Untitled

Ref:

2. top 5 books of all time?

I don't knoooow. I really don't. A Pál utcai fiúk is definitely in there, it might be my favourite of all time. I love The Hunger Games, Catching Fire is my favourite of the OG trilogy, so that's in the top 5 as well... The Időfutár series rearranged my brain at 13, I think I know the first one by heart at this point. I love Six of Crows, I love a good heist with great characters.... I don't knoooow. I don't know. I love Romeo and Juliet... and The Secret Garden, it's very important to me.

6. what books have you read in the last month?

I've been in an awful reading slump this semester, uni drained my energy, so I'll just list the best non-school related books I read this year: Maurice; A Pál utcai fiúk; Alice in Wonderland; Howl's Moving Castle; Whose Body?; I'm Glad My Mom Died; Mistletoe and Murder

15. recommend and review a book

Right now I'm reading Rokonok [Relations] by Móricz Zsigmond but I've already seen it in the theatre + I know the plot so I can say that it's good even though I'm only on page ~120/320.

Probably we should start with him turning eighteen. He wasn't married yet (and wasn't expected to be) so therefore none of these were affairs, but it's important to look at where his relationship with sex began. As was custom, his mother and a few other people arranged for him to lose his virginity to a prostitute and continue to see various other prostitutes (referred to as "sanitation ladies" and other such things). These women were sometimes professionals or sometimes even random peasant women (all of whom were, after this, typically given compensation and/or higher titles), and were for the most part brought to him without his real decision. Much of what I've read about his first experience with one of these women has been highly contradictory or downright counterfactual, so I believe that unless we have some undiscovered primary sources, the identity of the first woman he slept with is likely unknown. He was notably discreet with these affairs, a trait which will be relevant later. It's also important to remember that this was custom for Habsburg heirs at the time (you can read into it some gross stuff though. If you want). He continued seeing these women through his first years as Emperor, through two (or more) botched engagements.

I believe that the majority of these affairs (if there were any real long-lasting affairs) were ended after his engagement to Elisabeth, and from what I can tell he had no affairs (or at least none that were openly gossiped about; again, he was discreet) up until losing the battle at Solferino.

Elisabeth at the time of Solferino was heavily troubled, having to deal with the court and Archduchess Sophie, etc etc. Franz Joseph, coming back from the battle, began (we believe) several affairs. The identities of these women are not known, but we believe that Elisabeth's subsequent flights to Madeira and Corfu were the direct result of these affairs. It was customary for women at the time to basically put up with their husbands' cheating on them and not say anything, so her taking any action at all (even if it was in part because of worsening health issues) was notable. I don't know if he ended these affairs (though I assume to an extent he tried to reconcile with her in part by doing so).

The next information I have on his affairs is during the seventies and eighties, once Elisabeth was firmly out of politics and very very infrequently in Vienna. He remained romantically devoted to her and somewhat jealous of her relationships with other men (though none of these relationships ever turned sexual), whereas she, who had been very jealous in the early seventies, now poked fun at his predilection for beautiful women, seeming not particularly to care. We know that he had several affairs (whether sexual, romantic, or both we don't know), all kept secret because of the Empress, though we do not know with whom until in 1875 when he began an affair with a girl known as Anna, who later took the last name of Nahowski when she married. She was sixteen at the time, he 30 years her senior, and the relationship lasted around 14 years. He did not consummate until she was eighteen (not, however, because he was concerned over their age difference, but rather because he was waiting for her to divorce her first husband), and even then very anxiously (he stood her up for their first plans to consummate). The relationship remained a secret from his wife through its entirety, even though Nahowski is believed to have borne children by him. She first fell pregnant (not by him, by another man) in 1884, later marrying the father (and taking the name Nahowski thereafter), causing Franz Joseph some turmoil about sleeping with a married woman; however, her husband was easily bought off and the relationship continued, though Nahowski was prone to fits of jealousy. Their relationship began to fizz out around 1886, when Nahowski began to suspect he was having an affair with the actress Katharina Schratt.

Initially he was only vaguely interested in Schratt (having what the modern reader would likely consider a crush on her), having seen several of her performances and meeting her a few times at his request. They became good friends, engaging each other in long conversation and generally being amicable. Schratt was married to Baron Kiss de Ittebe, though they saw each other infrequently and he had married her in an attempt to pay off debts on both sides, which obviously did not wokr (interestingly enough, Schratt would later rely on the Emperor to pay off her large gambling debts). One evening in 1885, he invited her and various other theatre performers to have an intimate dinner with him, Elisabeth, and various other royals.

There, Elisabeth realized that her husband was in love with (or at least very interested in) Schratt and, motivated by sympathy and guilt for leaving her husband alone so often, commissioned Schratt's portrait for Franz Joseph in 1886 (Elisabeth did not know about the Nahowski affair; it is in part due to her intervention between Franz Joseph and Katharina Schratt that caused the rift between those two).

It is somewhat complicated to claim that Franz Joseph and Schratt "began a relationship". It is true that they were in a relationship from around 1886 up until his death in 1916, but it was (I believe, though some will claim otherwise) non-sexual through its entirety, in part because of his dedication to Elisabeth (though the lack of consummation continued after Elisabeth's death). This is not, however, to say that if there was never any sex (I must clarify: we don't know that there wasn't any sex. We have several letters where he mentions not consummating, but we also know that he planned his visits around her periods, so it's more than a little up in the air), they weren't in a romantic, or at the very least deeply intimate platonic, relationship. His letters to her (hers have been destroyed) may be very well defined as those of a man in love, and their relationship was, minus the sexual aspect, very much those of two people in a committed, mutual romantic relationship. Some will claim that as the relationship was not sexual, it is merely "a few somewhat intimate letters being treated as grounds for a relationship"; I do not share this belief and find it highly offensive to those in deeply intimate platonic or nonsexual relationships (but that's just me).

It is important to recognize Elisabeth's part in establishing this relationship in the 1880s and her involvement in it after its beginning. She took many steps toward kindling a friendly relationship between the royal family and Schratt, them buying each other and their families gifts and repeatedly asking for Schratt to spend time with her, inquiring about her health when she was sick, other things like that (we also know that, even though Elisabeth hated children, her relationship with Schratt's only son, Toni, was cordial and pleasant and the two developed a friendly relationship). Elisabeth, in order to facilitate Franz Joseph and Katharina's meetings, used one of her ladies-in-waiting, Ida Ferenczy's apartment for them to meet. Elisabeth often mocked Franz Joseph and Schratt in her poetic diary, showing jealousy, disgust, and hopelessness at the idea of love at all. Katharina herself was insecure about Elisabeth and what the Empress might feel towards her, though Franz Joseph was able to dispel her fears quickly. Despite this mild animosity, Katharina was given the official position of the "Empress's Friend", which made it impossible to refute her place at the Hofburg.

Valerie disliked this situation, and, though she never expressed much open hostility toward Schratt, felt distinctly uncomfortable around her, writing, "...she is really simple and likeable, but never the less, I hold a kind of grudge against her..." and that "Mama should not have encouraged this acquaintance so much." These feelings carried through the rest of her life. She, and Gisela to a lesser extent, were uncomfortable with Schratt's presence at Elisabeth's funeral.

Franz Joseph soon became dependently reliant on Schratt for his happiness (much as he had been on Elisabeth earlier), and they were incredibly close. He gave her quite a bit of money, in part to pay off gambling debts, and she amassed a small fortune because of it. Though he asked her to end her other affairs, she did not, but kept fairly discreet about them (one of her lovers, Count Wilczek, was tremendously jealous of Franz Joseph and never failed to mention it).

Her intimacy with the royal couple continued through Rudolf's death, though it changes to an extent. She was one of the first people to know about Mayerling. Elisabeth and Franz Joseph's relationship had been growing colder and colder through the years leading up to Mayerling, and was made worse by the incident. However, Schratt maintained a friendship with both of them, and it was often said that the only way they could be together was when she was in the room with them. This did prove true; as Elisabeth deteriorated in the 1890s, the relationship between the three of them grew closer. Both she and Schratt wrote letters (though infrequently) to Franz Joseph, but not to each other, with him acting as a middle party. After Schratt and Franz Joseph had any sort of falling out, Elisabeth was known to be the only one who could calm her down. Katharina Schratt became known in Elisabeth and Franz Joseph's letters as "die Freundin", or "the friend". She and Elisabeth traded slimming tips, Katharina having developed a similar eating disorder in an attempt to be more like Elisabeth (her trying to be more like Elisabeth was a theme; at one point, Franz Joseph mentioned Elisabeth traveling and almost all of a sudden, Katharina liked to travel), and often underwent the same treatments for weight loss (this was largely encouraged by FJ, but there were a few times where he had written letters to Elisabeth scolding her for "plung[ing] into ruin also the friend, who participated in every medical nonsense."

Elisabeth died. After her death FJ said/wrote to Schratt a few times about how he "feel[s] best in your company because it is so easy to talk to you about the unforgettable [Elisabeth], whom we loved so much and because I like you so very much."

After her death their relationship continued on somewhat as it had before, up until a break they took in 1900-1901 due to several causes (mostly his refusal to take her side on a dispute with her theatre company, and what I referenced in this post). While their relationship resumed thereafter, it was never the same. She became known as the "unofficial empress" in the early 20th century, and he was sometimes referred to (derogatorily or affectionately I can't quite tell) as "Herr Schratt". There were some talks among the court of trying to find him another wife who could theoretically bear him children, but these hypothetical plans never reached fruition.

I have nothing which says that he ever cheated on Schratt (what that would constitute is a different subject entirely, and one that I think might detail this frankly very Schratt-focused answer). He and Katharina talked frequently and took walks (she often read to him as his eyes were failing neat the end of his life), and she would sometimes entertain guests (especially when etiquette maintained that he could not). Their close friendship continued until his death, where she was one of the last people to see him (iirc, she was never explicitly told that he was dying, but she knew). After his death, she assumed the life of a recluse, never really leaving her home (except to film one movie, Der Ochsenkrieg, in 1920). She became a devout Catholic and was known to visit Franz Joseph's and Elisabeth's graves once a week. She died on 17 April 1940, at an age somewhere between 85 and 87 (her birth year is often disputed), a week before Franz Joseph and Elisabeth's 86th anniversary. She refused to say anything on Franz Joseph or the nature of their relationship to the press, replying to requests for her to write memoirs with, "I am an actress not a writer and I have nothing to say, for I was never a Pompadour, still less a Maintenon."

Citations:

Neuhauser, Regine. Empress Elisabeth of Austria: Free Spirit, Beauty Queen, and Imperial Legend. Amazon Distribution GmbH, 2024.

Corti, Egon Cesar, Conte. Elizabeth, Empress of Austria. Translated by Catherine Allison Philips. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936.

Van Der Kiste, John. Emperor Francis Joseph: Life, Death, and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire. Thrupp: Sutton Publishing, 2005.