September 10, 1898 –
Empress Elisabeth of Austria was not a particularly happy royal. Known as the Princess Diana of her day, she was estranged from her husband, Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria (because of the stifling nature of court life) she lost her daughter, Sophie, in 1857, and her favorite cousin, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, in a tragic fashion. Her brother-in-law, Emperor Maximilian of Mexico was shot by revolutionaries. But most of all, she never was able to get over her most terrible tragedy, the suicide of her son, Rudolph, in 1889.
She was still known as one of the most beautiful women in Europe well into her 60s. Her decades-long hunger diets coupled with a need for movement and exercise which compelled her to undertake lengthy and strenuous hikes, caused malnutrition and depressions and led finally to suicidal fantasies.
The sixty-year old empress was stabbed with a file by a twenty-four year old anarchist, Luigi Lucheni, shortly after noon on September 10, 1898 on the promenade of Lake Geneva as she boarded a steamship for Montreux.
After the incident the Empress still walked for a few minutes. Because she was so strictly corseted, she was unaware how seriously she had been wounded.
Her last words were “What happened to me?“
And so it goes
The Haus of Dcaligari 