell note to his mother that he be buried next to Mary Vetsera in Alland. Elisabeth was haunted by this, and visited the Capuchin Crypt, hoping that Rudolf's spirit would visit her and communicate his wishes. The dossier on the investigations and related actions were not deposited in the state archives, as they would typically have been. The story that Rudolf had violently quarreled with the Emperor over his liaison with Freiin von Vetsera may have been spread by agents of Germany's Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who had little love for the politically liberal Rudolf. It was certainly doubted by many of Rudolf's close relatives, who knew the Chancellor personally. German Empress Victoria wrote: She then wrote to her mother, Queen Victoria: Allegations of a double murder masked as a murder–suicide have also been made. In a series of interviews with the Viennese tabloid newspaper Kronen Zeitung, the Empress Zita, who was not born until three years after the incident, expressed her belief that the deaths of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his mistress were not a double suicide, but rather a murder by French agents sent by Georges Clemenceau. ==Aftermath==

The death of Rudolf caused a dynastic crisis. As Rudolf was the only son of Franz Joseph, the emperor's brother, Karl Ludwig, became heir-presumptive to Austria-Hungary. He renounced his succession rights a few days later in favour of his eldest son, Franz Ferdinand. After Franz Ferdinand's assassination in 1914, Franz Ferdinand's nephew (and Karl Ludwig's grandson), Karl, became the heir-presumptive. Karl would ultimately succeed his great-uncle as Emperor Karl I in 1916. ==Motivation==

In July 2015, the Austrian National Library issued copies of Vetsera's letters of farewell to her mother and other family members. These letters, previously believed to be lost or destroyed, were found in a safe deposit box in an Austrian bank, where they had been deposited in 1926. The letters—written in Mayerling shortly before the deaths—state clearly and unambiguously that Vetsera was preparing to die by suicide alongside Rudolf: Theories Brigitte Hamann, in her book Rudolf, Crown Prince and Rebel, states Rudolf had first proposed a double suicide to a prominent courtesan, Mizzi Kaspar. It was after she refused that Rudolf proposed the death pact with the more susceptible Vetsera. Hamann, in an interview, argued Rudolf "was a poetic young man and brooded a lot. He was ill with syphilis and felt guilty that he had infected his wife." This is the theory most widely accepted by historians. Clemens M. Gruber, in a piece called The Fateful Days of Mayerling, argues Rudolf died in a drinking brawl. In Gruber's story, Vetsera's relatives forced their way into the lodge and Rudolf drew a revolver, accidentally shooting the baroness. He was then killed by one of her relatives. ==Exhumations and forensic evidence==

Freiin von Vetsera's body was removed from Mayerling and interred in the graveyard at Heiligenkreuz. In 1946, occupying Soviet troops dislodged the granite plate covering the grave and broke into Vetsera's coffin in the graveyard, perhaps hoping to loot it of jewels. This break-in was not discovered until 1955 when the Red Army withdrew from Austria per the Austrian State Treaty. In 1959, a young physician named Gerd Holler, stationed in the area, accompanied by a member of the Vetsera family and specialists in funereal preservation, inspected her remains. Holler carefully examined the skull and other bones for traces of a bullet hole but stated that he found no such evidence. Intrigued, Holler claimed he petitioned the Vatican to inspect their 1889 archives of the affair, where the papal nuncio's investigation had concluded that only one bullet was fired. Lacking forensic evidence of a second bullet, Holler advanced the theory that Vetsera died accidentally, probably as the result of an abortion, and it was Rudolf who consequently shot himself. Holler witnessed the body's re-interment in a new coffin in 1959. In 1991, Vetsera's remains were disturbed again, this time by Helmut Flatzelsteiner, a Linz furniture dealer who was obsessed with the Mayerling affair. Initial reports were that her bones were strewn around the churchyard for the authorities to retrieve. But Flatzelsteiner removed them at night for a private forensic examination at his expense, which finally took place in February 1993. Flatzelsteiner told the examiners that the remains were those of a relative killed some 100 years ago, who had possibly been shot in the head or stabbed. One expert thought this might be possible, but since the skull was not only in a state of disintegration but was actually incomplete, this could not be confirmed. Flatzelsteiner then approached a journalist at the Kronen Zeitung to sell both the story and Vetsera's skeleton. That these were Vetsera's remains was confirmed through forensic examination. The body was re-interred in the original grave in October 1993, and after a court case, Flatzelsteiner paid the abbey €2000 for damages. ==In the media==

The Mayerling affair has been dramatized in: Literature • A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888–1889 – a work of popular history by Frederic Morton • Mayerling: The Love and Tragedy of a Crown Prince – a novel by Claude Anet (pseudonym of Jean Schopfer). • ''Angel's Coffin (Ave Maria/Tenshi no Hitsugi)'' – 2000 Japanese manga by You Higuri. Stage • Marinka – 1945 premier; operetta by Hungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán; libretto by George Marion, Jr. and Karl Farkas, lyrics by George Marion, Jr. • Mayerling – 1957 opera by Barbara Giuranna • Mayerling – 1978 ballet created by Kenneth MacMillan • Elisabeth – 1992 musical; book/lyrics by Michael Kunze, music by Sylvester Levay. Incident is dramatized as a stylized dance sequence • Mayerling : Requiem einer Liebe – 2006 German crossover opera by Ricardo Urbetsch, lyrics by Siegfried Carl • Rudolf – 2006 musical by Frank Wildhorn and Steve Cuden; premiered 26 May 2006: Operett Színház, Budapest • Rudolf – 2011 play by David Logan dramatises the last few weeks of the life of Crown Prince Rudolf • Utakata No Koi ("Fleeting Love") – 1983 premier; Japanese play by Takarazuka Revue Film • Tragedy in the House of Habsburg – 1924 German silent film directed by Alexander Korda • The Fate of the House of Habsburg – 1928 German silent film directed by Rolf Raffé • Mayerling – 1936 French film directed by Anatole Litvak • De Mayerling à Sarajevo – 1940 French film directed by Max Ophüls • Le Secret de Mayerling – 1949 French film directed by Jean Delannoy • Kronprinz Rudolfs letzte Liebe - 1955 Austrian film directed by Rudolf Jugert • Mayerling – 1968 British/French film (in English) directed by Terence Young • Private Vices, Public Virtues (Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù) – 1976 Italian/Yugoslavian film (in Italian) directed by Miklós Jancsó • The Illusionist – 2006 American film directed by Neil Burger; includes a fictionalized depiction of the incident Radio • The Story of Mayerling – 1950 American radio play on Theater of Romance (CBS); episode 244: August 1, 1950 • Mayerling Revisted – 1977 American radio play on CBS Radio Mystery Theater; episode 0648: May 16, 1977. Modern frame story of the contemporary events. Television • Mayerling – 1957 American television episode of ''Producers' Showcase'' (released theatrically in Europe) directed by Anatole Litvak • "Requiem For A Crown Prince" – 1974 British television series Fall of Eagles; episode 4 • Kronprinz Rudolfs letzte Liebe (US release titled The Crown Prince) – 2006 Austrian TV film directed by Robert Dornhelm ==See also==