Archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austria
Encyclopedia
Elisabeth Maria Henriette Stephanie Gisela (2 September 1883, Laxenburg – 16 March 1963, Vienna), was an Archduchess of Austria and the only child of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria
. She was known to the family as "Erzsi", a diminutive of her name in Hungarian
. Later nicknamed "The Red Archduchess", she was famous for becoming a socialist and a member of the Austrian Social Democratic Party
.
Laxenburg
on 2 September 1883, to Rudolph and Princess Stéphanie
, daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium
. The only child of his only (deceased) son, Erzsi was the favorite granddaughter of her paternal grandfather, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria.
In 1889, when Erzsi was a little over five years old, her father and Baroness Mary Vetsera
, his mistress, were found dead in what was assumed to be a murder-suicide
pact at the Imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling. Her father's death interrupted the dynastic succession within the Austrian imperial family of Habsburg-Lorraine, fractured her grandparents' already tenuous marriage, and was a catalyst in Austria-Hungary
's destabilization which culminated in the First World War and the subsequent loss of the Habsburg Empire.
After Rudolph's death, Franz Joseph took over her guardianship; by his order, she was forbidden to leave Austria with her mother. At a young age she displayed a strong personality, as well as an opposition to the Viennese court.
Her grandmother, the beautiful and capricious Empress Elisabeth, did not enjoy being identified as a grandmother and was therefore not close to any of her grandchildren. However, after her assassination in 1898, her will specified that outside of a large bequest of the sale of her jewels to benefit charities and religious orders, all of her personal property was bequethed to Erszi, her namesake and, of course, Rudolph's only child. The Empress was open in her dislike of her daughter-in-law prior to the scandal, and after Mayerling blamed Stéphanie's jealous behavior for her son's unhappiness and suicide. Rudolph's wife, the Crown Princess Stéphanie, mother of the young Archduchess Elizabeth, was entirely dependent on the Emperor's charity. Following Rudolph's death, the resulting lack of Imperial support towards Stephanie impacted Elizabeth's relationship with her mother negatively; the parent and child were never close.
In 1900 Stéphanie renounced her title of Crown Princess to marry the younger – and Protestant – Hungarian Count Elemer Lonyay. Although Franz Joseph provided her with a dowry and Lonyay eventaully converted, Elisabeth broke off all contact with her mother as she disapproved of the marriage, feeling it a betrayal of her father's memory. Later, following her marriage, Stéphanie retaliated by disinheriting her only child, Elisabeth, in 1934.
, heir to the throne of Belgium
; but King Leopold II
violently disapproved of her mother's recent morganatic marriage to Count Lonyay, and he refused to give Albert his permission. Albert's sister Henriette
was horrified at her brother's choice, feeling Elisabeth's background was too unstable for the marriage to be a success.
That same year, Elisabeth met Prince Otto Weriand von Windisch-Grätz (1873–1952) at a court ball. Ten years her senior, he was far below her in rank. Nonetheless she importuned Franz Joseph to be allowed to marry him; he agreed. By many accounts it was Elisabeth alone who wanted the marriage; Otto was already engaged to another woman and was dumbfounded when his Emperor informed him of his new engagement. Ordered by the Emperor to break his "lesser" engagement to marry his granddaughter, he complied.
In order to avoid future succession issues
, the Emperor made the marriage conditional on Elisabeth's renouncing her right to succession, although he allowed her to keep her personal title and provided her with a generous dowry. Although the Habsburgs did not regard Otto's Mediatized House
as their equal, unless the marriage was morganatic, his family would have grounds for pressing Elisabeth to become Empress should the succession become interrupted again.
The couple married at the Hofburg on 23 January 1902. They had 3 sons: Prince Franz Joseph (1904–1981), Prince Ernst (1905–1952) and Prince Rudolph (1907–1939). Their last child was a daughter, Princess Stephanie of Windisch-Graetz
(1909–2005), was born at Ploschkowitz
.
The marriage, however, was troubled, and led to unwelcome reminders for the Emperor of his son's death, and possible further scandal for the family:
It was only after the death of Franz Joseph in 1916 and the end of the monarchy in 1918, did the couple officially separate. In 1921 Elisabeth joined the Social Democratic Party
and met Leopold Petznek from Bruck an der Leitha
, then president of the audit office, at one of the election meetings. A teacher and a committed Social Democratic politician who became president of the Lower Austria
n Landtag [state parliament] after the war, Petznek came from a modest background, but was highly cultivated. He was also married; his wife, with whom he had a son, was institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital in Mauer-Ohling, where she died on 9 June 1935.
The lengthy legal process dragged on and it was not until March 1924 that Elisabeth was able to obtain a judicial separation. A sensational custody battle for their four children ensued. Originally the court granted Elisabeth custudy of the two elder sons, while their younger son and daughter were to live with Otto. She is supposed to have prevented this either by presenting Otto with a house full of armed Socialists when he came to remove them, or else by threatened him with her suicide should she have to give them up. In any event, Elisabeth ultimately retained custody of all four children. Elisabeth doted on her children when they were small, but her relationship with her children deteriorated as they grew older. Rudolf, in accordance with her socialist politics, was reportedly taken out of school and put to work in a factory. Elisabeth and her daughter Stephanie did not have a good relationship; she reportedly stated that she married her first husband based on the fact that her mother did not like him.
Elisabeth moved to the Hütteldorf
district of Vienna and bought a villa in 1929, where she lived with Petznek for the next twenty years. She was at his side at Social Democratic marches and meetings, where she was accepted and accorded great respect. Leopold, however, due to his "haughty" character, was not welcome in aristocratic circles. In 1934 her husband and son made a legal motion to place her under a conservatorship on the grounds that she had squandered profits from the sale of the couple's property in numerous donations, made in order to join the the Social Democrats. The motion was later dropped. Although divorce became legal in 1938, when Austria became part of Germany and adopted German law after the Anschluss, Elisabeth was not able to divorce her husband until after the end of the war.
concentration camp, until the camp was liberated by the Russians in March 1945. After the war he became the first President of the Austrian Federal Court of Audit
.
As Elisabeth renounced her official title of Archduchess to the House of Habsburg at the time of her first marriage, the new Habsburg-laws did not apply to her; she was allowed to stay in Austria and keep her personal possessions. She formally divorced Prince Otto in early 1948, and on 4 May 1948 she and Leopold married in a registry office in Vienna.
When Vienna was liberated by the Red Army, Elisabeth's villa was commandeered and then ransacked by Soviet soldiers. When Hütteldorf became part of the French occupied zone, the villa was occupied by General Bethouart
; Elisabeth and Leopold were not allowed to return until 1955, when the Allied occupation ended. By then both were in bad health: Petznek died in July 1956 from a heart attack. Elisabeth, who was wheelchair-bound much of the time due to gout, bred German Shepherds, but became reclusive until her death in 1963.
She ordered that her dogs be euthanized on her death, so that (not unlike the heirlooms) they would not have to go to other trainers.
According to her wishes, she was buried in a nameless grave at the Hütteldorfer Friedhof in Vienna with her second husband, close to the house where she spent her last years.
Since 1995 the villa has been in the possession of the international (Buddhist) community Soka Gakkai International.
Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria
Rudolf , archduke of Austria and crown prince of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, was the son and heir of Franz Joseph I, emperor of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, and his wife and empress, Elisabeth...
. She was known to the family as "Erzsi", a diminutive of her name in Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
. Later nicknamed "The Red Archduchess", she was famous for becoming a socialist and a member of the Austrian Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party of Austria
The Social Democratic Party of Austria is one of the oldest political parties in Austria. The SPÖ is one of the two major parties in Austria, and has ties to trade unions and the Austrian Chamber of Labour. The SPÖ is among the few mainstream European social-democratic parties that have preserved...
.
Early life
Elisabeth was born at SchlossSchloss
Schloss is a German word for a building similar to a château, palace or manor house; or what in the British Isles would be known as a stately home...
Laxenburg
Laxenburg
Laxenburg is a town in the district of Mödling in the Austrian state of Lower Austria, near Vienna.- History :The place is well-known for its castle, Schloss Laxenburg, which, beside Schönbrunn, was the most important summer seat of the Habsburg dynasty....
on 2 September 1883, to Rudolph and Princess Stéphanie
Princess Stéphanie of Belgium
Stéphanie was a Belgium princess by birth, and then made Crown Princess of Austria through her marriage to the heir of the Habsburg dynasty, Archduke Rudolf...
, daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium
Leopold II of Belgium
Leopold II was the second king of the Belgians. Born in Brussels the second son of Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orléans, he succeeded his father to the throne on 17 December 1865 and remained king until his death.Leopold is chiefly remembered as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free...
. The only child of his only (deceased) son, Erzsi was the favorite granddaughter of her paternal grandfather, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria.
In 1889, when Erzsi was a little over five years old, her father and Baroness Mary Vetsera
Baroness Mary Vetsera
Baroness Marie Alexandrine von Vetsera was a member of Austrian high society nobility and one of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria's mistresses...
, his mistress, were found dead in what was assumed to be a murder-suicide
Murder-suicide
A murder–suicide is an act in which an individual kills one or more other persons before or at the same time as killing himself or herself. The combination of murder and suicide can take various forms, including:...
pact at the Imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling. Her father's death interrupted the dynastic succession within the Austrian imperial family of Habsburg-Lorraine, fractured her grandparents' already tenuous marriage, and was a catalyst in Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
's destabilization which culminated in the First World War and the subsequent loss of the Habsburg Empire.
After Rudolph's death, Franz Joseph took over her guardianship; by his order, she was forbidden to leave Austria with her mother. At a young age she displayed a strong personality, as well as an opposition to the Viennese court.
Her grandmother, the beautiful and capricious Empress Elisabeth, did not enjoy being identified as a grandmother and was therefore not close to any of her grandchildren. However, after her assassination in 1898, her will specified that outside of a large bequest of the sale of her jewels to benefit charities and religious orders, all of her personal property was bequethed to Erszi, her namesake and, of course, Rudolph's only child. The Empress was open in her dislike of her daughter-in-law prior to the scandal, and after Mayerling blamed Stéphanie's jealous behavior for her son's unhappiness and suicide. Rudolph's wife, the Crown Princess Stéphanie, mother of the young Archduchess Elizabeth, was entirely dependent on the Emperor's charity. Following Rudolph's death, the resulting lack of Imperial support towards Stephanie impacted Elizabeth's relationship with her mother negatively; the parent and child were never close.
In 1900 Stéphanie renounced her title of Crown Princess to marry the younger – and Protestant – Hungarian Count Elemer Lonyay. Although Franz Joseph provided her with a dowry and Lonyay eventaully converted, Elisabeth broke off all contact with her mother as she disapproved of the marriage, feeling it a betrayal of her father's memory. Later, following her marriage, Stéphanie retaliated by disinheriting her only child, Elisabeth, in 1934.
First marriage
The Belgian royal court considered Elisabeth as a possible bride for Prince AlbertAlbert I of Belgium
Albert I reigned as King of the Belgians from 1909 until 1934.-Early life:Born Albert Léopold Clément Marie Meinrad in Brussels, he was the fifth child and second son of Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders, and his wife, Princess Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen...
, heir to the throne of Belgium
Monarchy of Belgium
Monarchy in Belgium is constitutional and popular in nature. The hereditary monarch, at present Albert II, is the head of state and is officially called King of the Belgians .-Origins:...
; but King Leopold II
Leopold II of Belgium
Leopold II was the second king of the Belgians. Born in Brussels the second son of Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orléans, he succeeded his father to the throne on 17 December 1865 and remained king until his death.Leopold is chiefly remembered as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free...
violently disapproved of her mother's recent morganatic marriage to Count Lonyay, and he refused to give Albert his permission. Albert's sister Henriette
Henriette
Henriette may refer to:*Henriette, Minnesota*Henriette, North Carolina* La fête à Henriette, a 1952 French film often known simply as Henriette...
was horrified at her brother's choice, feeling Elisabeth's background was too unstable for the marriage to be a success.
That same year, Elisabeth met Prince Otto Weriand von Windisch-Grätz (1873–1952) at a court ball. Ten years her senior, he was far below her in rank. Nonetheless she importuned Franz Joseph to be allowed to marry him; he agreed. By many accounts it was Elisabeth alone who wanted the marriage; Otto was already engaged to another woman and was dumbfounded when his Emperor informed him of his new engagement. Ordered by the Emperor to break his "lesser" engagement to marry his granddaughter, he complied.
In order to avoid future succession issues
War of the Austrian Succession
The War of the Austrian Succession – including King George's War in North America, the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear, and two of the three Silesian wars – involved most of the powers of Europe over the question of Maria Theresa's succession to the realms of the House of Habsburg.The...
, the Emperor made the marriage conditional on Elisabeth's renouncing her right to succession, although he allowed her to keep her personal title and provided her with a generous dowry. Although the Habsburgs did not regard Otto's Mediatized House
German Mediatisation
The German Mediatisation was the series of mediatisations and secularisations that occurred in Germany between 1795 and 1814, during the latter part of the era of the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic Era....
as their equal, unless the marriage was morganatic, his family would have grounds for pressing Elisabeth to become Empress should the succession become interrupted again.
The couple married at the Hofburg on 23 January 1902. They had 3 sons: Prince Franz Joseph (1904–1981), Prince Ernst (1905–1952) and Prince Rudolph (1907–1939). Their last child was a daughter, Princess Stephanie of Windisch-Graetz
Princess Stephanie of Windisch-Graetz
Princess Stéphanie of Windisch-Graetz was the daughter of Prince Otto Weriand of Windisch-Grätz and Archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austria , only child of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and Princess Stéphanie of Belgium.Her full name was Stéphanie Eleonore Maria Elisabeth Kamilla Philomena...
(1909–2005), was born at Ploschkowitz
Ploskovice
Ploskovice is a village and municipality in Litoměřice District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic.The municipality covers an area of , and has a population of 384 ....
.
The marriage, however, was troubled, and led to unwelcome reminders for the Emperor of his son's death, and possible further scandal for the family:
"His granddaughter has lately married the Prince Windischgratz; she was the only daughter of the late Crown Prince Rudolph. The marriage was a love match, but when they had been married only about one year they quarrelled on account of an actress at PraguePraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, who was fired at by the Princess. The actress has since died of the wound. The Emperor, in consequence of this event, did not attend the baptism of the son of the Archduchess Princess Windischgratz. The whole affair caused a painful sensation at the Court in Vienna, though it has been hushed up as most events of the kind are."
"The Red Archduchess"
Both Erzsi and Otto were open in having mutual affaires, most notably Elisabeth's liaison with Egon Lerch, an Austrian submarine captain during World War I.It was only after the death of Franz Joseph in 1916 and the end of the monarchy in 1918, did the couple officially separate. In 1921 Elisabeth joined the Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party of Austria
The Social Democratic Party of Austria is one of the oldest political parties in Austria. The SPÖ is one of the two major parties in Austria, and has ties to trade unions and the Austrian Chamber of Labour. The SPÖ is among the few mainstream European social-democratic parties that have preserved...
and met Leopold Petznek from Bruck an der Leitha
Bruck an der Leitha
Bruck an der Leitha is a city located in Lower Austria, Austria at the border to the Burgenland, which is marked by the Leitha river....
, then president of the audit office, at one of the election meetings. A teacher and a committed Social Democratic politician who became president of the Lower Austria
Lower Austria
Lower Austria is the northeasternmost state of the nine states in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria since 1986 is Sankt Pölten, the most recently designated capital town in Austria. The capital of Lower Austria had formerly been Vienna, even though Vienna is not officially part of Lower Austria...
n Landtag [state parliament] after the war, Petznek came from a modest background, but was highly cultivated. He was also married; his wife, with whom he had a son, was institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital in Mauer-Ohling, where she died on 9 June 1935.
The lengthy legal process dragged on and it was not until March 1924 that Elisabeth was able to obtain a judicial separation. A sensational custody battle for their four children ensued. Originally the court granted Elisabeth custudy of the two elder sons, while their younger son and daughter were to live with Otto. She is supposed to have prevented this either by presenting Otto with a house full of armed Socialists when he came to remove them, or else by threatened him with her suicide should she have to give them up. In any event, Elisabeth ultimately retained custody of all four children. Elisabeth doted on her children when they were small, but her relationship with her children deteriorated as they grew older. Rudolf, in accordance with her socialist politics, was reportedly taken out of school and put to work in a factory. Elisabeth and her daughter Stephanie did not have a good relationship; she reportedly stated that she married her first husband based on the fact that her mother did not like him.
Elisabeth moved to the Hütteldorf
Hütteldorf
Hütteldorf is a part of Vienna's 14th district, Penzing. It is located in the west of Vienna, but roughly in the geographical center of the district, stretching roughly from Deutschordenstraße in the east to Wolf in der Au in the west, where Hütteldorf borders Hadersdorf-Weidlingau.Hütteldorf is...
district of Vienna and bought a villa in 1929, where she lived with Petznek for the next twenty years. She was at his side at Social Democratic marches and meetings, where she was accepted and accorded great respect. Leopold, however, due to his "haughty" character, was not welcome in aristocratic circles. In 1934 her husband and son made a legal motion to place her under a conservatorship on the grounds that she had squandered profits from the sale of the couple's property in numerous donations, made in order to join the the Social Democrats. The motion was later dropped. Although divorce became legal in 1938, when Austria became part of Germany and adopted German law after the Anschluss, Elisabeth was not able to divorce her husband until after the end of the war.
Second marriage
In late 1933 Petzneck was arrested and jailed by the Austrian government until July 1934. In 1944, he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to DachauDachau
Dachau is a town in Upper Bavaria, in the southern part of Germany. It is a major district town—a Große Kreisstadt—of the administrative region of Upper Bavaria, about 20 km north-west of Munich. It is now a popular residential area for people working in Munich with roughly 40,000 inhabitants...
concentration camp, until the camp was liberated by the Russians in March 1945. After the war he became the first President of the Austrian Federal Court of Audit
Court of Audit
A Court of Audit or Court of Accounts is a Supreme audit institution, i.e. a government institution performing financial and/or legal audit A Court of Audit or Court of Accounts is a Supreme audit institution, i.e. a government institution performing financial and/or legal audit A Court of Audit or...
.
As Elisabeth renounced her official title of Archduchess to the House of Habsburg at the time of her first marriage, the new Habsburg-laws did not apply to her; she was allowed to stay in Austria and keep her personal possessions. She formally divorced Prince Otto in early 1948, and on 4 May 1948 she and Leopold married in a registry office in Vienna.
When Vienna was liberated by the Red Army, Elisabeth's villa was commandeered and then ransacked by Soviet soldiers. When Hütteldorf became part of the French occupied zone, the villa was occupied by General Bethouart
Antoine Béthouart
Marie Émile Antoine Béthouart was a French Army general who served during World War I and World War II....
; Elisabeth and Leopold were not allowed to return until 1955, when the Allied occupation ended. By then both were in bad health: Petznek died in July 1956 from a heart attack. Elisabeth, who was wheelchair-bound much of the time due to gout, bred German Shepherds, but became reclusive until her death in 1963.
Aftermath
On her deathbed, she ordered her staff to close her villa against her two surviving children and call for a police detail to secure her belongings until the Ministry of Education could remove them. Only her daughter was allowed to see her for a few moments, in the presence of her servants. She had willed some 500 objects heirlooms, owned by the Habsburg Imperial family, to the Republic of Austria. Over the objections of her first husband, who thought they should go to their children, she wanted all art and books to "be put back in their former places", as she did not believe Imperial property should be sold at auction or come into the possession of foreigners. These pieces are in museums in Vienna today.She ordered that her dogs be euthanized on her death, so that (not unlike the heirlooms) they would not have to go to other trainers.
According to her wishes, she was buried in a nameless grave at the Hütteldorfer Friedhof in Vienna with her second husband, close to the house where she spent her last years.
Since 1995 the villa has been in the possession of the international (Buddhist) community Soka Gakkai International.
Ancestry
See also
- Elisabeth IslandSalisbury Island (Russia)Salisbury Island, is an island located in the central area of Franz Josef Land, Russia.Salisbury Island is relatively large and long, having a surface of 960 km²...
(An island in Franz Josef Land, Russia, that was named in her honor).