Archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austria
Archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austria | |||||
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Princess Otto of Windisch-Graetz | |||||
Born | Franzensburg Castle, Laxenburg, Austria-Hungary | 2 September 1883||||
Died | 16 March 1963 Villa Windisch-Graetz, Hütteldorf, Vienna, Austria | (aged 79)||||
Burial | Hütteldorfer Friedhof | ||||
Spouse | |||||
Issue Detail |
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House | Habsburg-Lorraine | ||||
Father | Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria | ||||
Mother | Princess Stéphanie of Belgium |
Archduchess Elisabeth Marie Henriette Stephanie Gisela of Austria (
Early life
Archduchess Elisabeth, nicknamed 'Erzsi', was born at Schloss Laxenburg on 2 September 1883 to Crown Prince Rudolf and Stéphanie, daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium. She was named after her grandmothers, Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Queen Marie Henriette of Belgium. Erzsi was Franz Joseph's only grandchild through his son.
In 1889, when Erzsi was a little over five years old, her father and
After Rudolf's death, Franz Joseph took over guardianship of Erzsi; by his order, she was forbidden to leave Austria with her mother.[2] At a young age she displayed a strong personality, as well as an opposition to the Viennese court.
Her grandmother, the capricious and image obsessed
In 1900, Stéphanie renounced her title of Crown Princess to marry the Protestant Hungarian count Elemér Lónyay von Nagy-Lónya und Vásáros-Namény (he was eventually made a Prince in 1917 by Emperor Karl I.). Although Emperor Franz Joseph provided his daughter-in-law with a dowry and Lónyay eventually converted to Roman Catholicism,[4] Elisabeth broke off all contact with her mother as she disapproved of the marriage, feeling it a betrayal of her father's memory. Later, following her marriage, Stéphanie retaliated by disinheriting Elisabeth in 1934.[5]
First marriage
Elisabeth was considered a potential bride for several princes in Europe; among them was her cousin Prince Albert, heir presumptive to the throne of Belgium. However, King Leopold II vehemently disapproved of Stéphanie's recent morganatic marriage to Count Elemér Lónyay and thus refused to give Albert his permission. Albert's sister Henriette was horrified at her brother's choice, feeling Elisabeth's background was too unstable for the marriage to be a success.
During a court ball in 1900, Elisabeth met Prince
In order to avoid future succession issues, the Emperor made the marriage conditional on Elisabeth's renouncing her right to succession, although he allowed her to keep her personal title and style, as well as providing her with a generous dowry. While his family was officially listed in the Habsburg list of families which were allowed to make an
The couple married at the Hofburg on 23 January 1902. They had three sons: Prince Franz Joseph, Prince Ernst and Prince Rudolf. Their last child and only daughter, Princess Stephanie, was born at Ploschkowitz.
The marriage, however, was troubled, and led to unwelcome reminders for the Emperor of his son's death, and possible further scandal for the family:
His granddaughter has lately married the Prince Windischgratz; she was the only daughter of the late Crown Prince Rudolf. The marriage was a love match, but when they had been married only about one year they quarrelled on account of an actress at Prague, who was fired at by the Princess. The actress has since died of the wound. The Emperor, in consequence of this event, did not attend the baptism of the son of the Archduchess Princess Windischgratz. The whole affair caused a painful sensation at the Court in Vienna, though it has been hushed up as most events of the kind are.[9]
"The Red Archduchess"
Throughout their marriage both Elisabeth and Otto were open in having affairs, most notably the former's liaison with the young Austrian naval officer Egon Lerch, who would later command the submarine U-12 during World War I.
Only after the death of Franz Joseph in 1916 and the end of the monarchy in 1918 did the couple officially separate. In 1921 Elisabeth joined the Social Democratic Party, where she met Leopold Petznek from Bruck an der Leitha, then president of the audit office, at one of the election meetings. A teacher and a committed Social Democratic politician who became president of the Lower Austrian Landtag (state parliament) after the war, Petznek came from a modest background, but was highly cultivated. He was also married; his wife, with whom he had a son, was institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital in Mauer-Ohling, where she died on 9 June 1935.
The lengthy legal process dragged on, and it was not until March 1924 that Elisabeth was able to obtain a judicial separation. A sensational custody battle for their four children ensued. Originally the court granted Elisabeth custody of the two elder sons, while their younger son and daughter were to live with Otto. She is supposed to have prevented this either by presenting Otto with a house full of armed Socialists when he came to remove them, or else by threatening him with suicide should she have to give them up. In any event, Elisabeth ultimately retained custody of all four children. Elisabeth doted on her children when they were young, but her relationship with them deteriorated as they grew older. Rudolf, in accordance with her socialist views, was reportedly taken out of school and put to work in a factory. Elisabeth and her daughter Stephanie did not have a good relationship; she reportedly stated that she married her first husband based on the fact that her mother did not like him.
Elisabeth moved to the Hütteldorf district of Vienna and bought a villa in 1929, where she lived with Petznek for the next twenty years. She was at his side at Social Democratic marches and meetings, where she was accepted and accorded great respect. Leopold, however, due to his "haughty" character, was not welcome in aristocratic circles. In 1934 her husband and son made a legal motion to place her under a conservatorship on the grounds that she had squandered profits from the sale of the couple's property in numerous donations, made in order to join the Social Democrats. The motion was later dropped. Although divorce became legal in 1938, when Austria became part of Germany and adopted German law after the Anschluss, Elisabeth was not able to divorce her husband until after the end of the war.
Second marriage
In late 1933 Petznek was arrested and imprisoned by the Austrian government until July 1934. In 1944, he was arrested by the
When Vienna was occupied by the Red Army, Elisabeth's villa was commandeered and then ransacked by Soviet soldiers. When Hütteldorf became part of the French occupied zone, the villa was occupied by General
Aftermath
On her deathbed, she ordered her staff to close her villa against her two surviving children and call for a police detail to secure her belongings until the Ministry of Education could remove them. Only her daughter was allowed to see her for a few moments, in the presence of her servants. She had willed some 500 heirlooms, owned by the Habsburg Imperial family, to the Republic of Austria. Over the objections of her first husband, who thought they should go to their children, she wanted all art and books to "be put back in their former places", as she did not believe Imperial property should be sold at auction or come into the possession of foreigners; these pieces are in museums in Vienna today.
She died in Vienna, aged 79. According to her wishes, she was buried in an unmarked grave at the Hütteldorfer Friedhof in Vienna with her second husband, close to the house where she spent her last years.
Since 1995, the villa has been in the possession of the international (Buddhist) community Soka Gakkai International.
Honours
- Austria-Hungary: Dame of the Order of the Starry Cross[10]
Issue
- Franz Joseph (b. 1904 – d. 1981),[1] m. in 1934 Countess Ghislaine d'Arschot Schoonhoven (b. 1912 – d. 1997) and had:
- Stephanie Maria Eva (b. 1939 – d. 2019)
- Guillaume Franz Josef (b. 1950)
- Ernst (b. 1905 – d. 1952),[1] m. in 1927 Helena Skinner (b. 1906 – d. 1982) and in 1947 Baroness Eva von Isbary (b. 1921) and had:
- Otto Ernst Wilhelm (b. 1928)
- Stephanie Maria Magdalena (b. 1933)
- Eleonore Aloysia Elisabeth Maria (b. 1947)
- Elisabeth Maria Eva Margarita (b. 1951)
- Rudolf (b. 1907 – d. 1930),[1] never married and had no issue;
- Stephanie (b. 1909 – d. 2005),[1]m. in 1934 Pierre d'Alcantara de Querrieu (b. 1907 – d. 1944) and in 1945 Karl Axel Björklund (b. 1906 – d. 1986) and had:
- Alvar Etienne d'Alcantara de Querrieu (b. 1935 – d. 2019)
- Bjorn-Axel Björklund (b. 1944 – d. 1995)
Ancestry
Ancestors of Archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austria | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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See also
- Princess María Teresa of Bourbon-Parma, fellow socialist Royal, nicknamed "the Red Princess"
References
- ^ ISBN 978-3-492-24538-8.
- ^ Moore, George Greville, Society recollections in Paris and Vienna, 1879–1904, D. Appleton and Co., 1908, p. 236
- ^ Anonymous, At the Austrian Court: Recollections of a Royal Governess, D. Appleton & Co., 1915, p. 299
- ^ Anonymous, At the Austrian Court: Recollections of a Royal Governess, D. Appleton & Co., 1915, p.299
- ^ Weissensteiner, Friedrich, Elisabeth, Die rote Erzherzogin Elisabeth, the red Archduchess, Vienna, 1982, p.142
- ^ "Relationship Calculator: Genealogics".
- D. Appleton & Co.p. 310.
- ^ Weissensteiner, Friedrich (1982). Elisabeth, Die rote Erzherzogin [Elisabeth, the red Archduchess] (in German). Vienna. p. 142.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Moore, George Greville (1908). Society recollections in Paris and Vienna, 1879–1904. D. Appleton and Co. p. 232.
- ^ Hof- und Staatshandbuch der Österreichisch-Ungarischen Monarchie (1915), Genealogy p. 1