A violent death in Geneva
During the last years of her life, journeys lasting many months took the morbidly and central Europe and several times to Lake Geneva. In spring 1897 she came from the Riviera to Territet ( Caux ), where by chance she encountered the heir to the throne, archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose personal physician, doctor Eisenmenger, saw her and noted symptoms of oedema induced by hunger. In March 1898, and at the end of the summer, she again stayed at Territet. On 9 November, in the company of her trusted lady-in-waiting countess Sztaray and a small retinue, she went to visit baroness Julie Rothsdchild at Pregny, then spent the night in Geneva at the Grand Hotel Beau Rivage, under the usual pseudonym “Countess of Hohenems”.
On 10th September 1898 in Geneva, the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni put an end on Elisabeth’s life. He stabbed a carpenter’s file into her heart as she was on her way to board a ship. For a little while the situation did not look too serious, the stab-wound was so small that no-one noticed it and everybody involved thought that she had just been hit with a bare first. The Empress stood up and went on board the ship. It was only there that she collapsed and died. The whole thing happened only a few hundred metres away from Beau-Rivage hotel where she had spent the night.
Her violent death has one particularly tragic element: Luichi’s real target had been the Prince of Orleons, as a representative of the aristocracy he so hated. However the Prince had cancelled his planned trip to Geneva and in the newspaper it had stated that the Empress of Austria was there, even though she was travelling incognito under the pseudonym on the Countess of Hohenems. As the assailant was not interested in any one person in particular, but in striking back at the aristocracy in general, he chose the Empress to be his victim. You can see the stab-wound next to her heart very good on the dress that Sisi was wearing on the moment of the day she died.
On 11 September the autopsy and embalming were carried out and on 13 September the bishop of Freiburg imparted his blessing. On 15 September the body of the empress arrived at the Hofburg.
The hearse was pulled by eight black horses and was not just used for Empress Elisabeth and Emperor Franz Joseph as well as Crown Prince Rudolf, it was also used to take Zita, at last Empress of Austria, to her final resting place in the Capuchian crypt.
She was laid to rest in the Capuchian Crypt ( Kapuzinergruft ) on the 17th of September , the traditional burial place for members of the Imperial Family. Her coffin lies alongside those her son and her husband.
Sisi was wearing a black lace dress when she was assassinated. The property of her lady-in-waiting, Countess Irma Sztaray, the dress was later transferred tot the “Queen Elisabeth Museum” in Budapest and, after the latter’s destruction, to the Hungarian National Museum.
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