“Bleak, desperate excitement” gripped Vienna as word of Rudolf’s death swept through the city’s smoky coffeehouses and aristocratic palaces.1 At the Stock Exchange, people whispered of a hunting accident or murder.2 The early afternoon edition of the Wiener Zeitung confirmed Rudolf’s death at Mayerling, attributing it to a stroke.3 The story had changed by the evening. Prime Minister Taaffe had heartily disliked Rudolf; deep down he might have relished the idea of spreading word that the unstable heir to the throne had killed himself and his mistress. Taaffe, though, owed his first allegiance to the emperor. And so, at three that Wednesday afternoon, he released a terse bulletin: “His Imperial and Royal Highness the Most Serene Crown Prince the Archduke Rudolf died between 7–8 in the morning at his hunting lodge Mayerling of heart failure.”4
A stroke? A heart attack? Few believed the official bulletins, and the shifting explanations only fed conspiracy theories. By noon most of the city’s diplomatic corps had heard whispers of Rudolf’s alleged suicide, and as the hours passed, the rumors only increased. “Breathlessly,” recalled a military cadet, “we caught at every speck of detailed news. The words ‘hunting accident,’ ‘murder,’ and ‘suicide’ were flying about. The news of such an unexpected disaster threw everything out of order.”5
Theaters closed; black-draped photographs of Rudolf went up in shopwindows. An immense crowd soon surged around the Hofburg, sobbing and demanding, “Is it true?” of even the lowliest servants. “Vienna,” reported Le Figaro, “is in a fever.”6 There was, Marie Larisch remembered, “a somber stillness, like a funeral pall, over everything and everybody … a sense of horror and mystery in the very air we breathed.”7
At half past one on the afternoon of January 30, Prime Minister Taaffe met with Baron Krauss. “The Crown Prince was found dead in bed with the Vetsera woman this morning,” Taaffe told the police chief. “They had poisoned themselves.” A commission had already left for Mayerling; the most important thing, Taaffe warned, was to conceal Mary Vetsera’s death at the lodge, get her body away from Mayerling, and bury her in secret.8
Vienna thrived on gossip, and it was not long before word of Helene Vetsera’s anxious visit to the Hofburg that morning leaked out. Rudolf’s affair with Mary Vetsera was no secret, and people quickly assumed that the young baroness might somehow have been involved in his death. By early afternoon journalists jostled along the iron railing ringing the Vetsera Palace, shouting questions at anyone who dared appear.9
Panic erupted in the Hofburg: The truth had to be suppressed. A crown prince who had an affair, aided by the empress’s illegitimate niece, with a young woman of scandalous reputation and died at her side under suspicious circumstances was too humiliatingly distasteful ever to admit. It wasn’t only inquisitive journalists who might uncover and publish unwelcome details: With Helene Vetsera’s reputation, who knew what she might do? Unwilling to take the risk, Franz Josef met with Taaffe: He wanted Helene Vetsera out of Vienna immediately.10 And so that afternoon the emperor dispatched his adjutant Paar to the Vetsera Palace. Still relying on what Hoyos had said, the count told Helene that Mary had poisoned an unsuspecting crown prince and then herself. Helene Vetsera was to leave Vienna that evening and remain out of the country until the emperor decided otherwise.11
Curious disbelieving crowds had also begun gathering outside Mayerling. Inspector Eduard Bayer, ordered by Krauss early that morning to investigate Mary Vetsera’s whereabouts, was refused admittance to the lodge. Sure that something dramatic had taken place behind those shuttered windows, he pulled out his notebook and slyly began questioning servants. The lodge, a few confided, had blazed with light throughout the night—presumably some kind of party had taken place.12
It was a little after noon when the imperial physician Dr. Hermann Widerhofer, accompanied by Bombelles, arrived at Mayerling from Vienna; only then did Widerhofer learn that Rudolf and his mistress were dead. Loschek led him into the corner bedroom, opened the shutters, and drew the curtains back. “I hope I may never see such a sight again,” Widerhofer later told Larisch. “There was blood everywhere. It stained the pillows, it bespattered the walls, and it had flowed in a sluggish stream from the bed to the floor, where it had made a horrible pool.”13
The two corpses were still on the bed. Mary was in full rigor mortis, but Rudolf was only in the beginning stages; he had survived his lover by at least six hours.14 Rudolf wore his usual hunting clothes, but the information about Mary is contradictory. Loschek said that she was “fully dressed,” while Hoyos claimed she wore a black dress.15 Yet the only clothing Mary brought to Mayerling was the olive-green ice-skating ensemble she wore out to the lodge; this was found neatly folded on an armchair in the bedroom.16 There was no black dress: Loschek and Hoyos were probably attempting to conceal the lurid fact that Mary was naked.17
Standing on the left side of the bed, Widerhofer visually examined Rudolf’s corpse: His legs still hung over the side of the bed, his torso upright but bent forward and his head bowed. Blood had gushed from his nose and mouth, congealing on his lap and around the bed in an ugly crimson pool. A single bullet hole, singed around the ragged edges, gaped in his right temple: The projectile had pierced the brain, blowing out the left top and rear of Rudolf’s head. Fragments of bone, hair, and brain tissue had sprayed against the headboard and the wall behind the bed; decimated brain tissue oozed from the shattered skull and covered the sheets.18
Mary’s head, too, hung down, loose hair falling about her neck and shoulders. Open eyes, “protruding in a fixed stare,” gazed vacantly; congealed blood entirely covered her upper torso and had pooled at her waist. A single shot disfigured Mary’s left temple; the area around the wound was singed by gunpowder. The bullet had passed through the brain, exiting above the right ear and splintering the skull; she still held a handkerchief in her left hand.19 Rudolf’s sister Marie Valerie supposedly recalled that Widerhofer found both bullets in the room.20 The bullet which killed Rudolf was supposedly handed over to Franz Josef—certainly a grisly relic to pass on to a grieving father.21
Darkness had fallen by the time the seven-member court commission, led by Dr. Heinrich Slatin, court secretary in the lord marshal’s office, arrived at Mayerling from Vienna late that afternoon.22 They crowded into the bedroom, examining the grisly scene. A crystal tumbler on the bedside table still held brandy; a broken coffee cup and two smashed Champagne glasses apparently lay on the floor.23
Loschek remembered that the gun had been by Rudolf’s side, presumably lying on the bed, something echoed by the official Wiener Zeitung.24 Hoyos, though, wrote that Rudolf still held the revolver in his hand: “It was no longer possible,” he insisted, “to straighten out the right index finger, which was crooked round the trigger.”25 Widerhofer told Larisch that it was still in Rudolf’s hand when he arrived, but other accounts reported that the gun was found on the floor at the side of the bed.26 By the time of the court commission’s arrival, though, someone—presumably Loschek or Widerhofer—had moved the gun; Slatin saw it resting atop a small table or chair to the left of the bed.27
Slatin also noted that a small hand mirror lay on the table next to the gun.28 Later Slatin learned of Rudolf’s interest in the suicide of the Hungarian sportsman István Kégl using a hand mirror to better adjust his aim. This led Slatin to speculate that Rudolf had used the mirror when he shot himself; if so, it—like the gun—must have been moved after his death, given that the bullet to his brain was instantly fatal and left no time for Rudolf to set the mirror down calmly.29
The commission found a number of notes and letters in the bedroom. Rudolf had written four. Near the bed was a note addressed to Loschek: “Dear Loschek, Fetch a priest and have us buried together in a grave at Heiligenkreuz. Please hand over my dear Mary’s valuables to her mother. Thank you for your invariably loyal and devoted services throughout the many years you have served me. See that the letter to my wife reaches her by the shortest route. Rudolf.”30 He had added a postscript: “Greetings to Count Hoyos. The Baroness asks him if he remembers what he said to her about Mayerling during the evening reception of German Ambassador Prince Reuss. Hoyos is not to telegraph Vienna, but send to Heiligenkreuz for a priest to come and pray by our sides.”31 Rudolf had also drafted a telegram to Abbot Heinrich Grünböck, prior of the monastery at Heiligenkreuz, asking him to come and pray over the bodies.32
These notes were obviously written at Mayerling, as was the letter Rudolf left for his mother. The precise wording of the latter remains something of a mystery. Elisabeth later asked her reader and trusted companion, Countess Ida von Ferenczy, to destroy it; what little is definitely known came from the countess and from Marie Valerie.33 In 1934 Egon Caesar Conte Corti published his pivotal biography Elisabeth von Österreich, which appeared in an English translation two years later as Elisabeth, Empress of Austria. Corti consulted Ida von Ferenczy’s papers, which apparently included an extensive transcription of Marie Valerie’s diary.34 This related conversations at the Hofburg, described the scene at the lodge, and gave the wording of Rudolf’s last letters to his mother and to his youngest sister. Subsequent historians, believing that Marie Valerie’s diaries were either lost or inaccessible, have all drawn on these apparent transcriptions, which were partly reproduced in Corti’s book and survived in his personal archive. Yet questions surround the material. Marie Valerie’s actual diary ended up in the Bavarian State Library and was published in 1998. This revealed serious discrepancies between Corti’s version of the diary as recorded by Ferenczy; Marie Valerie’s actual entries related to events at the Hofburg; and the content of Rudolf’s final letters. It is possible that Ferenczy heard the details she recorded from Marie Valerie and mistakenly attributed them to her diary, but the differences suggest that readers employ a degree of caution.
The letter to Empress Elisabeth thus remains a frustrating mystery. Referring to his father, Rudolf apparently wrote, “I know quite well that I am not worthy to be his son.” According to notes left by Ferenczy, the letter ended with a plea that Rudolf be buried at Heiligenkreuz alongside Mary, whom he called “a pure, atoning angel.”35 In her diary Marie Valerie recorded only that her brother made some reference to “the necessity of his death to save his stained honor.”36 Yet Empress Eugénie of France later recalled that Elisabeth told her the letter began with the words “I no longer have any right to live: I have killed.”37
The fourth of Rudolf’s letters likewise bore no date; the content suggests it was likely written in Vienna and brought to the lodge. This was addressed to Count Ladislaus Szögyény-Marich, chief of the Hungarian section of the Imperial Foreign Ministry, and written in Hungarian:
Dear Szögyéni! I must die—it’s the only way to leave this world like a gentleman. Have the goodness to open my desk here in Vienna, in the Turkish Room, where we so often sat together in better times, and deliver the papers as set out in my last will enclosed herewith. With warmest regards and with all good wishes for yourself and for our adored Hungarian fatherland. I am yours ever, Rudolf. Departmental Chief von Szögyény-Marich will please open my writing desk in the Turkish Room in Vienna at once and alone. The following letters to be delivered: 1) Valerie; 2) To my wife; 3) To Baron Hirsch; 4) To Mitzi Caspar. Any money that is found please hand over to Mitzi Caspar—my valet Loschek knows her exact address. All letters from Countess Marie Larisch and the little Vetsera girl to me should be destroyed immediately.38
A fifth letter was supposedly found in a desk drawer. Allegedly written by Rudolf to an unknown recipient and bearing the date January 30, it read: “Time is running short. I conclude: the Emperor will not abdicate in the foreseeable future. He is heading for decline. Eternal waiting with deeply injurious slights and repeated conflicts unbearable! Aspirations with regard to Hungary magnificent but dangerous. Be watchful! No understanding anywhere for crushing matrimonial relations! Young Baroness chooses the same way because of hopelessness of her love for me. Expiation! Rudolf.”39 Yet this letter has never been seen, and serious doubts surround its authenticity.40
Mary, too, had written a number of letters. Until recently their content was known only from Helene Vetsera’s privately published booklet on Mayerling. The originals, it has often been said, were destroyed after her death on Helene Vetsera’s instructions.41 But in the summer of 2015, the letters to her mother, sister, and brother were discovered in a bank vault in Vienna, among other papers related to the Vetsera family that had been mysteriously deposited there in 1926.42
All of Mary’s letters were written at the lodge, on stationery embossed “Jagdschloss [Hunting Lodge] Mayerling,” with a crest of antlers at the top. After her death Rudolf tucked three of these into a single envelope with his crest, and addressed it to Baroness Helene Vetsera. “Dear Mother!” Mary wrote. “Forgive me for what I have done; I could not resist love. In agreement with Him I wish to be buried by his side in the cemetery at Alland. I am happier in death than in life. Your Mary.”43 According to what one of Helene Vetsera’s friends told Hoyos, the letter contained the line, “We are already very curious to know what things are like in the next world.”44 But these lines do not appear in the recently discovered original.
“We are both going happily into the unknown beyond,” Mary wrote to Hanna. “Think of me now and again, and marry only for love. I could not do so, and as I could not resist love, I am going with him. Your Mary. Do not cry for me. I am going to the other side in peace. It is beautiful out here.” It has been said that this letter contained an additional postscript, asking Hanna to put a gardenia on her grave every January 13, and ensure that their mother provided for Mary’s maid, Agnes Jahoda, “so that she does not suffer from my faults,” though these sentences do not appear in the original.45
Another letter to Hanna was supposedly found tucked into Mary’s clothing: “Today he finally confessed to me that I could never be his; he gave his father his word of honor that he will break with me. Everything is over! I go to my death serenely.”46
To her brother Franz, Mary wrote: “Farewell, I shall watch over you from the other world because I love you very much. Your faithful sister, Mary.”47
Mary wrote two further letters. One, to the duke of Braganza, has never been published. It was, said Hoyos, “cheerful” and concerned a feather boa Mary left Braganza, with the request that he hang it over his bed as a reminder of their time together.48 A week after the tragedy, Le Figaro claimed that Rudolf had written the letter to Braganza: “Dear Friend, I must die. I cannot do otherwise. Farewell, Servus, your Rudolf.”49 This seems apocryphal, but Rudolf did add a postscript to Mary’s letter: “Cheers, Wasser!” This was a reference to Braganza’s nickname of Wasser, or Waterboy, derived from his habit of wearing red scarves like the boys who washed Vienna’s cabs.50
A final letter was addressed to Marie Larisch. Undated, it was finally shown to the countess some three weeks after Mary’s death: “Dear Marie, Forgive me all the trouble I have caused. I thank you so much for everything you have done for me. If life becomes hard for you, and I fear it will after what we have done, follow us. It is the best thing you can do. Your Mary.”51
Bodies bathed in blood, skulls shattered, brains spattered against walls, the glinting steel of a gun, aching farewell letters—Mayerling was a tableau of horrors. As the wind whipped against the lodge, Mary’s cold, naked, and bloody body was carried into a storeroom and hastily hidden beneath her clothing. A dozen hours had passed since Rudolf’s death; now Widerhofer carefully wrapped his shattered skull in a length of white cloth, hoping to conceal the terrible wound and prevent more brain tissue from oozing onto the bed. This done, he gently eased the stiffening body back against the crimson-splotched mattress and covered Rudolf with a sheet.52
Gathered around braziers for warmth, a crowd of curious spectators—their faces illuminated by flickering flames—watched as a squad of police surrounded Mayerling that evening. “Silent, lost in thought, all eyes turned to the white walls of the lodge that conceals a terrible mystery,” reported Le Matin.53 Soon snorting horses appeared out of the dark forest, pulling a hearse that quickly disappeared through a lodge gate. Nothing in nearby Baden had been deemed suitable for the crown prince, and so officials had dispatched a bronze casket by rail from Vienna. It was midnight when the hearse reappeared, now carrying Rudolf’s body past the silent crowd and out into the stormy night.54
A special train adorned with black crepe bunting waited to carry the crown prince from Baden station back to Vienna. Soldiers loaded the coffin, and at 12:20 a.m. the train finally steamed out of the station. A small crowd ringed Vienna’s Südbahnhof (South Station) as the train arrived; a guard of honor stood in the chilly early-morning air along the platform, presenting arms as four court valets carried the casket, covered in a black pall embroidered with a gold cross, to a hearse drawn by six horses. At half past one the grim cortege set off for the Hofburg; thousands stood in “great silence,” blanketed in fresh snow, as the hearse made its way down the Ringstrasse. Six mounted lifeguards trotted alongside the hearse; behind walked Dr. Laurenz Mayer, chaplain to the imperial court in the Hofburg; Prince Constantine von Hohenlohe; and Rudolf’s Flügeladjutant Baron Artur Giesl von Gieslingen and his ordinance officer, Major Count Maximilian Orsini und Rosenberg.
The clock in the Schweizerhof was chiming two when the cortege finally reached its destination. A crowd stood in the courtyard; when they caught sight of Rudolf’s coffin, many knelt in the snow. Valets eased the pall-draped casket from the hearse and carried it up the double staircase of honor into the palace.55 Rudolf’s parents were absent: Fearing his wife’s unpredictable emotions, Franz Josef made Elisabeth remain in her rooms.56 In death as in so much of his life Rudolf was alone.