Elisabeth Petznek

Philip Alexius de László : Archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austria, later Princess of Windisch-Graetz, oil on canvas, 1906

Elisabeth Petznek (born September 2, 1883 in Laxenburg , Lower Austria , † March 16, 1963 in Vienna ; born as Archduchess Elisabeth Marie Henriette Stephanie Gisela of Austria; divorced Windisch-Graetz ) was the only daughter of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria from the House of Habsburg -Lothringen and Austrian social democrat . In the republic she was known as the "red archduchess".

Childhood and youth

Archduchess Elisabeth Marie

Otto and Elisabeth Marie zu Windisch-Graetz

Elisabeth Marie was the only child of the Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince Rudolf and his wife Stephanie of Belgium . In the family she was called "Erzsi", the Hungarian pet form of Elisabeth.

Erzsi was only five years old when her father and his lover Mary Vetsera committed suicide on January 30, 1889 in Mayerling .

After this stroke of fate, her grandfather, Emperor Franz Joseph , took special care of his “favorite granddaughter”.

In 1900, her mother Stephanie married the Hungarian Count Elemér Lónyay von Nagy-Lónya and Vasaros-Nameny as a second marriage and thus left the Austrian Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty . Erzsi hardly had any contact with her after that. The relationship was also strained by the fact that she blamed her mother for the Mayerling tragedy. She mourned her dead father Rudolf and his lover Mary von Vetsera every day of their death.

Adult life

Marriage wish against the will of the emperor

Archduchess Elisabeth Marie had no material worries. The emperor had generously provided her with funds, and she received a considerable amount from the inheritance of her grandmother Elisabeth ("Sisi") . She fell in love with Prince Otto zu Windisch-Graetz (1873–1952) in September 1900 . However, her marriage request initially met with resistance from the emperor, as Windisch-Graetz was not equal and Elisabeth Marie was in prospect of a relationship with the German Crown Prince Wilhelm . But even after a period of reflection was imposed on her, she stuck to Windisch-Graetz, so that Emperor Franz Joseph finally consented.

Elisabeth Marie left the House of Habsburg-Lothringen and waived all claims, e.g. B. to be supported in an emergency from the family pension fund of the dynasty, Windisch-Graetz was raised to the personal prince status on the occasion of the wedding . The engagement was celebrated in Hetzendorf Castle , the church wedding in the Hofburg chapel. The bride was 18 years older , the groom ten years older. Elisabeth felt free for the first time in her life.

The marriage on January 23, 1902 resulted in four children. However, the marriage was not happy and was characterized by allegedly frequent mutual infidelity and jealousy. According to legend, Elisabeth Marie is said to have shot and seriously injured her husband's lover, the opera singer Marie Ziegler, in Prague.

Schönau Castle an der Triesting, exterior until 1895

Schönau Palace becomes permanent residence

In 1911 Elisabeth bought Schönau Palace and had it costly redesigned. Before that it was owned by Otto Franz Joseph of Austria , a nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph. Rumors continued in the society of the empire about the infidelity of Otto Windisch-Graetz. The couple became increasingly estranged, and Elisabeth Marie spent the winters with her children, separated from her husband, in Istria . There she met in 1913 in Pola lieutenant of the line, Egon Lerch , with whom she had at least a friendly relationship until he fell as a submarine officer in August 1915.

In the First World War , the marriage finally failed. For the first time, in August 1915, she confronted her husband Otto with her wish to divorce. The elderly emperor, who was fundamentally against divorces, did not consent.

Child custody battle

After the emperor's death, there were violent arguments about custody of the children, which were not settled until 1924, when the couple finally separated. At that time, according to other sources, the marriage was officially divorced in February 1948. Background was in 1921 by Otto Windisch-Graetz instigated court order , which allotted him the children. Back then, the court traditionally sided with the man in custody disputes. But the children desperately refused to be taken away by their father.

When the judge, including the bailiff and 22 gendarmes, came to Schönau Palace to pick up the children, around a hundred social democratic workers blocked the entrance. The judge had to leave. This incident preoccupied the international press and the Christian-social-led federal government . That forced the husband trial was stopped and the children remained with the mother.

Elisabeth obtains a final divorce

In conformity with the law, Elisabeth was officially "separated from table and bed" in 1924, but according to the church legislation at the time, she was not finally divorced, which meant that remarriage was impossible (see also marriage annulment and divorce ). It was not until 1948 that she achieved the elimination of all the bureaucratic obstacles involved.

Red Archduchess

Convinced social democrat

Elisabeth Windisch-Graetz, whose title of nobility was revoked with the Austrian Nobility Repeal Act in 1919, lived with her children from her previous marriage to Prince Windisch-Graetz on her estate at Schloss Schönau in Schönau an der Triesting in Lower Austria a few kilometers south of Vienna. At an electoral meeting of the Social Democrats in Leobersdorf in 1921, she met her future husband, the teacher and Social Democratic member of the Lower Austrian state parliament Leopold Petznek (1881–1956), with whom she soon entered into a cordial relationship.

She opened her castle garden to the children of the desolate workers' settlements in the area and helped with vegetables and fruit from the fields of the castle. This resulted in contacts with the social democratic child friends . Elisabeth Windisch-Graetz was increasingly concerned with social democracy . Petznek probably motivated Elisabeth Windisch-Graetz to approach the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) , which she joined in October 1925.

She expressed her understanding of women's politics in a long newspaper interview in 1927: “The Social Democrats alone helped women with the deed. […] The future belongs to socialism". Furthermore, Elisabeth was particularly involved with the children's friends, for whom she sold red paper carnations on May 1st . She later said, amused, that she was sometimes addressed by comrades as "Imperial Highness".

In the autumn of 1927 she and her daughter Stephanie Eleonore met the future Chancellor Bruno Kreisky . Kreisky recalled almost 60 years later: “By the way, it was the first party congress that I attended as a listener in the gallery, and I remembered it well because I was sitting next to Princess Windisch-Graetz, who was very pretty Had brought daughter. The "red princess", as she was called, was [...] an interesting figure, one of the most beautiful granddaughters of Franz Joseph ... ".

According to legend, Kreisky is said to have said repeatedly in the circle of his party executive that one can only learn something from workers and the aristocracy for an everyday understanding of politics . Elisabeth's idea of social democracy is said to have been shaped by Kreisky's political conviction that the core mandate of social democracy was the permanent guarantee of " just everyday life " and " social peace " for all people.

Penzing and the surrounding area around 1872 ( recording sheet of the state survey)

Relocation to the Windisch-Graetz-Villa

In 1929 she sold her Schloss Schönau and instead bought a palace on Wolfersberg in the western Vienna Woods in the Hütteldorf district , Linzer Straße 452. This district was then in the 13th district of Hietzing , and since 1938 in the 14th district, Penzing . The building is known to this day as the Windisch-Graetz-Villa.

Elisabeth had known the villa estate in which she lived with her partner Petznek from 1930 onwards from childhood. The late Biedermeier villa built by court architects in the middle of the 19th century and its extensive park were shown on a map from 1872 west of the center of Hütteldorf between Wolfersberg in the north and Nikolaiberg in what is now the Lainzer Tiergarten in the south, across the Vienna River .

As in the neighboring Esterházy hunting lodge , the high nobility were also drawn here by the Habsburgs' private hunting invitations to the Vienna Woods Mountains . The immediately adjacent Wolfersberg, the neighboring Bierhäuselberg and the area opposite, later called Lainzer Tiergarten, were private hunting grounds of the imperial family. For example, in 1846, near Elisabeth's later villa, the last wolf in the Vienna Woods for more than 150 years was hunted down by Archduke Franz Karl of Austria , the father of Emperor Franz Joseph .

Marriage to Petznek

Leopold Petznek was after the establishment of the dictatorship of Dollfuss temporarily arrested 1934th Then Leopold and Elisabeth got involved with families whose social democratic relatives were imprisoned. Leopold Petznek was arrested a second time in 1944 and deported to the Dachau concentration camp . He was only able to return home from there at the end of the Nazi regime in 1945. From 1945 to 1947 he was elected by the National Council and President of the Audit Office .

Elisabeth married him on May 4, 1948. (The May 14 information is based on a typo.)

Elisabeth Petznek's unwritten grave at the Hütteldorfer Friedhof

The villa in Hütteldorf, however , was confiscated from September 1945 to February 1955 by the Commander-in-Chief of the French-occupied zone of Austria , General Emile Béthouart (it was located in the French sector of Vienna). Only after the conclusion of the State Treaty , in 1955, could the couple return to their home when they were both seriously ill. Leopold Petznek died at the age of 75 in 1956.

Withdrawal from the public

During her SDAP and SPÖ membership , she actively supported social democracy, also through her presence at party events. A serious rheumatic illness and life in a wheelchair forced Elisabeth to withdraw from the public to her villa, where she was visited by her close party friend Bruno Kreisky, among others. Most recently she wrote a will in which she also favored the SPÖ-ruled city ​​of Vienna . In it, she stipulated that her burial (in contrast to her birth , which was celebrated throughout Austria-Hungary with gun salvos , military parades and torchlight parades ) should take place in silence.

Street sign of Elisabeth-Petznek-Gasse

Death and honor by the city of Vienna

Elisabeth Petznek died in 1963 at the age of 79 and was buried in the Hütteldorfer Friedhof in Vienna in the same grave as her husband (group 2, number G72). In front of Elisabeth's two sons from her marriage to Otto Windisch-Graetz, Rudolf († 1939) and Ernst († 1952), were buried in the grave.

Elisabeth-Petznek-Gasse has been named after her since 1998, a short side street off Hüttelbergstrasse, about 500 meters as the crow flies from the Windisch-Graetz-Villa.

Inheritance disputes

Elisabeth had considerable wealth , and she left the extensive park of her Penzinger Windisch-Graetz villa, in a prime Viennese residential area , to the City of Vienna for the construction of a new residential complex. The original entire area, located in today's Linzer Strasse 448 to 452 up to today's Anzbachgasse, has meanwhile been divided and its eastern part temporarily managed by relatives of Elisabeth for a religious order .

After the settlement of sometimes violent legal disputes between some relatives of Elisabeth's inheritance rights and the beneficiaries, a social community housing complex of the City of Vienna was opened in the originally western part of the park, above the villa at Linzer Straße 452, and then in the eastern part, Linzer Straße 448 to Anzbachgasse, a cooperative - non-profit park villa complex was built, whereby the ground plan of the park villas is reminiscent of Elisabeth's villa.

Name and title

• 1883–1902: born Archduchess Elisabeth Marie Henriette Stephanie Gisela of Austria
• 1902–1919: Princess Elisabeth Marie zu Windisch-Graetz
• 1919–1948: Elisabeth (Marie) Windisch-Graetz
• 1948–1963: Elisabeth Petznek

family tree

Family tree Elisabeth Petznek
Great grandparents	Archduke Franz of Austria (1802–1878) ⚭ 1824 Princess Sophie Friederike of Bavaria (1805–1872)		Duke Max Joseph in Bavaria (1808–1888) ⚭ 1828 Princess Ludovika Wilhelmine of Bavaria (1808–1892)		King of Belgium Leopold I (1790–1865) ⚭ 1832 Princess Louise d'Orléans of France (1812–1850)		Archduke Joseph of Austria (1776–1847) ⚭ 1819 Princess Maria Dorothea of ​​Württemberg (1797–1855)
Grandparents	Emperor of Austria King of Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Illyria, Lombardo – Venetia and Jerusalem President of the German Confederation Franz Joseph I (1830–1916) ⚭ 1854 Princess Elisabeth (“Sisi”) Amalie in Bavaria (1837–1898)				King of Belgium Leopold II (1835–1909) ⚭ 1853 Archduchess Marie Henriette of Austria (1836–1902)
parents	Crown Prince Rudolf (1858–1889) ⚭ 1881 Princess Stephanie Clotilde of Belgium (1864–1945)
Archduchess (until 1918) Elisabeth Marie of Austria (1883–1963)

progeny

Elisabeth Petznek's first marriage has four children:

1. Franz Josef Windisch-Graetz (* 1904 in Prague , † 1981 in Nairobi ), b. Prince Franz Josef Marie Otto Antonius Ignatius Oktavianus zu Windisch-Graetz;
   1. ⚭ (1934 in Brussels ) Ghislaine Windisch-Graetz (* 1912 in Ixelles / Elsene ; † 1997 in Namur ), b. Countess d'Arschot Schoonhoven.
2. Ernst Windisch-Graetz (* 1905 in Prague, † 1952 in Vienna), b. Prince Ernst Weriand Maria Otto Antonius Expeditus Anselmus zu Windisch-Graetz:
   1. ⚭ (1927 in Vienna) Ellen Windisch-Graetz (* 1906 in Scheibbs ; † 1982 in Vienna), b. Ellen Skinner; Gesch. 1938, canceled 1940;
   2. ⚭ (1947 in Schwarzenbach an der Pielach ) Eva Windisch-Graetz (* 1921 in Vienna), b. Eva Isbary (aristocratic historical: Freiin Isbary ).
3. Rudolf Johann Windisch-Graetz (* 1907 in Ploschkowitz ( Ploskovice ), † 1939 in Vienna), b. Prince Rudolf Johann Maria Otto Joseph Anton Andreas zu Windisch-Graetz.
4. Stephanie Björklund, ad. Countess d'Alcantara de Querrieu (* 1909 in Ploschkowitz (Ploskovice), † 2005 in Uccle / Ukkel ), b. Princess Stephanie Eleonore Maria Elisabeth Kamilla Philomena Veronika zu Windisch-Graetz
   1. ⚭ (1933 in Brussels) Count Pierre d'Alcantara de Querrieu (* 1907 in Bachte-Maria-Leerne / Deinze ; † 1944 Oranienburg concentration camp );
   2. ⚭ (1945 in Brussels) Carl Axel Björklund (* 1906 in Högsjö ; † 1986 in Anderlecht ).

literature

• Friedrich Weissensteiner : The red archduchess. The unusual life of the daughter of Crown Prince Rudolf . Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1984.
  • The red archduchess. The unusual life of the daughter of Crown Prince Rudolf . Piper, Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-492-24538-8 (new edition).
• Ghislaine Windisch-Graetz: Imperial eagle and red carnations. The life of the daughter of Crown Prince Rudolf . Amalthea, Vienna / Munich 1992, ISBN 3-85002-264-1 .
• Hannes Stekl, Marija Wakounig: Windisch-Graetz. A royal house in the 19th and 20th centuries . Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1992, ISBN 978-3-205-05468-9 , chapter "Marriage: Reason and Passion", p. 59 ff . ( Elisabeth and Otto Windisch Graetz, pp. ?? - 101 in the Google book search).
• Elisabeth von Österreich , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 23/1966 of May 30, 1966, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Died: Elisabeth Maria Petznek . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1963, pp. 96 ( online ).

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Marie von Österreich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Elisabeth Petznek in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Petznek, Elisabeth Archduchess Elisabeth Marie in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Petznek Elisabeth. In: dasrotewien.at - Web dictionary of the Viennese social democracy. SPÖ Vienna (Ed.)
• Elisabeth Petznek, the "red Archduchess". District Museum Landstrasse, archived from the original on December 5, 2013 ; accessed on January 3, 2018 . 
• Friedrich Scheu: The Emperor's granddaughter was a socialist. The late Elisabeth Petznek from the Habsburg family confessed to the party . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna March 21, 1963, p. 3 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).
• Lars Friedrich: The Mayerling Archive . mayerling.info

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich Scheu: The emperor's granddaughter was a socialist , obituary in the daily Arbeiter Zeitung , Vienna, No. 68, March 21, 1963, p. 3.
2. ↑ Friedrich Weissensteiner: The red archduchess . 5th edition. Piper, Munich 2011, ISBN 3-492-24538-2 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} The red granddaughter of Emperor Franz Joseph. Our Generation, Regional Wien (June 2009), 2, pp. 3–4, wien.pvoe.at ( memento of the original from December 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.1 MB). 
4. ↑ Robert Seydel: The affair of the Habsburgs . Ueberreuter, Vienna 2005.
5. ^ Ghislaine Windisch-Graetz: Imperial eagle and red carnation . Amalthea, Vienna 1988, subsequent editions, ISBN 978-3-85002-264-4 .
6. ↑ Schönau Castle - Landscape Garden ( Memento of the original from October 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 26, 2013. 
7. ↑ Miscellaneous. The marriage dispute in the Windisch-Graetz house. In:  Grazer Mittags-Zeitung , No. 124/1921 (8th year), June 4, 1921, p. 4 middle. (Online at ANNO ). .
8. ^ ^{A b} Hannes Stekl, Marija Wakounig: Windisch-Graetz. P. 100 f.
9. ↑ Bruno Kreisky: Between Times - Memories from five decades. Siedler Verlag and Kremayr & Scheriau, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-88680-148-9 , p. 194.
10. ↑ On the history of the settlements on the Wolfersberg and the Bierhäuselberg ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ^ Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. Volume 4, Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-218-00546-9 , p. 532.
12. ↑ ^{a b c} Friedhöfe Wien, search for the deceased ( memento of the original dated August 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. to Elisabeth Petznek. Retrieved June 16, 2011. 
13. ↑ Magistrate of the City of Vienna: Official legal act Elisabeth Petznek
14. ↑ City map of Vienna with the building plans drawn . Retrieved October 17, 2013.
15. ↑ C2. Pr Otto Weriand Hugo Ernst. Entry in Miroslav Marek's Genealogy.eu. Retrieved June 16, 2011.
16. ↑ Also Stefanie, cf. Graduates GRG1 Stubenbastei 1010 Vienna. ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Graduation from 1927: Windisch-Graetz Stefanie. Retrieved June 16, 2011.