Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. In last week's classic, Empress Elizabeth of Austria,
Speaker 1: better known as Cecy, came up as Ludwig, the Second
Speaker 1: of Bavaria's cousin and best friend. So we're gonna go
Speaker 1: back to the classic episode about her today, which talks
Speaker 1: about the Empress herself, why she was so beloved, and
Speaker 1: the gruesome end of her murderer. This episode is from
Speaker 1: November from past hosts Sarah and Deblina, So enjoy. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina choker Boarding.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure everyone who's listened to the podcast for
Speaker 1: a while knows that one of my favorite subjects ever
Speaker 1: is Ludvig, the second of Bavaria. He just to recap
Speaker 1: for you, since I don't talk about him enough. He's
Speaker 1: a Wagner super fan. He built all of those Disney castles,
Speaker 1: which are really more the inspiration for Disney castles than anything,
Speaker 1: and he died a very mysterious death, which is always
Speaker 1: good for a podcast subject at least. But after that
Speaker 1: episode on Ludvig Aired, a lot of listeners started writing
Speaker 1: in to suggest that we cover another member of the
Speaker 1: Vittelsbach family, Lydvig's cousin and his best friend, the Empress
Speaker 1: Elizabeth of Austria, who was better known as Empress Ceci.
Speaker 1: And Cecy's really considered a prime example of Vittelsbach eccentricity,
Speaker 1: but she's also considered, interestingly enough, a prime representative of
Speaker 1: the family. She married into the Habsburgs, And that's pretty
Speaker 1: ironic because Cecy wasn't really a very good Hapsburg at all. No,
Speaker 1: she wasn't. She was headstrong, introverted, and she preferred Corfu
Speaker 1: to Vienna. She believed monarchical government was obsolete, and worst
Speaker 1: of all, for Habsburg matriarch, she was more interested in
Speaker 1: tight laced corsets than having lots of babies. Yet she's
Speaker 1: often considered the favorite Habsburg and even the original people's princess,
Speaker 1: because she was so popular with her subjects. And you'll
Speaker 1: notice a lot of Princess Diana similarities here. At the
Speaker 1: one anniversary of her death, obviously a long time after
Speaker 1: the end of the Austro Hungarian Empire, you could find
Speaker 1: her lovely picture on mugs and kitchy souvenirs, and there's
Speaker 1: even a CCI museum in Vienna. Mattel even made a
Speaker 1: CC barbie for the European market. So we've got to ask,
Speaker 1: what is it about this Habsburg empress and this Vittlesbock
Speaker 1: oddball essentially that continues to fascinate people enough to make
Speaker 1: a barbie out of her. So Cecy's life story is
Speaker 1: often told with this sort of fairy princess kind of spin,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that started because of these movies
Speaker 1: that came out in the nineteen fifties that really presented
Speaker 1: her as the perfect fairy tale young princess who has
Speaker 1: an idyllic childhood, meets her prince, lives happily ever after. Um,
Speaker 1: but if you stop at h teen, that really does
Speaker 1: kind of fit her her actual life story. She was
Speaker 1: born Elizabeth amily Eugenie at a castle on Lake Starnberg
Speaker 1: on Christmas Eve eighteen thirty seven, and she was the
Speaker 1: daughter of the Bavarian Duke Maximilian Joseph and Princess Lodovica,
Speaker 1: who was the vittles Buck daughter of the Bavarian king.
Speaker 1: And she I know that sounds like an illustrious background,
Speaker 1: and it is, but she grew up in a more
Speaker 1: rural setting than you'd expect. She grew up horseback riding,
Speaker 1: hunting with her father, mountain climbing, doing charity work like
Speaker 1: visiting peasants, all again kind of princess e sort of
Speaker 1: sounding things. And she really was a country sort of
Speaker 1: princess with this relaxed, loving family, a lot of siblings,
Speaker 1: and a very close environment she grew up in. But
Speaker 1: she was also really pretty. She was considered to be
Speaker 1: the most beautiful princess in Europe in fact, so it's
Speaker 1: no surprise that in August eighteen fifty three, her twenty
Speaker 1: three year old cousin, Franz Joseph, fell in love with her.
Speaker 1: And now Franz Joseph had become Emperor of Austria at
Speaker 1: age eighteen after his uncle abdicated and his father was
Speaker 1: skipped over to reboot the monarchy with a new youthful leader.
Speaker 1: But in eighteen fifty three assassination attempt made it imperative
Speaker 1: that he get a family going, and so his mother, Sophie,
Speaker 1: decided she wanted to keep things in the family. She
Speaker 1: really wanted to set Franz Joseph up with her sister,
Speaker 1: Ludovika's daughter Helene, and invited the ladies to summer getaway.
Speaker 1: It seemed like it would be a good match. Helene
Speaker 1: was extremely religious, she was dutiful, probably would have made
Speaker 1: a good match for hard working Franz Joseph. But Ludovica
Speaker 1: fatefully brought along her younger daughter too, so Elizabeth was there,
Speaker 1: and Franz Joseph fell for her instead of Helene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they ended up announcing their engagement before they even
Speaker 1: left the little country retreat. And Ceci is supposed to
Speaker 1: have said at least some of the following foreboding gems.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can, I guess, pick whichever one you
Speaker 1: like the best. She is supposed to have said, I
Speaker 1: am so fond of the emperor. If only he were
Speaker 1: not an emperor. That doesn't sound very good. Uh, one
Speaker 1: doesn't turn down an emperor again, kind of scary sounding.
Speaker 1: And oh, if only he were a tailor, which that's
Speaker 1: just kind of funny. That one does sound pretty funny.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we should dig it too lightly, though,
Speaker 1: because cec did, of course, later become one of the
Speaker 1: most famous clients of the legendary couturier Charles Frederick Worth,
Speaker 1: so she did like clothes. Maybe a tailor would have
Speaker 1: been a good match. But whatever she specifically said, it
Speaker 1: seems likely that fifteen year old Cecy knew that she
Speaker 1: was going to have a really hard time being Empress
Speaker 1: of Austria, and trouble really started almost immediately for them.
Speaker 1: Even the couple's honeymoon was cut short since Franz Joseph
Speaker 1: would have to ride back to Vienna every morning to
Speaker 1: deal with the Crimean war, so it was sort of
Speaker 1: a choppy honeymoon, I guess, with him going back and forth.
Speaker 1: Once installed at court, Cecy did her best to perform
Speaker 1: her duties, but she found the formality they're compared to
Speaker 1: very just terrible. At the time, to be in the
Speaker 1: top tier at court, you had to prove unbroken descent
Speaker 1: from sixteen ancestors and the upper nobility, eight paternal and
Speaker 1: eight maternal lapses or marriages into the lesser nobility or
Speaker 1: middle classes were only acceptable if they occurred before the
Speaker 1: great great grandparents generation. So just to show you how
Speaker 1: strict that's just getting into court, you can imagine the
Speaker 1: kind of rules that regulate court once you're really there.
Speaker 1: So CEC did make attempts to loosen up the etiquette
Speaker 1: a little bit, try to modernize it some, but she
Speaker 1: was only met with disapproval from her mother in law,
Speaker 1: the arch Duchess Sophie, who also started to censure her
Speaker 1: daughter in law about her constant horseback riding. She would
Speaker 1: take lots of horseback riding lessons and the fact that
Speaker 1: she'd go out riding without chaperones, which her mother in
Speaker 1: law thought was kind of unseemly but also a little
Speaker 1: bit dangerous. So cc you know, this young teenager starts
Speaker 1: to get pretty stressed out, not just from being away
Speaker 1: from home now, but because of stressful court life in
Speaker 1: Vienna and all this pressure from her mother in law
Speaker 1: about how to act, and eventually she starts to get
Speaker 1: sort of sick. She'd have these panics about going down long,
Speaker 1: steep stairs, and she'd have coughing fits, and she'd suffer
Speaker 1: from what people considered classic vittles Bock melancholy. If you've
Speaker 1: listened to the Ludwig episode, you know all about that.
Speaker 1: And things really only got worse when her first baby
Speaker 1: arrived only ten months after the wedding. She named her
Speaker 1: Sophie after friends Joseph's mother, and that was a name
Speaker 1: that fit because the baby basically belonged to the Archduchess.
Speaker 1: CC was not allowed to play any part in its
Speaker 1: care and education and was truly upset about that. And
Speaker 1: she wasn't involved in the upbringing of her next daughter either, Gazella.
Speaker 1: But she really fell into a new level of depression
Speaker 1: when baby Sophie died in eighteen fifty seven. Um Cec
Speaker 1: stopped eating. She turned to these fasting cures, where she'd
Speaker 1: live on light meals of milk or eggs or what
Speaker 1: sounds really terrible, raw beef juice served as a soup.
Speaker 1: UM just trying to deal with her her depression in
Speaker 1: in this way, and these mood related fast were just
Speaker 1: the beginning for CC. Today, many historians looking back at
Speaker 1: her habits believe that she suffered from anorexia and also
Speaker 1: exercised to excess. She'd ride for hours or in later
Speaker 1: years ago on these long brisk walks. She took up
Speaker 1: fencing and had gymnasiums installed in all of her palaces
Speaker 1: so that she could work out whenever she wanted. If
Speaker 1: her weight crept above fifty kilows or about one and
Speaker 1: ten pounds and she was five eight, so just keep
Speaker 1: that she was really really tall for the time. She'd
Speaker 1: start a hunger cure until she lost the weight, and
Speaker 1: she'd weigh herself as many as three times a day.
Speaker 1: Occasionally she'd eat a lot, but that was rare. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight, for example, she was reported to have
Speaker 1: feasted on a meal of a hen and Italian and salad,
Speaker 1: champagne and cake. In one she bought an English country
Speaker 1: house and had a spiral staircase put in from her
Speaker 1: living room to the kitchen I guess, presumably to sneak
Speaker 1: down down as yeah, And I mean, I just think
Speaker 1: that the fact that these two events are actually of
Speaker 1: note in her dietary history gives us a real sense
Speaker 1: of her her daily meals. I mean hand the salad,
Speaker 1: champagne and cake that doesn't sound like that much. Also
Speaker 1: fast thing, however, wasn't nearly as troubling to her family
Speaker 1: as her habit of tight lacing corsets. And of course
Speaker 1: that was the style for the time, but CC really
Speaker 1: took it beyond the style into really kind of outrageous territory.
Speaker 1: Her goal waste was fifty centimes. That's nineteen inches. Again,
Speaker 1: she is five ft eight, so super tiny, and her
Speaker 1: pregnancies really really bothered her because obviously nineteen inch waste
Speaker 1: is exact opposite of being pregnant. And after a third pregnancy,
Speaker 1: which she really spent trying to hide her figure, which
Speaker 1: she saw as kind of grotesque, she finally had a
Speaker 1: son and heir named Rudolph, which meant that she could
Speaker 1: stop having kids. She had done her her wifely duty
Speaker 1: at last. Yeah, and she didn't just stop having kids,
Speaker 1: she also really stopped trying to be the empress that
Speaker 1: her mother in law had wanted her to be. She'd
Speaker 1: sleep only a few hours and stay up all night
Speaker 1: reading and writing romantic poetry. There's an article in History
Speaker 1: Today by Walter Vandreiken and Ron van Death and they
Speaker 1: call this her secret diary that she would write in.
Speaker 1: She also took up smoking, and she eventually learned English, French, Hungarian,
Speaker 1: and modern Greek. She has a lot of time to study,
Speaker 1: as we're going to talk about in a little bit.
Speaker 1: By eighteen sixty, she also got an easy way out
Speaker 1: of her official role. Suffering from anemia, exhaustion, and a
Speaker 1: lung complaints, Cecy's doctor prescribed a curative trip to Madeira.
Speaker 1: This meant that she could leave Vienna with a good reason,
Speaker 1: so sweet it's an excuse to get out of town.
Speaker 1: And after six months in Madeira she was entirely recovered
Speaker 1: and returned home, only to have all of the symptoms,
Speaker 1: all of the bad health come back after just four
Speaker 1: days in Vienna. So I think we're seeing some psychosomatic
Speaker 1: things going on here um And this really started a
Speaker 1: pattern of leaving for exotic locales like Greece or Venice
Speaker 1: or home or Spotsina going and seeing her family in Bavaria,
Speaker 1: are going to Austrian spas, and then popping back into
Speaker 1: Vienna only occasionally. She was away for almost two entire
Speaker 1: years between eighteen sixty two and eighteen sixty four, and
Speaker 1: on her way back to Vienna an unannounced trip back
Speaker 1: to Vienna, she threw up in her carriage four times.
Speaker 1: So she did not like living in the capital city.
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to assume no, she did, but
Speaker 1: she liked keeping her lifestyle the way it was. In
Speaker 1: order to get fresh dairy products on her rambles, which
Speaker 1: she loved, she'd only drink milk from her own animals.
Speaker 1: She would essentially she'd bring along goats and sheep with her,
Speaker 1: so essentially travel sized cows, you know what I mean. Basically,
Speaker 1: I think her her dairy obsession is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: I read one thing about how at some of her
Speaker 1: estates in Vienna she had full ranges of cow breeds
Speaker 1: to choose from, and the cook at the confectionery would
Speaker 1: actually specify which cow he wanted milk or cream or
Speaker 1: butter from, because they had different flavors and different tastes.
Speaker 1: We have to wonder what Franz Joseph thought of his
Speaker 1: wife being gone all the time. I mean, after all,
Speaker 1: this was a love match, so presumably he had some
Speaker 1: affection for her. Not to mention, she's the consort, so
Speaker 1: she has a lot of official roles um. Even though
Speaker 1: they were frequently separated from the eighteen sixties onward fronts
Speaker 1: Off really did stay deeply in love with his wife.
Speaker 1: They write a lot of letters to each other. He
Speaker 1: would build these palaces for her and her far off
Speaker 1: vacation spots or sometimes close to home, trying to trying
Speaker 1: to urge her to at least be near him in
Speaker 1: Vienna or make it easier for him to visit. He
Speaker 1: built a Pompey inspired Palace and Crafu, and this forest
Speaker 1: villa outside of Vienna to give her a lot of privacy,
Speaker 1: had it decorated with frescoes from Elizabeth's favorite play, which
Speaker 1: was A midsummer Night's Stream and It's funny. She acknowledged
Speaker 1: the Midsummer Night's Dream reference, but she didn't stay there
Speaker 1: very much, and when she did, she'd sleep on a
Speaker 1: mattress on the floor near a window so she could
Speaker 1: see the sky out the window. Franz Joseph wasn't totally
Speaker 1: selfless in this, though he did want a second son
Speaker 1: to secure his line, though Cecy's doctors said that her
Speaker 1: health couldn't permit a fourth pregnancy. Oddly enough, it was
Speaker 1: her growing interest in politics that finally convinced her to
Speaker 1: have a fourth child. As we mentioned, CC wasn't the
Speaker 1: best representative of monarchy, at least from the Habsburg perspective.
Speaker 1: She thought that it was an outdated institution. But she
Speaker 1: was really interested in Hungarian politics, an interest that might
Speaker 1: have been stoked by her possible lover, Count you La
Speaker 1: and Rassi eventually prime Minister of Hungary and uh, we're
Speaker 1: not going to go into that too. Much, because there's
Speaker 1: just not that much information on them except that they
Speaker 1: were good friends and they both obviously had a strong
Speaker 1: interest in Hungary. But in eighteen sixty seven, the Austro
Speaker 1: Hungarian Compromise made Franz Joseph the Emperor of Austria and
Speaker 1: the King of Hungary and by extension, Elizabeth Empress Um
Speaker 1: and it divided the monarchy into two halves, and each
Speaker 1: half had its own constitution in Parliament, but they were
Speaker 1: ruled by one leader and one ministry. And because of
Speaker 1: her interest in Hungary and its culture, she had another
Speaker 1: villa built there. She'd take her kids to Budapest all
Speaker 1: the time. CC became immensely popular in Hungary. She decided
Speaker 1: to eventually repay that love of the people by having
Speaker 1: a patriotic Hungarian baby, so one that would be born
Speaker 1: in Hungary, one that would symbolize the alliance between the
Speaker 1: two countries. So CC and Franz Joseph. When I had
Speaker 1: and had one more child, Marie Valerie, and she was
Speaker 1: born in Budapest April eighteen sixty eight, and this time
Speaker 1: I mean she she was the Hungarian baby, but she
Speaker 1: was also finally Cecy's baby. She got to raise her
Speaker 1: and be in charge of her, her upbringing and her education.
Speaker 1: The death of the Archduchess Sophie in eighteen seventy two
Speaker 1: gave CC even more freedom to do as she pleased.
Speaker 1: She started entering writing competitions as far off as England
Speaker 1: and Ireland, and she'd be seen in public for only
Speaker 1: the biggest events like the World Exhibition in Vienna and
Speaker 1: the wedding of her daughter Gizella or Franz Joseph Silver Jubilee,
Speaker 1: so things like that barely ever in Vienna right when
Speaker 1: she travel she'd go incognito. So it's probably strange, then,
Speaker 1: for someone who's so interested in being unknown to simultaneously
Speaker 1: be so interested in her looks. We've already talked about
Speaker 1: CC's extreme dieting and her exercising, but she's also associated
Speaker 1: with something that's become known as her cult of beauty.
Speaker 1: She almost idolized her own beauty, or at least became
Speaker 1: a slave to it, trying to live up to her
Speaker 1: own reputation. She'd be sewn into those figure hugging clothes
Speaker 1: that we talked about to show off her tiny waist.
Speaker 1: She'd take icy cold showers in the morning and warm
Speaker 1: olive oil baths every evening, and she'd wear night masks
Speaker 1: of raw veal and strawberries for her skin, which again
Speaker 1: sounds kind of I don't strawberry sounds nice, raw veal
Speaker 1: not so much. She also had a lot of hair.
Speaker 1: It was dark blonde when she was younger, chestnut colored
Speaker 1: when she was older, and it was not only really long,
Speaker 1: but really thick. If you look at any portraits of her,
Speaker 1: pictures of her, you'll see her with this particular her
Speaker 1: hairstyle kind of curled in the front and then just
Speaker 1: piles and piles and piles of braids and all of
Speaker 1: that hair took three hours of attention every single day.
Speaker 1: This is when she would study languages and philosophy and
Speaker 1: literature and history. And her hairdresser, who would come on
Speaker 1: all of those travels, just like the goats and the sheep,
Speaker 1: would wash her hair in what we're called essences every
Speaker 1: three weeks, and that day was just totally set aside
Speaker 1: for hair care, so she really could say, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: can't go out and washing my hair. Um. For special occasions,
Speaker 1: she would really adorn herself and try to draw even
Speaker 1: more attention to her beautiful hair. She'd wear this set
Speaker 1: of seven specially made diamond and pearl stars, and um
Speaker 1: those kind of became associated with Elizabeth to CC's stars.
Speaker 1: They're sometimes called. She'd give them as tokens to family
Speaker 1: members and ladies in waiting, kind of like a a
Speaker 1: calling card almost, and even her minimal use of makeup
Speaker 1: played into her own cult of beauty. She wanted to
Speaker 1: differentiate herself, her own natural looks, that is, from the
Speaker 1: painted ladies that she saw around her. From the eighteen
Speaker 1: sixties onwards, she started to collect photos in Venice. In
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two she started an album specifically about beauties
Speaker 1: and broke it up into different collections like Beauties from
Speaker 1: the East, historical beauties, dancers and skimpy outfits. Things like that.
Speaker 1: It's hard to think of c. C as entirely vain,
Speaker 1: though she took a strong interest in the poor and
Speaker 1: in particular the mentally ill, just like her cousin Ludwig
Speaker 1: the Second. In eighteen seventy one, her husband actually asked
Speaker 1: her what she'd like for her Saints Day, and she
Speaker 1: said she wanted a tiger cub and a medallion, but
Speaker 1: quote a fully equipped lunatic asylum would please me. Most. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, just sounding so strange, and it's important to remember,
Speaker 1: you know, when we when we talk about all these
Speaker 1: sort of eccentric things that she does and her own
Speaker 1: cult of beauty, just how popular she really was. I mean,
Speaker 1: people loved her. We talked a little bit about how
Speaker 1: much the Hungarians loved her because she was interested in
Speaker 1: their culture and their cause. But the Austrians really came
Speaker 1: around to or two when she took care of the
Speaker 1: wounded during or after a battle, and people just really
Speaker 1: gravitated toward her. But CC's life of eccentric rambling took
Speaker 1: a dark turn when in January, her son, Crown Prince
Speaker 1: Rudolph killed himself in this bizarre murder suicide with his
Speaker 1: seventeen year old mistress. And we got to talk about
Speaker 1: Rudolph for just a minute here. He was also kind
Speaker 1: of an odd ball. He believed that his father's views
Speaker 1: were really old fashioned, and like his mother Cecy, he
Speaker 1: wanted a looser court, kind of a more liberal government.
Speaker 1: And he actually went as far as to write articles
Speaker 1: for a leading liberal newspaper under a pseudonym, which sounds
Speaker 1: pretty I mean, I wonder how he got that role
Speaker 1: if he admitted who he was and then said, use
Speaker 1: my name. But um, that's a pretty radical thing for
Speaker 1: the crown prince to be doing. And he also socialized
Speaker 1: with people. We we talked about how strict that court
Speaker 1: etiquette was. He socialized with people who were outside of
Speaker 1: his class. He had a lot of Jewish intellectual friends,
Speaker 1: and all of this, instead of making him kind of
Speaker 1: the New Guard maybe as he was hoping, really made
Speaker 1: him an outcast with his father and with the aristocracy
Speaker 1: as a whole. And as a result, he was allowed
Speaker 1: no part in government and married off to a Belgian
Speaker 1: princess and clearly deeply unhappy and disturbed, and so he
Speaker 1: entered into a suicidal pact with the teenage Baroness Marie Vetzra.
Speaker 1: And it's possible he first asked one of his other
Speaker 1: mistresses to take part in the pact but was refused. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: just don't get any ideas that they were some kind
Speaker 1: of star cross lovers. It seems like he really just
Speaker 1: wanted to just the one who agreed. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: the resulting deaths were called Marling incident, and they were
Speaker 1: a huge scandal, and the emperor tried to cover up
Speaker 1: all the facts of the case, and there was some
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory surrounding us, right, yeah, I mean the main
Speaker 1: one is that Rudolf didn't first kill his lover and
Speaker 1: then commit suicide, but was in fact murdered, and the
Speaker 1: young baroness was murdered as well to make it look
Speaker 1: like it was a murder suicide. That's the main theory,
Speaker 1: but there are lots of them. So regardless of how
Speaker 1: it happened, c c was truly devastated by her son's death.
Speaker 1: She took to wearing mourning for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: And just to give you some context to Rudolf's death
Speaker 1: wasn't just one unhappy event in her life. It came
Speaker 1: right in the middle of a string of family tragedies.
Speaker 1: And the first you're familiar with because we talked about
Speaker 1: it pretty recently in our Emperor Maximilian of Mexico episode.
Speaker 1: He was, of course her brother in law and was
Speaker 1: executed in eighteen sixty seven. After that, his wife, Carlo Cha,
Speaker 1: was driven mad. Another one we've talked about before in
Speaker 1: six CC's beloved cousin Ludwig the Second drown or died
Speaker 1: under some kind of mysterious circumstances then in eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: another brother in law, Carl Ludwig, died from a parasite
Speaker 1: after drinking from the river Jordan's. And then the last
Speaker 1: blow really came in eighteen seven when CC's sister Sophie,
Speaker 1: who was once a fiance of Ludvig's, died in a
Speaker 1: fire at um a Paris charity bazaar. So even before
Speaker 1: some of those later events happened, even after the death
Speaker 1: of Rudolph, Cecy was afraid that she was going to
Speaker 1: go crazy from all of the grief in her life,
Speaker 1: go mad, and according to that History Today article we mentioned,
Speaker 1: she stopped writing poetry. She kind of encouraged her husband
Speaker 1: in his relationship with the actress Katerina Schrot and uh
Speaker 1: she went on to become his main companion. Really for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. Ceci kept on traveling to
Speaker 1: going to all of those spots far away near visiting Bavaria,
Speaker 1: just constantly on the move. As we mentioned, Cecy would
Speaker 1: usually go incognito on these travels, staying under an assumed name.
Speaker 1: But in while she was on a trip to Geneva
Speaker 1: to visit the Baroness Julie Rothschild, the hotel owner recognized her,
Speaker 1: and so news that she was in town wound up
Speaker 1: in the paper. This was perfect timing for a twenty
Speaker 1: year old anarchist named Luigi Luccini who was looking to
Speaker 1: kill someone important. His original target had been Prince Henri
Speaker 1: di or Leone, who was supposed to visit Geneva, but
Speaker 1: the prince never showed up, and so when Luccini saw
Speaker 1: the Austro Hungarian empress was in town, he decided she'd
Speaker 1: make a suitable replacement, especially since she wore all black
Speaker 1: and would be easy to spot. So on September tim
Speaker 1: he approached Cecy and her lady in waiting on the
Speaker 1: street and stabbed her with a homemade file, And initially
Speaker 1: cc didn't even realized that she had been stabbed because
Speaker 1: she wore such thick corset, she thought she'd just been
Speaker 1: pushed to the ground, so she got up. She quickly
Speaker 1: walked to the ship on Lake Geneva that she had
Speaker 1: been bound for, and at that point she collapsed and
Speaker 1: died soon after. The file turned out to have barely
Speaker 1: struck her heart. So the assassin was easily arrested, taken in,
Speaker 1: and he explained how he had wanted to kill somebody
Speaker 1: powerful and said quote, only he who works may eat,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be a really peculiar statement in
Speaker 1: light of CC's eating disorders. But he also admitted that
Speaker 1: he really didn't know who she was. He just knew
Speaker 1: that she was somebody important. He had no knowledge of
Speaker 1: all of her charitable deeds, her trying to help mentally
Speaker 1: ill people and um the poor, all the things that
Speaker 1: made her such a popular figure with a lot of Europe.
Speaker 1: And Luccini wanted to be executed as a martyr for
Speaker 1: his crime. He asked to be killed old, but he
Speaker 1: really should have picked the place where he committed his
Speaker 1: murder a little better, because the death penalty had by
Speaker 1: that point been outlawed in Switzerland, so instead he got
Speaker 1: life in prison, and he hanged himself with a belt
Speaker 1: um many years later in nineteen ten, supposedly after his
Speaker 1: memoirs had been confiscated, and of course Franz Joseph was
Speaker 1: deeply upset by what had happened. When he heard that
Speaker 1: Ceci had been killed, he's supposed to have said, quote,
Speaker 1: you have no idea how much I loved this woman,
Speaker 1: And in light of all his family tragedy, he said,
Speaker 1: quote nothing has been spared me in this world. So
Speaker 1: a sad end to the love story of Phronsie and
Speaker 1: Cecy here. But there's a very mccab twist to this
Speaker 1: story too, and he knew to Bolina is gonna like
Speaker 1: it because there is a preserved head waiting at the
Speaker 1: end of this podcast for all of us. So for
Speaker 1: eighty seven years after Elizabeth's death, Geneva's morgue contained the
Speaker 1: decapitated head of assassin Luigi Luccini, and in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the head, which was preserved in formaldehyde, was sent to Austria.
Speaker 1: And there's an a New York Times article from the
Speaker 1: eighties um that quotes a doctor old Rich Freik, who
Speaker 1: was the chief of Geneva's Institute of Legal Medicine. He said,
Speaker 1: quote personally, I am happy we are rid of it.
Speaker 1: You could keep it for two hundred or three hundred
Speaker 1: years like that. I had wanted to dispose of it,
Speaker 1: perhaps make a mass casting of the face, but the
Speaker 1: Austrians wanted it, perhaps to see a piece of history
Speaker 1: of the Austro Hungarian Empire. Gets weirder than that, though,
Speaker 1: because just a few years after the swap, it seemed
Speaker 1: like everybody had forgotten how the head got from Geneva
Speaker 1: to Austria in the first place. There's an article I
Speaker 1: found from the Lancet in the late nineties, and the
Speaker 1: head was by that point at the Museum of Pathology,
Speaker 1: and it was just a total puzzle to everyone how
Speaker 1: it had gotten there. Um. Carl Hlobar, who is the
Speaker 1: chairman of the Institute for the History of Medicine, figured, quote,
Speaker 1: the Swiss probably thought, my god, what do we do
Speaker 1: with this? We'll give it to Austria. So I like that. Um.
Speaker 1: They kind of assumed that the Swiss didn't want the
Speaker 1: head and figured Austria would, And really Austria did want
Speaker 1: the head. Correct. And I would just like to point
Speaker 1: out that I'm not the only one in the studio
Speaker 1: who's interested in his I know, I think you started.
Speaker 1: You started the trend then, So unlike Ned Kelly's head
Speaker 1: that we discussed a few episodes ago, no one wanted
Speaker 1: this creepy experimented on head of Luccini. The Pathology Museum
Speaker 1: director at the time or curator at the time even
Speaker 1: said that the head was quote of no scientific worth,
Speaker 1: and they've been trying to get permission to have it
Speaker 1: interred for years, and that finally happened in two thousands.
Speaker 1: And you know why it happened. Why because people kept
Speaker 1: on coming to the museum because Emperor CC is still
Speaker 1: so popular. People would come, like on the day she
Speaker 1: was assassinated and try to see the head. And one
Speaker 1: of the stipulations of the HUD being transferred to Austria
Speaker 1: was that it would not be on public view because
Speaker 1: that's just too gross and creepy. It's it's I mean,
Speaker 1: a head and formaldehyde come on with that. In the
Speaker 1: stipulation that they I mean, this is gross and creepy
Speaker 1: and you can't do it. Those are That's my interpretation
Speaker 1: of the transfer. So I think closing with that head
Speaker 1: pretty much wraps up the story of um CC's murderers death.
Speaker 1: But um I mean I wanted to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about who she was and the things that
Speaker 1: made her so unusual for her time. How strange it
Speaker 1: is that those things are are common now or or
Speaker 1: not unusual at all. The extreme dieting, the exercising, the
Speaker 1: being obsessed with her hair and aging and losing her beauty,
Speaker 1: all things that just a few decades later really wouldn't
Speaker 1: make her stand out at all, wouldn't have been a
Speaker 1: big deal. And yeah, that's a good point, she once
Speaker 1: wrote to her daughter Marie Valerie quote, marriage is a
Speaker 1: nonsensical institution. One is sold off as a fifteen year
Speaker 1: old child, taking an oath that one does not understand,
Speaker 1: cannot revoke, and then regrets for thirty years or more.
Speaker 1: I just thought that was an interesting quote to end on, because,
Speaker 1: you know, after we told this whole story about the
Speaker 1: love story with Fronz Joseph, it gives you a different
Speaker 1: idea of how she felt when she got married. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us on this Saturday. If
Speaker 1: you have heard an email address or a Facebook you
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