The 19th century’s Empress Elisabeth of Austria is ubiquitous in Vienna: on chocolate boxes, on bottles of rosé wine, on posters around the city. The Greek antiques that she collected are on display at Hermesvilla palace, on the outskirts of the city; her hearse is at Schönbrunn Palace, the Hapsburg family’s former summer residence; and her gym equipment is on display at the Hofburg, which was the monarchy’s central Vienna home
These traces paint an enticing, yet incomplete, picture of an empress who receded from public life not long after entering it, and spent most of her time travelling the world. She had a tattoo on her shoulder, drank wine with breakfast, and exercised two to three times a day on wall bars and rings in her rooms. These eccentricities, combined with her refusal to have her picture taken after her early 30s, fuelled the air of mystery that surrounded her.
Today, nearly 125 years after the then 60-year-old Elisabeth was assassinated, two new productions — a new Netflix series called The Empress and a film called Corsage, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May and will hit American cinemas on 23rd December — offer their own ideas.
“Growing up in Austria, she was the main tourist magnet, aside from Mozart,” said Marie Kreutzer, who wrote and directed Corsage. Nevertheless, she added, Elisabeth, who was married to Emperor Franz Josef I, remains largely a mystery. “Her image is one you can reimagine and reinterpret and fill with your own imagination, because we have a lot of stories about her, but you don’t know if they’re true,” explained Kreutzer.
The moody, intellectual and beautyobsessed empress has had many revivals.
During her lifetime, Elisabeth, who also went by the nickname Sisi, travelled constantly, often visiting Hungary, Greece and England, and was rarely seen by the Viennese public. In private, she wrote poetry, rode horses and hunted, hiked in the high Alps, read Shakespeare, studied classical and modern Greek, took warm baths in olive oil and wore leather masks filled with raw veal as part of her skincare routine.
“She was such a recluse,” said Wien Museum curator Michaela Lindinger, who has spent more than two decades studying Elisabeth and authored the book My Heart Is Made of Stone: The Dark Side of the Empress Elisabeth, which inspired the film Corsage. “People didn’t see her, and she didn’t want to be seen,” said Lindinger.
She was nevertheless empress of Austria, and later also queen of Hungary, so she was widely discussed. “No matter how much she fled the attention and scrutiny and the court, she was always pursued,” said Allison Pataki, who has authored two historical novels about Elisabeth – The Accidental Empress and Sisi: Empress on Her Own. “She was thrust into the spotlight as this young girl who was chosen by the emperor, in large part because of her physical beauty.”
After Elisabeth was killed by an anarchist in Switzerland, in 1898, she became an object of fascination throughout the Hapsburg Empire, and her image appeared on commemorative coins and in memorial pictures. In the 1920s, a series of novels about her were published, focusing on her love life.
Today, nearly 125 years after the then 60-year-old Elisabeth was assassinated, two new productions — a new Netflix series called The Empress and a film called Corsage, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May and will hit American cinemas on 23rd December — offer their own ideas
During the 1950s, the Sissi film trilogy, starring Romy Schneider, revived Elisabeth as a happy-go-lucky Disney princess come to life, clad in bouncy pastel dresses and beloved by animals and people alike. The syrupy films, which appear on German and Austrian TV screens every Christmas, are part of the Heimatfilm genre, which emerged in the Germanspeaking world after World War II and feature beautiful scenes of the countryside, clear-cut morals and a world untouched by conflict. “I grew up watching the Romy Schneider movies in a campy way,” said Katharina Eyssen, show runner and head author of The Empress, who hails from Bavaria. As interpreted by Schneider, Elisabeth is “just a good-hearted girl that has no inner conflicts,” she said.
Eyssen’s take on Elisabeth, played by Devrim Lingnau in The Empress, is feistier, wilder and edgier than Schneider’s. The series opens shortly before Elisabeth meets her future husband (and cousin), during his birthday celebrations in Bad Ischl. As the story goes, Franz Josef was expected to propose to Elisabeth’s elder sister, Duchess Helene in Bavaria, but he changed his mind when he set eyes on Elisabeth. Where Schneider’s eyes sparkle with joy and excitement, Lingnau’s are heavier and signal a darker inner world. In the biographies that Eyssen read while developing the show, she said that Elisabeth’s character is portrayed as “difficult, fragile, almost bipolar, melancholic”, but Eyssen didn’t fully buy into this perspective. “There has to be a creative and passionate force, otherwise she wouldn’t have survived that long,” she said.
Much of what is known about the empress’s personal life comes from her poems, as well as letters and written recollections from her children, her ladies-in-waiting and her Greek tutor. “She’s a myth in so many ways,” explained Kreutzer. “It was a different time, there was no media as there is today. There are so few photographs of her.”
Elisabeth refused to have her picture taken after her early 30s, while she last sat for a portrait at the age of 42. Photos and paintings of her that are dated later are either retouched or composites. “She wanted to remain in the memory of the people as the eternally young queen,” said Lindinger.
In some ways, Pataki said, she might have felt more comfortable in today’s society than in 19th-century Vienna. “Her primary role and the expectation put on her was to have sons, produce heirs,” Pataki said. “But Sisi was far ahead of her time in wanting more for herself as a woman, an individual, a wife and a leader.”
Corsage goes further down the dark pathways of Elisabeth’s character than The Empress, offering a punkgothic portrait of the empress at 40, as a deeply troubled soul who grasps for levity and freedom in the stifling atmosphere of the Hapsburg court. She smokes, is obsessed with exercise and the sea, and weighs herself daily (all true, according to historians).
The German title of the film translates as “corset”. Elisabeth famously maintained a 50-centimetre waistline throughout her life.
Kreutzer and Vicky Krieps, who portrays Elisabeth, decided that – for the sake of authenticity – Krieps would wear a corset like the Empress’s during filming.
“It’s a real torture instrument,” admitted Krieps. “You can’t breathe, you can’t feel. The ties are on your solar plexus, not on your waist.” She said she almost gave up on filming because of how miserable the corset made her feel.
The final years of Elisabeth’s life have remained largely unexplored in popular culture (Corsage takes artistic liberties with the portrayal of her death.) After Elisabeth’s only son, Crown Prince Rudolf, killed himself in 1889, her longstanding depression became deeper and more permanent. While sailing on her yacht, Miramar, she would sit on the deck even during bad weather, her ever-present black lace parasol representing her only defence against the rain and breaking waves, according to the Katrin Unterreiner book Sisi: Myth and Truth. Once, during a heavy storm, she had herself tied to a chair above deck. According to her Greek tutor, Constantin Christomanos, she said: “I am acting like Odysseus because the waves lure me.”
According to novelist Allison Pataki, Elisabeth fought against the constricting role of being an empress throughout her life. From her poems, intellectual pursuits and travels, it appears as though Elisabeth was always looking outward, imagining herself as being anywhere but where she was. In one poem from 1880, she gave a hint of what she might have been thinking during all the time she spent on the deck of the Miramar: “I am a seagull from no land/I do not call any one beach my home/I am not tied by any one place/I fly from wave to wave.”
In some ways, Pataki said, she might have felt more comfortable in today’s society than in 19th-century Vienna. “Her primary role and the expectation put on her was to have sons, produce heirs,” Pataki said. “But Sisi was far ahead of her time in wanting more for herself as a woman, an individual, a wife and a leader.”