Empress Elisabeth

Crown Prince Rudolf

Elisabeth

Empress Elisabeth (*1837, +1898) developed into a beautiful and extravagant woman whom Franz Joseph worshipped his whole life long.

The emperor and empress had four children; their first child, Sophie, died at the age of two, their surviving daughters Gisela (1856-1932) and Marie Valerie (1868-1924) both married and had several children, from whom there are numerous descendants. Their only son, Crown Prince Rudolf, born in 1858, took his own life together with that of his mistress, the seventeen-year-old Baroness Mary Vetsera, at his hunting lodge at Mayerling in 1889. His marriage to Stephanie of Belgium had produced a daughter, Elisabeth – known as Erzsi –, who after her divorce from Prince Windisch-Graetz joined the Social Democratic Party and married the socialist Leopold Petznek, going down in Austrian history as the 'Red Archduchess'.