COUNT LONYAY HAD HIS SAY

I failed to learn what year this book by Count Carl Lonyay was written but this is a first edition, the publisher, Scribner, sold it for $5. My guess is the early 1950's.

Rather than a lack of interest in a romantic tragedy that occurred in 1889, the question of what happened at Meyering carries on perhaps because it concerns royalty and changed history. Vintage copies of the book, some with a cover showing Rudolph in his coffin, his blown off head wrapped in white gauze (what! No wig?), are selling for $20 or more.

I was unable to get a copy to read this one cover to cover, so I won't review it. I was able to find a promotion review in Google Books which must've been in a Life Magazine. So to paraphrase, the Hungarian Count Carl Lonyay gets his credentials because he says his uncle married Prince Rudolph's widow, Princess Stephanie of Belgium! He wrote that the Prince wasn't at all in love with Baroness Mary Vetsera. He says the Prince even spent the night before the murder suicide with another woman. Though she was not yet 18 when Rudolph murdered her, the author paints Mary as a flirt and seductress who'd already had many affairs. I hope that doesn't imply she deserved to die because she wasn't a virgin.

It's not easy to know if the Count was telling the truth or repeating what his uncle married to Stephanie had to say. Was there a wish to blame Mary?

C 2019
 

SECRET LETTERS THAT GAVE RISE TO THE SUICIDE EXPLANATION OF MARY VETSERA

Were letters written by Mary Vetsera found in a forgotten bank security box? According to an article in The Journal ie, August 2, 2015, 126 year old letters written by the 17 year old Baroness were found including one to her mother, a suicide note, asking forgiveness.

"Please forgive me for what I've done, I could not resist love."

The Austrian National Library clearly accepted that these letters are authentic. They day the letters had actually been in their archives since 1926. The find contained photos of her family.

Mary wrote that she wanted to be buried next to the 30 year old Prince as if that was his wish.

I personally think that there may have been various schemes involved to change the story, including ones that the young Baroness' family cooperated with. A shocking murder-suicide of aristocratic and royal persons that was world news had to be embarrassing as well as deeply upsetting. 

One of the reasons I think this way is that Mary was never buried next to Prince Rudolf. She was buried and buried again.

According to one of the YouTube videos I watched while researching for this month's posts reported that Mary not only buried and reburied and reburied again but was targeted by grave robbers.

Mary Vetsera Often Buried But Never Dead by ferryfilmstudio, states this:

In 1889, upon the bloody scene's discovery, Mary was taken away from the Meyering hunting castle and given a crude burial in a wooden box. That same year her family built her a crypt at the Heiligenkteuz cemetery with a stained glass image of her praying. In 1945 at the end of WWII, Russian soldiers broke in and the vandalizing continued. In 1959 she was put into a new tin coffin. There was another break in 32 years later. The tomb was raided in 1991. In 1992 again. In 1993 another newer coffin was used and the grave secured by filling it in with earth. Her old tin coffin was given to be put on display elsewhere. 

Such morbid curiosity!

MEYERLING BALLET

 

THE CROWN PRINCE : MISTRESS MANIFESTO FILM REVIEW

In a retelling of the the vivid story of Mary Vetsera and Crown Prince Rudolf, this film attempts to take us back in time to a period when stability in Europe was in question and Crown Prince Rudolf was a reluctant heir, frankly not suited for the role. The Prince seemed desperate for a life of irresponsibility.

A bad relationship with his father and his parents own unhappy arranged marriage as no good example, and with few Royal women of interest, the Prince pursued the party. He went to houses of prostitution and got VD which wasn't curable. He used morphine, though a doctor supplied it. The family were devout Catholics so he upset them and the bishops by hanging out with the Masons and mixing with commoners. He had a secret romance with a Jewish woman, who didn't know he was a Prince. But, like the Buddha, he also discovered the suffering, the poverty, the orphans in the streets, the fact that there were Greek Catholics and people of other religions in the Empire he was born to rule. He was no longer protected from the realities of the Empire. 

He's a progressive, interested in the new technology of electricity. He had new ideas that were not welcome. When he wasn't in Vienna, he's in Prague. Oddly, using a Jewish pen name, he writes articles that are published in a Jewish newspaper. 

After rejecting five possible matches, he could resist no longer and married Stephanie of Belgium who hadn't even had her period. Stephanie soon grew into a woman who had political opinions and was into her role as an upcoming emperor's wife. He thought of her as just one more society girl. The couple were miserable, especially when he gave her VD that resulted in infertility and there was no longer a reason for their marriage. 

His mother lived a life separate from his father, who had a mistress. She even lived in Godollo, a town in Hungary - part of the Austrian Empire but far away. So the Prince accepted an assignment in the military, as it was hoped this responsibility would give him self discipline and confidence. His father told him to fix his marriage. He wanted an annulment. The couple followed his parent's example and he lived a bachelor's life separate life from his wife.

Despite all this, there were women competing for the Prince and mothers pushing their daughters to become his mistress. The question was and is, did Mary Vetsera really want to be with him or has her life story been rewritten to explain how or why a beautiful young women, who could have had a had good marriage among the nobility, ended up in a suicide pact.

Her love for the Crown Prince may have been played up, so that she appears to have been desperately in love, possessed, enthralled and - utterly hopelessly fatally romantic. The story might have also been invented, I speculate, to get a pushy mother out of trouble or save her reputation. (For, from other sources, I know it appears there was a cover up that her family cooperated with that resulted in her reburial.) Was Mary a murder victim? Was the Prince not just a rebel but mentally ill.

The story goes that Mary, even as a girl, had a crush on him, and her mother ripped up the pictures of him that Mary kept of her idol, when he married to discourage her.

Perhaps there was another woman, a relative, who served as an intermediary between Mary and Rudolf? For in this version of what happened at Meyering, called a hunting lodge but one of his residences and the scene of wild parties, the Prince, who was now shooting up morphine and a very ill addict, not to mention possibly becoming deranged from the complications of VD, only planned to kill himself, but young Mary went to him, desiring to be with her Prince for eternity, the only way they could be together.

Mitzi, the common and more pragmatic Mistress is shown as the only person to be concerned about him to reach out for help. She was rebuffed.

The production appears to have come out of Austria or Germany and is rich with details. Perhaps it's my research that has lead me to more speculation.

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MIZZI KASPER - THE SENSIBLE ONE - MISTRESS OF CROWN PRINCE RUDOLF and THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE

MIZZI KASPER - Please note that I've seen her name spelled Kaspar and Casper as well. Some say she had Jewish heritage.  Someone else pointed out to me that perhaps she was Armenian due to the common Armenian surname Kasperian - or even Russian.  Mizzi was probably a nickname. Information on Mizzi and her relationship with the Crown Prince Rudolf here comes from the book The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke by Timothy Snyder, which was published in 2008.  The book is focused on Wilhelm Von Habsburg who was said to be homosexual. It's available on Google Books.

THE RED PRINCE : The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke

Notes from Page 36:  Crown Prince Rudolf's childhood education as ordered by his father that he was to replace someday as the King of Austria-Hungary was brutal.  He was not allowed to state his opinions.  His father had come into power at eighteen in 1888 but at thirty Crown Prince Rudolf was still frustrated and waiting.* 

He wanted to annul his marriage with Princess Stephanie of Belgium.  (They had one child, a daughter, and so he had no heir.) The Pope sent back his request - to his father. The Crown Prince had given his wife a venereal disease. He was said to use alcohol, morphine, and women.  The venereal disease was said to be responsible for his insanity.

Of his many mistresses, there was MARY VESTERA, who was not his favorite. Probably the love of his life was MIZZI KASPER.  Rudolf had given Mizzi a house in Vienna where she lived and where a mutual friend ran a high class bordello.

Mizzi laughed at Rudolf when he spoke of his desire to perform a double suicide and reported this to the police in hopes of stopping him.  "Mary Vetsera, on the other hand, was a femme fatale in the truest sense."

After the death of Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889, his father decided that his son Archduke Karl Ludwig, who he had sired by the second of his three wives, was the best choice.  He had tuberculosis.  He married his first cousin, Maria Theresa. (She became Queen Maria Theresa.)

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MARY VETSERA and THE MEET UP WITH CROWN PRINCE RUDOLF - AN AMBITIOUS MOTHER - A WORRIED BROTHER

This is a reprint.  The book was published in 1914 in Austria.  The so called Meyerling "Incident" happened in 1881, when Mary Vetsera was just seventeen years old.  Gribble's book focuses on the situation with Mary and Mizzi in Chapter XX. I like that the book was published way back, closer to that time in history.

My notes from The Life Of The Emperor Francis Joseph

The author if this book, Frances Henry Gribble, hints that MARY VETSERA had turned down a marriage prospect to Miquel of Braganza.  Her personality and character? "Infatuated and determined to have Rudolf."  Supposedly she stuck herself to him, groupie-like, and he said she was a "leech" who couldn't be shaken off.  What evidence of this is there? She wrote him a letter asking him to meet her.  She asked her mother to be sent to him.  She may have already lost her virginity.  It sounds forward for a 19th century woman but we have learned that there were many independently minded women even in times where women were denied so much.

It was suggested that Mary had been motivated by some form of political intrigue such as a conspiracy with Rudolf against his father; that Hungary might separate from the Austrian empire and that he, Rudolf, become King of Hungary.  That or perhaps some other plot. It says Mary, with her mother's approval, went off to Meyerling to be with the Crown Prince for a couple days. This suggests that her mother was encouraging her daughter towards this relationship.  Maybe she could become Queen?  The initial meeting of the doomed lovers was arranged by Countess Marie Larisch who continued to be a go-between.  Mary Vetsera did have a protective brother, Alexander Baltazzi, who went out looking for her.  This suggests to me that he loved her more or was more concerned about family reputation, knowing Crown Prince Rudolf was a despoiler.

Meyerling was not a rugged isolated dwelling in hunt county.  I t was not far from the capital, Vienna, and was a place where the Crown Prince and his friends had fun.  They drank and had affairs.  Crown Prince Rudolf's wife, Stephanie of Belgium, knew and may have followed him or had him followed.  Perhaps Crown Prince Rudolf wanted a divorce? Her father, King Leopold II had also had affairs and a mistress or two. Stephanie wasn't going to get any sympathy there.

... to be continued

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THE OBSESSED MARY BARONESS OF VETSERA - CROWN PRINCE RUDOLF - AND THE SELF PRESERVING "MIZZI" KASPER

MARY BARONESS OF VETSERA

March 19, 1871 - January 30 1889

Photo of MARY VETSERA from Wikimedia Commons

Crown Prince Rudolf was a rogue.  A man who was in line to be King of the Austria and Hungarian Empire, but whose lust for women was more important than any sense of integrity in his liaisons or duty.  He was said to have had about thirty illegitimate children who he did not recognize or support.  His accounting of conquests included keeping track of those he had deflowered. Young women who succumbed to him might have felt they could not say no to such an important person of high rank. Any hope of real romance was extinguished when they had been had and never heard from him again. Was he tired of women who threw themselves at him? Was he even capable of love?

An arranged and incompatible marriage to Princess Stephanie of Belgium, who was only fifteen at the time, but whose marriage was probably not consummated until she had completed her education and was seventeen, produced one daughter. He, like all those who would one day be King, needed a legitimate son to succeed him. He had refused a number of arranged marriages already. The marriage with the Princess hadn't changed him any and bringing a venereal disease home to her surely ended any hope of love or another child there. 

And yet, what really happened, if you've never heard this mystery story before, may be  confusion or surprising.  At the end of his life - by suicide or double suicide or murder and suicide - Crown Prince Rudolf is said to have had two mistresses; Mary and Mizzi.  One a virginal teenager who left letters asking forgiveness as she followed her lover to  her own death at seventeen and one a prostitute who he first asked to be his partner in death and who he had provided well for. The self preserving Mizzi said no thank you and went to the police hoping someone would warn others that he was serious. She was discredited because of her sex and class. The teenage Mary, Baroness of Vetsera, met with him at the Mayerling Hunting Castle, and there met her death as it seems she expected to do. She said she was too obsessed with him to have saved herself? Had she really written that letter suggesting she willingly went to her death as an act of love or was it all part of a cover up by the Royal Family or their advocates?  Was she really a femme fatale?

While researching Mary and Mizzi, I thought of another of our Mistresses of the Month here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, Adolph Hitler's long time Mistress whom he married in the final moments before their suicide pact, Eva Braun. 

There was tremendous secrecy about this tragedy which is still made small by being called an "incident."  The Crown Prince lay in his casket with his head wrapped in a bandage. Mary Vestera was buried and reburied and reburied. 

MARY VETSERA was born MARIE ALEXANDRINE FREIIN VON VETSERA. While a member of the aristocracy she wasn't royal enough to actually contemplate marriage to the Crown Prince.  MIZZI KASPER was a commoner who had even less a chance. The death of Crown Prince Rudolf and without any male heirs to the Kingdom of Austrian-Hungary shifted history as the Kingship was to go to another line of the family. 

Prime reference for this months posts are books include Mary Vestera - which can be linked to at www.timetravel-vienna and The Life of Emperor Francis Joseph by Francis Henry Gribble on Google Books.  I'll share my reading notes with you.

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Note that Eva Braun as Adolph Hitler's Mistress can be found in the archives here in as Mistress of the Month, June of 2010 and there are other references to her. You can use her name to search within this blog.

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