Messages in a Bottle: The Habsburgs

The last two days were mostly spent learning about the Habsburgs and visiting their two magnificent palaces in the city. They are called Hofburg and Schönbrunn; the former was a winter palace and the latter a summer palace. In fact when it was first built Schönbrunn was out in the middle of the country! The city's grown enough that now it's just three subway stops away from Hofburg, at the heart of the city. Anyway, I promised you guys some interesting stuff about the royal family, and you will get it! But before I start talking about all the crazy things the Habsburgs did I should probably give you some background knowledge. I'm going to start with Maria Theresa, the matriarch of the Habsburgs and the only female ruler of the Habsburg empire. In fact she had no brothers or male cousins, and rather than having the royal lineage go on to a distant relative her father spent his entire career as emperor changing the laws so that one of his two daughters would be able to rule. Therefore when he died his eldest daughter Maria Theresa became empress at the age of 19. She was generally well-liked by her people and was very clearly the matriarch of the family; she had 16 children, 13 of which survived infancy, and felt very strongly that as the royal family she and her children were duty-bound to extend and protect their empire, often by diplomacy and marriage. She also greatly loved her husband and after he died calculated exactly how many years, months, weeks, days, and hours they had spent married to each other. And, finally, she was the mother of Marie Antoinette and two future emperors. Her only shortcoming when it comes to political power is that she was not allowed to become Holy Roman Empress because of her sex, a role which would have been practically guaranteed her had she been male, but instead she had her husband given that title. All right, so fast forward four generations to Emperor Franz Joseph, the great-great grandson of Maria Theresa. He was the son of Franz Charles (brother of Emperor Ferdinand I), who was the son of Emperor Franz II, emperor of Austria, who was the son of Emperor Leopold II, who was the son of Maria Theresa. Franz Joseph seemed like a pretty honorable man; he worked 16 hours a day, starting from before 4 in the morning, was extremely dedicated to his wife, and was greatly loved by the people. What's the catch? He started WWI. His wife, Elisabeth of Bavaria, was also very interesting. She is given the endearing nickname of "Sisi." She was an extremely modern woman for her time. She was very educated and besides German also spoke French, English, Hungarian, and ancient and modern Greek. She also wrote poetry. She was considered to be one of the most beautiful women of her time, with ankle-length hair and a 20 inch waist. (Think about it. That's TINY. Don't worry, though, she didn't have any weird surgeries or wear tiny corsets to be that way; she was naturally very thin and relied on exercise and diets to keep her figure.) Unlike most women back then who did not do anything at all athletic, she had a daily exercise regime, went hiking regularly, and was trained as a trick horseback rider; at one point one of the most capable female horseback riders in Europe (or so they say). Other beauty tips, a la Sisi, include raw veal put on the face under a leather mask while sleeping, 2-3 hour hairstyles, zero makeup, and a shampooing of her ankle-length hair using a mixture of cognac and egg yolk, a process which took an entire day. That is some commitment. The most interesting (and sad) part of Sisi's character was her depression. She felt extremely trapped by court life, particularly because she was given the title of empress and was married to Franz Joseph at a mere 16 years of age. She was hardly ever happy with where she was and traveled all over the world. Despite her beauty she greatly disliked the attention that was given to her and often wore all black (especially after her son's suicide) and hid her face beneath veils and parasols. She disliked the marriage practices of royals of the day, saying that young girls were whisked off at the mere age of 15 and told to say a marriage vow that they did not yet understand and would regret for the rest of their lives. Overall, she was very depressed and in her later years often wished for death. Finally in 1898 while in Geneva an Italian anarchist stabbed her with a filing knife. She was only stabbed once and didn't seem to feel the affects at first but soon collapsed. She died within a few minutes. Sisi's story is a pretty sad one, but interesting because like I said before, in a lot of ways she was very modern for her time.

Now that I think about it, my "background knowledge" pretty much took up all of my fun facts. Except one: part of Sisi's diets sometimes was eating meat juice. Pretty weird. But the rumor that it was raw meat juice is incorrect; they boiled it first.

Anyway, unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures inside either of the palaces but I have some from outside and I've got some off the internet. So enjoy!

Schönbrunn