Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria
| Rudolf | |
|---|---|
| Crown Prince of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia | |
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| Spouse | Princess Stéphanie of Belgium |
| Issue | |
| Archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austria | |
| House | House of Habsburg-Lorraine |
| Father | Franz Joseph I of Austria |
| Mother | Elisabeth of Bavaria |
| Born | 21 August 1858 Laxenburg, Austrian Empire |
| Died | 30 January 1889 (aged 30) Mayerling, Austria-Hungary |
| Burial | Imperial Crypt, Vienna |
Rudolf (21 August 1858 – 30 January 1889), Archduke of Austria and Crown Prince of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, was the son and heir-apparent of Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia, and his wife and Empress-Queen consort, Elisabeth. His death, apparently through suicide, along with that of his mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera, at his Mayerling hunting lodge in 1889 made international headlines.
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Background [edit]
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Archduke/Crown Prince Rudolf Franz Karl Joseph, was born on 21 August 1858 in Schloss Laxenburg,[1] a castle near Vienna, as the son of Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth. Influenced by his tutor Ferdinand von Hochstetter (who later became the first superintendent of the Imperial Natural History Museum), Rudolf became very interested in natural sciences, starting a mineral collection at a very early age.[1] (After his death, large portions of his mineral collection came into the possession of the University for Agriculture in Vienna.[1])
Crown Prince Rudolf was raised together with his older sister Gisela by their paternal grandmother Archduchess Sophie. His parents' oldest child, a daughter named Sophie, died at the age of two before Rudolf was born, while younger sister Marie-Valerie was born ten years after Rudolf. Gisela and Rudolf grew up together and were very close. At the age of six, Rudolf was separated from his sister as he began his education to become a future Emperor. This did not change their relationship and Gisela remained close to him until she left Vienna upon her marriage to Prince Leopold of Bavaria.
In contrast with his deeply conservative father, Crown Prince Rudolf held distinctively liberal views, that were closer to those of his mother.[citation needed] Nevertheless his relationship with her was at times strained.
Marriage [edit]
In Vienna, on 10 May 1881, Rudolf married Princess Stéphanie of Belgium, a daughter of King Leopold II of the Belgians, at the Augustinian's Church in Vienna. By the time their only child, the Archduchess Elisabeth, was born on 2 September 1883, the couple had drifted apart, and he found solace in drink and other female companionship. Rudolf started having many affairs, and eventually wrote to Pope Leo XIII about the possibility of divorcing Stéphanie, but the Emperor forbade it.
Affairs and suicide [edit]
In 1887, Rudolf bought Mayerling hunting lodge. In late 1888, the 30-year-old crown prince met the 17-year-old Baroness Marie Vetsera, known by the more fashionable Anglophile name Mary and began an affair with her. According to official reports their deaths were a result of Franz Joseph's demand, that the couple end the relationship: the Crown Prince, as part of a suicide pact, first shot his mistress in the head and then himself. Rudolf was officially declared to have been in a state of "mental unbalance" in order to enable Christian burial in the Imperial Crypt (Kapuzinergruft) of the Capuchin Church in Vienna. Mary's body was smuggled out of Mayerling in the middle of the night and secretly buried in the village cemetery at Heiligenkreuz. After the deaths, the Emperor had Mayerling converted into a penitential convent of Carmelite nuns. Today prayers are still said daily by the nuns for the repose of Rudolf's soul.
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The young crown prince Rudolf during his adolescence
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Official engagement photo of Crown Prince Rudolf and Princess Stéphanie of Belgium (1881)
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Mayerling lodge as it appeared when the crown prince killed himself there (before 1889)
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Crown Prince Rudolf placed in a bed for private viewing by his family at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. His head had to be bandaged in order to cover gunshot wounds. When he later lay-in-state, his skull was reconstructed using wax so that his appearance appeared normal.
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Crown Prince Rudolf (right) lies entombed next to his parents graves in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.
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Statue in memory of the Crown Prince Rudolf in the City Park of Budapest
Impact of Rudolf's death [edit]
Rudolf's death plunged his mother into despair. She wore black or pearl grey, the colours of mourning, for the rest of her life and spent more and more time away from the imperial court in Vienna. Empress Elisabeth was murdered while abroad in Geneva in Switzerland in 1899 by Italian anarchist, Luigi Lucheni.
Next in the line of succession after Rudolf to the Austrian, Bohemian, Croatia and Hungarian thrones was Archduke Karl Ludwig, Franz Joseph's younger brother. Karl Ludwig renounced his succession rights a few days after Rudolf’s death, meaning his oldest son, Archduke Franz Ferdinand became heir presumptive.[2] Franz Ferdinand's assassination in 1914 sparked a chain of events that caused instability within Austria-Hungary and the collapse of the dynasty at the end of World War I in November 1918. Rudolf's father, Emperor Franz Joseph died in November 1916.
In film and theatre [edit]
- Mayerling, is a black and white film dramatization based on the novel by Claude Anet. It is directed by Anatole Litvak and stars Charles Boyer as Crown Prince Rudolf and Danielle Darrieux as Maria Vetsera.
- De Mayerling à Sarajevo (1940 film), director Max Ophüls. The film starts with Rudolf's death.
- The musical Marinka (1945), book by George Marion, Jr., and Karl Farkas, lyrics by George Marion, Jr., music by Emmerich Kalman
- Mayerling (1968 film), starring Omar Sharif as Crown Prince Rudolf, Catherine Deneuve as Mary.
- Japanese Takarazuka Revue's "Utakata no Koi"/"Ephemeral Love" (based on Mayerling) revolves around Rudolph and Marie Vetsera.
- Requiem for a Crown Prince, fourth episode of the British documentary/drama series Fall of Eagles (1974), about the collapse of the Romanov, Habsburg and Hohenzollern dynasties. Directed by James Furman and written by David Turner, the 60-minute episode tracks in detail the events of Wednesday 30 January 1889, at Mayerling as well as the following few days - The discovery of the dead bodies, the breaking of news to Rudolf's family, the desperate attempts to cover up, what really happened - even to the Emperor and Empress - and the secret smuggling of Marie Vetsera's body away from Mayerling before scandal can erupt.
- Miklós Jancsó's 1975 film Vizi Privati, Publiche Virtù (Private Vices, Public Virtues) is a daring reinterpretation of the Mayerling incident, in which the lovers and their friends are murdered by imperial authorities for plotting the Emperor's overthrow and for gross immorality and Mary Vetsera was portrayed as a hermaphrodite, which has no basis in history. The film was denounced by some critics as gratuitously graphic, but the director's point is, how the decay and hypocrisy of the empire was reflected in the prince's desperately aberrant behavior.
- Kenneth MacMillan's 1978 ballet, Mayerling
- Rudolf also appears as a character in the musical Elisabeth (1992) and in Lillie, Grenada TV's dramatisation of the life of Victorian society beauty, Lillie Langtry.
- Japanese manga by Higuri You named "Tenshi no Hitsugi" (Angel's Coffin) (2000). Based on of his life and his mistress Mary Vetsera.
- In The Illusionist (2006), a central character is the fictitious "Crown Prince Leopold", son of the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria. In the film, "Leopold" commits suicide after a failing in a plot to overthrow his father and (apparently) murdering his fiancée. As the antagonist, he is depicted as rational and forward-thinking in contrast to the protagonist who uses demagoguery and the illusion metaphysical powers.
- Crown Prince Rudolph, TV film directed by Robert Dornhelm (2006) in two parts. Historical adviser: Brigitte Hamann. Here, the love story and the conflict between father and son are embedded in the general political situation of the time in Central Europe.
- Frank Wildhorn's new musical Rudolf centers around Crown Prince Rudolf. It premiered at the Operetta Theatre in Budapest in 2006 and ran for three years. The Vienna production opened 26 February 2009 at the Raimund Theater.
- The play Rudolf (2011) by David Logan dramatises the last few weeks of the life of Crown Prince Rudolf and features his relationship with his parents Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth as well as his wife Crown Princess Stephanie, his cousins Marie Larisch and Archduke Johan Salvator and his two loves Mary Vetsera and Mitzi Caspar.
Ancestors [edit]
See also [edit]
- Baroness Mary Vetsera
- Lake Rudolf
- Alma V. Hayne
- Mayerling Incident
- Rudolf Island
- List of heirs to the Austrian throne
Notes [edit]
- ^ a b c "Crown Prince Rudolf (1858-1889)" (museum notes), Natural History Museum of Vienna, 2006, NHM-Wien-Rudolfe.
- ^ "The Crown Prince’s Successor". New York Times. 2 February 1889.
Further reading [edit]
- Barkeley, Richard. The Road to Mayerling: Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria. London: Macmillan, 1958.
- Franzel, Emil. Crown Prince Rudolph and the Mayerling Tragedy: Fact and Fiction. Vienna : V. Herold, 1974.
- Hamann, Brigitte. Kronprinz Rudolf: Ein Leben. Wien: Amalthea, 2005, ISBN 3-85002-540-3.
- Listowel, Judith Márffy-Mantuano Hare, Countess of. A Habsburg Tragedy: Crown Prince Rudolf. London: Ascent Books, 1978.
- Lonyay, Károly. Rudolph: The Tragedy of Mayerling. New York: Scribner, 1949.
- Morton, Frederic. A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889. Penguin 1979
- Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria. Majestät, ich warne Sie... Geheime und private Schriften. Edited by Brigitte Hamann. Wien: Amalthea, 1979, ISBN 3-85002-110-6 (reprinted München: Piper, 1998, ISBN 3-492-20824-X).
- Salvendy, John T. Royal Rebel: A Psychological Portrait of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988.
External links [edit]
Media related to Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria at Wikimedia Commons
- A profile of Marie Vetsera
- Crown Prince Rudolf's Coffin
- IMDB on various Mayerling Films
- Crown Prince Rudolfs death
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Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria
Cadet branch of the House of Lorraine
Born: 21 August 1858 Died: 30 January 1889 |
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| Austro-Hungarian royalty | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Ferdinand Maximilian |
Heir-apparent to the Austrian throne 21 August 1858 – 30 March 1867 |
Succeeded by Establishment of Austria-Hungary |
| New title Austria-Hungary established
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Heir-apparent to the Austrian-Hungarian throne 30 March 1867 – 30 January 1889 |
Succeeded by Karl Ludwig |
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- Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria
- Archdukes of Austria
- House of Habsburg-Lorraine
- Hungarian princes
- Bohemian princes
- Heirs apparent who never acceded
- Knights of the Golden Fleece
- Knights of the Garter
- Austrian Roman Catholics
- Roman Catholic monarchs
- Suicides by firearm in Austria
- Royalty who committed suicide
- Joint suicides
- 1858 births
- 1889 deaths
- 19th-century Austrian people
- People from Laxenburg
- Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary
- Knights of the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation
