AUSTRIA: The Mystery of Mayerling

Viennese cinema goers have surged in for weeks beneath a blazing sign: THE DRAMA OF MAYERLING. Such a title would have been unthinkable in the days when Austria-Hungary was an Empire, would have led to wholesale arrests for lèse-majesté. Even last week, in republican Austria, a young post office official, Ewald Laumann, 23, was driven to the last fringe of emotional hysteria by this curious, true drama of the Habsburgs, the mystery of which is not even yet revealed.

Herr Laumann, after witnessing the cinema drama several times, took a third class ticket to Baden, purchased there an armful of roses and a revolver, set out on foot for the onetime imperial hunting chateau of Mayerling.

The pine-topped hills and the bleak, oblong, white chateau held no interest for Herr Laumann. His eyes sought instead a low wooden cross which he believed marked the grave of Marie, Baroness Vetschera, the dark heroine of Mayerling. Herr Laumann, young, strewed the grave with roses, paused, laid a note upon the ground: “If possible bury me here beside the Baroness Vetschera.”

Finally, Herr Ewald Laumann drew his revolver, shot himself through the heart. . . .

No impressionable clerk ever died to honor a less worthy lady. The Baroness’ grandfather was one Baltazzi, “a dirty Greek,” who amassed millions. Her father was one Baron Vetschera, a doddering Austrian diplomat with just sense enough to sell his title high. She, launched by a clever mother, became the siren who ensnared the Archduke Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, son of the Emperor Franz Josef.

The Archduchess (Princess Stéphanie of Belgium) reacted to her husband’s infatuation for the Baroness Vetschera with such violence that she hurled, from time to time, numerous articles of bric-à-brac at him—a fact incontestably proved. He, vexed, indulged himself the more riotously, inhaled ether and took morphia when he found that champagne had no more effect upon him. At last the Archduchess persuaded the Emperor Franz Josef to command her husband to break with the Baroness Vetschera. Moody, the Archduke departed for Mayerling, driven by his favorite coachman, one Bratfisch (“Fried Fish”).

The Baroness Vetschera followed. Before setting out she purchased not roses and a revolver, but a razor which she ordered carefully stropped.

At Mayerling it was granted her to pass one more night. Next morning the Archduke and the Baroness were found reclining together on a couch. His head had been almost blown off by a sporting rifle, evidently inserted into his mouth. She had been strangled. The razor lay upon the floor. How this came about is not and probably will not be known. . . .

The Emperor Franz Josef spent a sizable fortune in suppressing every sort of evidence and comment. All the servants at Mayerling were paid well to emigrate under assumed names. It is not even known with certainty where the Baroness Vetschera was buried.

Logic has supplied a plausible and widely believed explanation of what is supposed to have taken place: he declared his intention of breaking with her, and she attacked him with the razor. He strangled her, then blew his brains out from remorse.

Significantly the film now so popular in Austria portrays only what everyone knows, omits the tragic scene at which everyone guesses.