Empress Elizabeth of Austria -Murder of Sisi, a Melancholic Empress

Both executioner and victim were literary characters. His, more vulgar, looked like it had come out of a social pamphlet, those dealing with the numerous misfortunes of the poor. Hers, a lot more complex, was like the main character of a psychological novel dissecting a tormented personality.

Luigi Lucheni, Murderer of Elizabeth of Bavaria, Empress Sisi

 

His name was Luigi Lucheni, father unknown –perhaps the heir of a well-off family-, son of a humble Italian maid. In other to hide her shame, his mother left her city and went abroad. She gave birth in Paris and abandoned him in an orphanage.

 

He was therefore rootless since he was conceived. The orphanage gave him some education, but he could never be more than a laborer, although that’s what he was around half of Europe. In a natural way he embraced the international anarchist ideology and joined the fight for the “propaganda of the deed”. In simpler terms, the indiscriminate murder of the powerful who were oppressing the poor.

 

 

Photograph of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Empress Sisi, 1867

Her name was Elizabeth von Wittelbasch, known as Sisi, and was Empress of Austria. Wittelbaschs had a streak of madness; her cousin was the mad or crazy King of Bavaria. Sisi was as rootless as Lucheni, she had never fit neither Vienna’s Court nor the family life with her husband, Franz Joseph I of Austria.

She wandered around the world, victim of melancholy. To say that she suffered from anorexia would be to oversimplify things; she used to subject her body to a discipline bordering on punishment, as if she hated it. She had a disturbing beauty –no man could escape being fascinated by it. An infinite sadness, justified by personal misfortunes –her only male child committed suicide. A neurasthenic and morbid personality –she used to enjoy visiting mental hospitals.

Chance made their paths cross in Geneva on the 10th of September 1898.

Locheni used to work as a day laborer in the building of the Post Office Building. He was already on the Swiss police’s records, but was nonetheless considered as “not dangerous”. A huge mistake. One day he found out that the Duke of Orleans was in Geneva and decided to murder him.

The Duke was one of the suitors to the throne of France, that is to say, a nobody from a political point of view. But to the propagandists, by definition any member of royalty, aristocracy or simply rich person deserves the death penalty.

Lucheni had no backing of any organization, or any means of his own. He couldn’t even afford a weapon. He sharpened a thin awl, stuck it in his pocket and went looking for the Duke of Orleans.

The Empress was in Geneva without escort or entourage, as was her custom. She was staying at the Beau Rivage Hotel, and that morning she had wanted to go to the Territet Spa through Leman Lake. She left the Mont Blanc docks followed by only one lady-in-waiting, Sztaray Countess. Nobody recognized her; Sisi mastered the art of going incognito.

Nobody… except Lucheni. Anarchic terrorists used to devour the equivalent of tabloids, illustrated magazines and high-society news, as they had to know their enemy well. The Empress of Austria in his reach! He forgot about the Duke, Sisi ensured bigger headlines. He pretended to stumble and pierced her heart with his awl. Nobody noticed.

Sisi fell to the ground, but was helped up by the Countess. “It was nothing”, she said to calm the lady down, and they went on board. Shortly after that she fainted. “It is nothing but the fright”, she insisted. But once they were sailing the Leman waters she felt a Sharp pain in her chest.

The Countess unbuttoned her dress and saw a stain of blood the size of a coin. The wound looked insignificant, the awl had just pierced her left ventricle, causing a slight bleeding, the blood was falling drop by drop on her pericardium, causing a slow heart failure.

Only then she identified herself to the ship’s captain, who immediately turned around towards Geneva. She was taken to her hotel where she died an hour later, without complaints. Death was perhaps liberating to her.

When Lucheni, who would be sentenced to life, found out about her personality during his trial, he said in dismay: “And for me to think I had killed a person who was arrogantly happy.”

He then committed suicide.

Sisi used to exercise, trek until total exhaustion, she used to sleep on a bed without a mattress and used to purge herself in order to always be less than 110 lbs. Since she was tall, 5ft 6in, she had the best figure in Europe, as well as the most beautiful mane of hair, to which she used to look after as much as she punished her body. She was a narcissist who did not allow anybody to take a picture of her so the passage of time would not tell on her, although at 30 she looked 15, and at 50, 30. Nevertheless, a week before she was murdered a Street photographer took a picture of her. Perhaps that was the picture which allowed Lucheni to identify his victim.

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Translated from “Asesinato de una emperatriz melancólica” by Luis Reyes. Published in ‘Tiempo’ on 21.11.2008. Available in http://www.tiempodehoy.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=50&idioma=CAS&idnoticia_PK=36243&idseccion_PK=618&h (last accessed 11.11.2009)