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Hunting lodge and Carmelite church at Mayerling

The term Mayerling Incident refers to the series of events leading to the apparent murder-suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his lover Baroness Mary Vetsera. The couple's bodies were discovered in a hunting lodge in Lower Austria on January 30, 1889.

Crown Prince Rudolf

Mary Vetsera

By 1889, it was known by many, including both his wife Stephanie, and his father Franz Joseph, that Rudolf and Mary were having an affair. Rudolf’s marriage to Stephanie had resulted in the birth of one daughter, Elisabeth, and was not particularly happy. Rudolf had no male heir. It is rumoured that the reason why Stephanie was unable to have any more children was that she was infected by Rudolf with venereal disease.

On the morning of January 30 1889, Mary and Rudolf were found dead at Rudolf’s hunting lodge Mayerling. The death of his only son devastated Franz Joseph I. As Rudolf had no son, the next male heir was Franz Joseph's nephew, Franz Ferdinand.

The initial official explanation for the incident was that Rudolf had suffered heart failure; Mary was not mentioned and her body was buried secretly. However, the official story did not hold up well, and it later had to be admitted that Rudolf had committed suicide. Many stories were floated about the pair’s death, with the most widely accepted being that the two lovers had carried out a suicide pact after Franz Joseph demanded they separate. Rudolf shot his mistress in the head, then sat by her body for several hours before shooting himself. A special dispensation from the Vatican was obtained, declaring Rudolf to be in a state of “mental imbalance” in order for Rudolf to be buried in the Imperial Crypt.

Mainstream historians generally dismissed the idea that there was more to the Mayerling Incident than a simple murder-suicide. However some have argued that the official story may be incorrect.

Notably, Empress Zita, (born 1892 died 1989), widow of the last Emperor, Karl (r: 1916-1918) and last surviving Imperial, claimed that the Crown Prince was murdered, and the crime was disguised as a double suicide. The responsible party were Austrian security officials, in response to the Prince’s suspected pro-Hungarian sympathies, or French agents because he refused to participate in the deposition of his pro-German father. No evidence has been discovered to support either of these theories.

The idea that the Prince was killed for political reasons, with Vetsera’s death used to cover up the crime, is one of more popular theories surrounding Mayerling.^{[citation needed]}

This theory rests in part on the idea that the affair between Vetsera and Prince Rudolf was an open secret in the Imperial Family. Indeed, Rudolf’s wife, Princess Stéphanie was carrying on her own affair. Thus, the Emperor’s demand that the couple separate was not a serious concern for the two, making a lover’s pact unnecessary.

A resulting re-examination of files about the death of the Crown Prince revealed major discrepancies between the claimed manner of the deaths and the factual evidence. At one point it was claimed that six shots were fired from the weapon, which did not belong to Rudolf. The initial report stated that only one shot was fired, instantly killing the Crown Prince, which raises the question of how the remaining five bullets were fired. This information suggests that Rudolf had engaged in a violent struggle before his death. However, an examination of the papal nuncio issued to allow Rudolf’s Christian burial asserts that only one shot was fired.

However, this theory has one major problem. By ruling Rudolf’s death a suicide, the Imperial Family was required to petition the Pope for permission to bury Rudolf in the family crypt. Critics of the conspiracy theory claim that the Imperial Family would have seized on any shred of evidence that might have indicated Rudolf did not kill himself in order to avoid the scandal of petitioning the Pope.

Final letter of the Crown Prince, on display at the Mayerling museum. Click for the German text and English translation.

Apart from the straightforward lover’s pact proposed in the official report, a lover’s quarrel has also been postulated. It has been said that Vetsera was murdered by Crown Prince Rudolf, who then killed himself; that they both committed suicide; that they killed or murdered one another, and that she may have been pregnant at the time of her death. One variant states that Mary died during a botched abortion and the grief-stricken Rudolf killed himself.

Examination of the bodies indicated that Mary had likely died several hours before Rudolf, implying that he had killed her (or she had killed herself) and sat next to the body until he finally shot himself.

Rudolf's final letter to Princess Stephanie also supports the suicide hypothesis. In it, Rudolf bids farewell to her and his friends, saying that only death can save his good name. This letter raises at least as many questions as answers, since Rudolf does not give a reason why he must kill himself, nor is there any mention of Mary Vetsera.

Given the age of the case, the delicate nature of the Rudolf and Mary’s deaths (both politically and personally), conflicting initial reports and conflicting official versions, the mystery of the Mayerling Incident will likely never be solved. Much of the evidence was destroyed or concealed at the time, for fear of scandal, hampering later inquiries. All the major players in the Incident have died, most without publicly commenting on the tragedy.

A major obstacle to all of these theories, alternative and official, is the question of why any of these stories would be suppressed. The apparent suicide of the heir to the throne was at least as damaging as any other story, thus it would be illogical to conceal one painful or damaging truth with another.

In December 1992, the cemetery at Heiligenkreuz was vandalized and Mary Vetsera's remains were stolen. Upon recovery they were examined to ensure that they were the correct remains. The findings again contradicted the official reports that she had been shot; her skull showed no evidence of bullet wounds or shrapnel. Instead, the evidence indicated that she had been beaten to death. However, given the circumstances of the examination, there is room for doubt as to whether it really was Mary Vetsera's body which had been recovered.

Rudolf's death brought ruin to his parents' marriage, uncertainty over the imperial succession, and ultimately contributed to the end of the ancient house of Habsburg in 1918. The tragic and mysterious death of Archduke Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria and Hungary, immediately caused a dynastic crisis. Since he was the only male heir to Franz Joseph, Rudolf’s uncle Archduke Karl Ludwig, became heir-presumptive, a role inherited after his death in 1896 by his son Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and then, after the latter's assassination, by Karl Ludwig's grandson Archduke Karl, who would ultimately succeed his grand-uncle as Emperor in 1916. The removal of the liberal, but unstable, Rudolf made Franz Joseph's conservative policies easier to pursue.

Grieving emperor and empress at the deathbed

Tomb of Mary Vetsera at Heiligenkreuz

The Mayerling affair has been dramatized in:

• the movie Mayerling (1936), directed by Anatole Litvak
• the movie De Mayerling à Sarajevo (1940), directed by Max Ophüls
• the musical Marinka (1945), book by George Marion, Jr., and Karl Farkas, lyrics by George Marion, Jr., music by Emmerich Kalman
• the movie Le Secret de Mayerling (1949), directed by Jean Delannoy
• Mayerling, a 1957 American television production (released theatrically in Europe) starring Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer.
• the movie Mayerling (1968), directed by Terence Young, starring Omar Sharif, Catherine Deneuve, James Mason, and Ava Gardner.
• the series Fall of Eagles (1974), in the episode Requiem For A Crown Prince
• the film Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù (1975), directed by Miklós Jancsó.
• the ballet Mayerling choreographed by Sir Kenneth MacMillan (1978)
• the Japanese manga 'Ave Maria/Tenshi no Hitsugi' (2000), by HIGURI You.
• the German crossover opera Mayerling * Requiem einer Liebe (2006) by Siegfried Carl (lyrics) and Ricardo Urbetsch (composer) [1]
• Steven Millhauser took artistic license with this for his short story Eisenheim the Illusionist
• The film The Illusionist, based on the Steven Millhauser short story, directed by Neil Burger
• The musical Elizabeth (1992), with book/lyrics by Michael Kunze and music by Sylvester Levay, the part "Mayerling" is dramatized of the incidence
• The musical Rudolf (2006) by Frank Wildhorn
• Kronpriz Rudolf, a 2006 Austrian TV film starring Max von Thun and Vittoria Puccini, featuring a cameo appearance by Omar Sharif

• Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845–1886), whose death, allegedly by drowning, remains an unsolved mystery.

• Barkeley, Richard. The Road to Mayerling: Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria. London: Macmillan, 1958.
• Franzel, Emil. Crown Prince Rudolph and the Mayerling Tragedy: Fact and Fiction. Vienna : V. Herold, 1974.
• Judtmann, Fritz. Mayerling: The Facts Behind the Legend. London: Harrap, 1971.
• Lonyay, Károly. Rudolph: The Tragedy of Mayerling. New York: Scribner, 1949.
• Markus, Georg. Crime at Mayerling: The Life and Death of Mary Vetsera: with New Expert Opinions Following the Desecration of Her Grave. Riverside, Calif.: Ariadne, 1995.
• Wolfson, Victor. The Mayerling Murder. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

• Mayerling tragedy
• Mayerling mystery