![]() ![]() There were long extra issues about the life and death of Empress Elisabeth, for example this broadly illustrated Österreichische Illustrierte Zeitung. A lot of newspapers were published with a black mourning border, like Der Burggräfler or Meraner Zeitung. Needless to say, the public, especially in Austria and Hungary, was shocked and in deep mourning. A few minutes later, Elisabeth lost consciousness and died. Thinking of a robbery attempt, they went on boarding the ship. But neither the empress nor her lady-in-waiting realised what really happened. ![]() Luigi Lucheni, a poor man full of rage for the upper nobility, ran towards them as they walked by on the promenade and stabbed Elisabeth directly into her heart with a self-made weapon composed of a small sharp file. Together with her lady-in-waiting, the Hungarian Countess Irma Sztáray, she walked the short distance between the hotel and the pier without her entourage, despite warnings of possible assassination attempts. When Elisabeth was sixty years old, she followed an invitation from the Rothschild family to Geneva. She started to travel and wrote melancholic poems, and after the tragic death of her only son Rudolf she disappeared nearly completely from the Austrian court. Elisabeth on the day of her coronation as Queen of Hungary, 8 June 1867Īs a Bavarian princess who enjoyed a happy and unstrained childhood, the extremely strict court life in Vienna was a burden Elisabeth never got used to. Sports and diets were her passion, and she loved to hike and to ride, but was so slim that she suffered from famine oedema. She was obsessively concerned about her beauty and spent several hours a day just to groom her knee-long hair. The tragic event was well covered in the coeval press, as Elisabeth of Austria – also known as Sisi (not “Sissi”, like in the movies) – was a mysterious fairy-tale princess. ![]() On this Saturday, 10 September 1898, Empress Elisabeth was assassinated by Luigi Lucheni, an Italian anarchist. It was a beautiful Indian summer day 117 years ago in Geneva, Switzerland, when Empress Elisabeth of Austria left the Hotel Beau-Rivage, where she spent a night incognito, to hurry to the steamship “Genève”. ![]()
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