Marie Louise of Larisch-Wallersee

Marie Louise von Wallersee

Marie Louise Elisabeth Freiin von Wallersee , née Marie Louise Elisabeth Mendel , married Countess von Larisch-Moennich , Marie Bruck's second marriage , Marie Meyer's third (* February 24, 1858 in Augsburg ; † July 4, 1940 ibid) was the niece of Empress Elisabeth of Austria .

Childhood and youth

Marie Louise was born the illegitimate daughter of Duke Ludwig in Bavaria and the actress Henriette Mendel . Her parents morganatically married a year after she was born in 1859 . Henriette Mendel was also raised to the nobility in 1859 and has since been allowed to call herself Baroness von Wallersee . The hereditary title of nobility also applied to the descendants of this couple. The family lived in Augsburg, Munich and Garatshausen .

Marie had a fairly free childhood and was well brought up. She was excellent at riding and fencing. When her aunt Elisabeth came to visit in 1869 , she took a liking to her and invited her to visit Vienna and, in 1876, to her Gödöllő Palace in Hungary. Here she lived for several months with her aunt and her guests. The Empress surrounded herself with a femme fatale veil and made Marie her confidante - suspiciously and jealously eyed by the nobles who were present, including the Baroness Helene Vetsera . The daughter of an actress as confidante of the Empress was not “ comme il faut ”.

Marriage to Count Larisch

Marie Louise (right) with Archduchess Marie Valerie (left)

Through the mediation of the jealous lady in waiting, Countess Marie Festetics , who Marie wanted to see far away from the court because "little Wallersee" had a good chance of becoming the lady-in-waiting of the aunt due to her origins and good riding skills, Marie Louise became Count Georg Larisch -Moennich (1855–1928), whom she married on October 20, 1877 under pressure from her aunt Elisabeth. The couple moved to near Opava (Silesia), where their children Franz Joseph (1878) and Marie Valerie (1879) were born. Godparents were the Emperor of Austria Franz Joseph , and his youngest daughter, Archduchess Marie Valerie .

Marie was appointed palace lady, Georg the chamberlain. For a few years she accompanied the empress on her travels. However, the arranged marriage turned out to be inharmonious. Finally, contact with the imperial aunt was loosened. In 1881 and 1887 she still helped her aunt to secretly print her poems and stories. Since it was a matter of a forced marriage, Marie Louise believed that she did not have to keep her conjugal oath of loyalty. Heinrich Baltazzi lived in Pardubitz near the riding and hunting enthusiasts. An open secret was that two of their children, Marie Henriette (1884) and Georg Heinrich (1886), did not come from their husband Georg, but he recognized them as his own and thus preserved the Decorum . The Countess betrayed the father by the middle name, also with Friedrich Karl, whose father was Ernst von Otto-Kreckwitz . With this child, born in 1894, appearances could no longer be upheld, because the couple had lived separately since 1889, she in Bavaria, the count in Silesia. So in 1896 they got divorced.

Relationship with Baltazzis and Vetseras

The relationship with Heinrich Baltazzi , the brother of Baroness Helene Vetsera , had two children, Marie Henriette and Georg Heinrich. However, the relationship between the married couple continued to deteriorate. In addition, the countess got into debt immensely, because the count kept her tight and the need for toilets was great. Her lover Baltazzi and her cousin Crown Prince Rudolf , the son of her aunt Elisabeth, helped her financially. Heinrich Baltazzi saw the donations as alimony, but later voluntarily placed himself under the curate so that he no longer had to pay. By paying her bills, Rudolf created a partisan for himself.

Marie Louise and Mary Vetsera (1888)

At that time, in 1888, the depressed Crown Prince Rudolf was looking for a woman who wanted to part with him. Countess Marie Louise frequented the Palais Vetsera and willingly told Baltazzi's niece, Mary Vetsera , who raved about the Crown Prince and who had already sought contact by letter, about her close relatives. As a result, Marie covered some meetings out of friendship. The Crown Prince also asked her to mediate and she was obliged to him after paying a few bills. After Mary caused a scandal in the opera in early December and saw herself as a serious competitor to Crown Princess Stephanie , Rudolf's wife, Marie Louise withdrew. Rudolf and Mary Vetsera continued to meet with the help of Rudolf's personal fiaker Bratfisch and the domestic servant Agnes. On January 28, 1889, Marie Louise brought Mary to the Hofburg at the request of the Crown Prince (allegedly he wanted to separate from her), from where Mary fled to the Countess's greatest dismay. On the night of January 30, 1889, the Crown Prince implemented his plan to commit suicide together in the Mayerling Hunting Lodge by first shooting Mary Vetsera and then killing himself hours later.

While Rudolf demanded his own love-pretending letters to Mary and burned them, he left the "little Vetsera" and Countess Larisch in his desk. He even referred to it in a codicil for his will. A Larisch letter was found in his uniform jacket. Due to these tragic circumstances, Countess Marie Louise fell out of favor with the Empress Elisabeth and was no longer wanted by the court and family. She was given no way to justify herself. She soon withdrew to Bavaria, where she lived in Rottach-Egern in her "Villa Valerie" (now the town hall).

Marriage with opera singer Otto Brucks

In Rottach-Egern she met the Bavarian. Court opera singer Otto Brucks know, whom she married in 1897. Out of solidarity with the Austrian imperial family, he was no longer employed on the Bavarian stages and court operas. With every criticism, background reports about his marriage to "that Countess Larisch, who in Mayerling ..." were more important than his musical performance. Brucks began to drink. Their son Otto was born in 1899. Out of financial difficulties, Marie Brucks wrote down what she knew about her imperial and royal relatives. Emperor Franz Joseph wanted to prevent her revelations and bought the first manuscripts from her for a large amount and a pension. Despite this, in an attempt to rehabilitate her reputation and because of further high debts, she repeatedly came into contact with publishers and journalists who tried to take advantage of her proximity to the imperial family.

In 1906 Otto Brucks became theater director in Metz . In 1907 and 1909 Marie Louise's children died from their association with Baltazzi, Marie Henriette of the black leaves , Georg Heinrich shot himself in Naples when he found out who his real father was and that he was "connected to the Mayerling story". Bypassing her obligations under the contracts with the imperial family, she made contact with an English journalist in 1913, with whose help the book My Past was written. It achieved large print runs (and was officially published in Germany as a pirated print in the same year), but the war did not achieve the financial success hoped for. Otto Brucks died in 1914 of cirrhosis of the liver . The following year, the eldest daughter Marie Valerie died of a tropical disease that she contracted as a missionary sister. During the First World War , the widowed Ms. Brucks worked as a Red Cross nurse on the Western Front and as an operations nurse in Munich. In 1920 she made a silent film about Empress Elisabeth in which she played herself.

In the following years she lived in great poverty and also worked as a housekeeper in Berlin. She wanted to avoid this situation by emigrating to the USA, and in 1924 a journalist wrote an article about the empress's niece and her current deplorable life, garnished with pictures of the young countess and imperial relatives 40 years ago. It also contained an offer to marry whomever would pay her and her son the crossing.

Marriage to the American William Henry Meyers

At the age of 66, Marie Louise came into contact with a farmer and real estate agent from Florida, William Henry Meyers, who paid for the passage to the USA for her and her son Karl. Three days after her arrival, she married him, as promised, in return and to get a residence permit. She always emphasized that it was a marriage of convenience . However, her husband turned out to be an impostor who had hoped to gain respect and money as the husband of a (young) European countess. He abused his wife, who fled to New Jersey in 1926 , where she worked as a cook and cleaning lady. She told a German-American writer about her life, who wrote two books with the addition of "scandals" with high sales potential, but cheated on her of the income. Because of these books, Marie Louise was seen as a vicious and greedy ex-countess who had sold her imperial and royal families for money.

In 1929 she returned to Augsburg , lived very poor and withdrawn, always busy with her rehabilitation and betrayed again by a publishing consortium. Marie Louise von Larisch-Wallersee died completely impoverished on July 4, 1940 in an old people's home. After her death, her room was searched by an Augsburg Gestapo officer and manuscripts were confiscated. Her remains were buried next to those of her father Duke Ludwig and her son Friedrich Karl in Munich's Ostfriedhof . Her son died on October 10, 1929 in Munich at the age of 35 after suffering from the flu of a weak heart.

Marie Louise, however, remained “... that Countess Larisch”.

Her greatest wish, a tombstone with her maiden name on it, was not granted. Her grave remained anonymous for many decades and was not cared for. It was not until 2012 that her grave was given a simple wooden cross with a small name plaque.

family

She married her first husband, Count Georg Larisch von Moennich (* March 27, 1855 - January 7, 1928), on October 20, 1877. The marriage was divorced in 1896.

• Franz-Joseph Ludwig Georg Maria (1878–1937)
• Marie Valerie Franziska Georgine (1879–1915)
• Marie (Mary) Henriette Alexandra (1884–1907)
• Georg Heinrich Maria (1886–1909)
• Friedrich Karl Ludwig Maria (1894–1929)

She then married the singer Otto Brucks on May 15, 1897 in Munich (born November 28, 1858 - † January 16, 1914).

• Otto Brucks, jr. (1899–1977)

After the First World War she emigrated to the USA and married William Meyers (* 1859) on September 2, 1924 in Elizabeth, New Jersey . The marriage did not end in divorce, as is often read.

Works

• A royal tale . Spohr, Leipzig 1898
• A poor queen . F. Fontane, Berlin 1900
• My past . F. Fontane, Berlin 1913 ( http://www.literature.at/alo?objid=14867 ), new edition 1937 (My Past, London 1913)
• Empress Elisabeth and me . Eisentraut, Leipzig 1935, digitized ; English Her Majesty Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary , New York, 1934
• The heroine of Gaeta. Tragedy of a queen . Goten-Verlag, Leipzig 1936 (My Royal Relatives, London 1936, Les Secrets d'une Maison Royal, Paris 1935)
• Crowned Women, Love and Death , 1943 (contains the last three works mentioned in one volume)

literature

• Brigitte Sokop: That Countess Larisch. Marie Louise Countess Larisch-Wallersee, confidante of the Empress - ostracized after Mayerling Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 1985, 4th edition 2006, ISBN 3-205-77484-1
• Gabriele Hasmann, Sabine Wolfgang: Die wilde Wanda and other dangerous women: female criminals over the centuries , Carl Ueberreuter Verlag GmbH, 2020, ISBN 978-3-8000-7743-4

Web links

Commons : Countess Marie Larisch von Moennich  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Marie Louise von Larisch-Wallersee in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Marie Louise von Larisch-Wallersee  in the German Digital Library
• Daniela Wakonigg: July 4th, 1940 - Anniversary of Marie Louise von Larisch-Wallersee's death, WDR ZeitZeichen from July 4th, 2015. (Podcast)