Stephanie of Belgium

Princess Stephanie (photo)

Stephanie Clotilde Louise Hermine Marie Charlotte of Belgium (born May 21, 1864 in Laeken near Brussels ; † August 23, 1945 in Pannonhalma , Hungary) was Princess of Belgium and, as the wife of Crown Prince Rudolf, Crown Princess of Austria-Hungary . In the dual monarchy (1867–1918) she was the only woman to bear this title, since the heir to the throne after Rudolf's death were no longer crown princes (sons of the ruling monarch) and the later crown prince Otto (son of Charles I) remained unmarried until the end of the monarchy .

youth

Princess Stephanie was born as the second daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium and his wife Marie Henriette of Austria . Her siblings were Louise (1858–1924), Clementine (1872–1955) and Crown Prince Leopold (1859–1869), who died as a child .

Like her siblings, Stephanie did not have a loving childhood. The mother showed little affection for the children of her unloved husband and the father was hardly interested in them either. The mother raised the three daughters with draconian severity, which also included hand-held punishment with the rod.

marriage

Stephanie's marriage was planned by the courts in Vienna and Brussels. Only a Catholic princess, who should not be older than 20 years, could be considered as future wife of Rudolf for the Viennese imperial court. The fact that the Crown Prince, known for his numerous affairs with attractive women, found himself ready for dynastic reasons to marry the rather homely Stephanie, who lacked charm, wit and a talent for conversation, met with amazement in those around him.

Crown Princess

Stephanie and Rudolf at their engagement

Stephanie with her only daughter Elisabeth Marie

16-year-old Stephanie and Rudolf married on May 10, 1881 in Vienna . The marriage of the two was considered happy in the first few years. The inexperienced and uninformed Stephanie realized that her husband was thoroughly amiable. After the wedding, the young couple initially spent some time traveling and then lived in Prague . During this time Rudolf devoted himself full of energy to his scientific research and the two led a quiet life.

The birth of his daughter Elisabeth Marie , called Erzsi (the nickname of Elisabeth in Hungarian, Erzsébet) in 1883 was a great disappointment for Rudolf. The birth of an heir to the throne could have helped to improve the conflict-ridden relationship with his conservative father, Emperor Franz Joseph I.

The hoped-for heir to the throne continued to fail, which is probably due to the fact that Rudolf became infected with a sexually transmitted disease during one of his love affairs, infected his wife and rendered her sterile. Eventually the marriage broke up as the two grew more and more apart.

Stephanie made it clear to her husband that she couldn't stand his friends, especially the newspaper publisher Moritz Szeps . In her opinion, he poisoned her husband with his liberal ideas. In return, Rudolf did not understand the ultra-conservative, conceited attitude of his wife, which he considered completely out of date.

Stephanie was never popular at the Viennese court. She was nicknamed "cool blonde" there. Her mother-in-law, Empress Elisabeth , called her "trample" because she was not as graceful as the Empress herself.

When she and her husband traveled to the Crown Land of Galicia in the early summer of 1887 , the now 23-year-old Crown Princess met Count Artur Potocki (1850–1890), 14 years older, widowed for seven years , a member of the Galician state parliament and from 1889 a member of the Austrian mansion . She fell in love with the father of two daughters, but tried to keep the relationship a secret under all circumstances. However, she canceled the trip to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and left Rudolf to travel alone. Only her sister Louise , who lives in Vienna and is married to Prince Philipp of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha , was privy to the relationship and organized intimate get-togethers for the lovers. Nevertheless, it was soon rumored in Vienna that the Crown Princess was secretly meeting with a Polish nobleman.

Rudolf's suicide on January 30, 1889 in Mayerling widowed Stephanie at the age of 25. The Crown Prince wrote in his farewell letter to Stephanie: Dear Stephanie! You are delivered from my presence and plague; get happy your way. Be good to the poor little one who's all that's left of me. His and Stephanie's daughter Elisabeth Marie was taken into care by her grandfather, Emperor Franz Joseph.

widow

Stephanie's relationship with Potocki continued, but it turned out that he was terminally ill with tongue cancer . After his second tongue operation, he recovered in the Eder sanatorium in Döbling on the outskirts of Vienna. The last meeting of the two took place in January 1890, but Potocki could hardly speak anymore. He died on March 26, 1890.

In order to escape the Viennese court, which made her complicit in Rudolf's suicide, the Crown Princess widow, like her mother-in-law, Empress Elisabeth, began to travel restlessly. She spent a lot of time with her sisters Louise and Clementine and avoided staying in Vienna whenever possible. After Rudolf's death, she hardly had any representative duties to perform at court.

Later her father and Franz Joseph tried in vain to marry Stephanie to the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand ; Franz Joseph was thus not befitting connection of the heir to Countess Sophie Chotek of Chotkowa prevent.

The second marriage

Stephanie and Count Lónyay

After Stephanie had mourned Potocki for almost ten years, she fell in love with the Hungarian Count Elemér Lónyay von Nagy-Lónya and Vásáros-Namény . In order to be able to marry him, she renounced the title of crown princess widow and left the imperial family in agreement with the emperor. Franz Joseph showed that Stephanie did not leave the dynasty in resentment by accompanying the bride to the train on her departure from Vienna. On the day she married again, the court of the Crown Princess widow was dissolved and at the same time a court was established for her daughter Elisabeth Marie.

The 36-year-old Stephanie married Lónyay after eleven years of widowhood on March 22, 1900 at Miramar Castle near Trieste , where her aunt Charlotte of Belgium had lived with her husband, Archduke Maximilian of Austria , before Maximilian ascended the imperial throne of Mexico . Stephanie had officially visited Miramar, which was under the control of the monarch, in 1882 with Franz Joseph, Elisabeth and Rudolf and had spent a few days there in 1885.

The second marriage, which was not appropriate for a former member of the Belgian royal family and Austrian imperial family, led to Stephanie's final break with her father, the Belgian king. But this marriage was Stephanie's happiest part of life, which she never regretted. In 1917 Count and Countess Lónyay were elevated to the rank of prince by the last Austrian emperor, Charles I.

The couple lived in Villa Zichy in Kalksburg south of Vienna, in today's 23rd district of Liesing , until 1906 , then at Karlburg Castle (Hungarian: Oroszvár , Slovak: Rusovce ), a manorial property near Bratislava in the floodplains on the south Danube bank (then part of Hungary, today the outskirts of the Slovak capital). The two-story palace complex with more than 200 rooms was equipped with every comfort; the Lónyays had extensive renovations carried out (including new baths), and a new water tower was built in the park to improve the water supply.

Karlburg Castle

The nature-loving Stephanie took care of the extensive gardens and parks with more than 30 glass houses. Stephanie demonstrated business acumen by founding the profitable nursery and tree nursery “Stephaneum”. A catalog of around 100 pages was published four times a year. Members of the high nobility were invited to the frequent hunts. Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Duchess von Hohenberg were welcome guests on the Lónyay property, as these two were not married appropriately.

Stephanie also kept in contact with Franz Joseph I. According to press reports, she visited him on September 8, 1914 for a lengthy private audience at Schönbrunn Palace . On the ribbon of her wreath for the deceased emperor in 1916 there were the words "From your eternally grateful - faithfully loving Stephanie."

Family quarrel

When her mother died in Spa in 1902 , Stephanie traveled to Brussels for the funeral. But when she wanted to say goodbye at the coffin, her father turned her out of the chapel. Her mother's inheritance was only 50,000 francs, which the creditors of Stephanie's heavily indebted sister Louise in particular could not believe, as the king had earned billions in the Belgian Congo (initially his private property). Stephanie took Louise's creditors to court against her father, but lost the trial.

With her daughter, Archduchess Elisabeth Marie, Stephanie had almost no contact after her renewed marriage. Her relationship with her daughter was clouded by the fact that Elisabeth Marie blamed her mother for the "Mayerling tragedy".

Late years

In 1935, Stephanie published her memoir, entitled I Should Be Empress . This led to a scandal in Austria (her daughter had the distribution of the book forbidden in Austria), but the book still sold very well and was translated into several languages.

During the Second World War , in autumn 1944, a Waffen SS command under the leadership of SS Brigade Leader Edmund Veesenmayer took up residence in Karlburg Castle. In March 1945 the withdrawing German troops tried to persuade the princely couple to come along. The Lónyays refused. In the last months of her life, Stephanie's health deteriorated. She suffered from a severe heart condition and usually did not go to bed. In this state, she experienced the occupation Karl Petersburg by the Red Army on April 2, 1945. In May 1945, succeeded Krizosztom Kelemen , abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Pannonhalma to bring the aged prince married couple in the abbey, under the protection of the International Red Cross was . Stephanie spent the last weeks of her life there; Here she died at the age of 81 on August 23, 1945. According to her request, she was buried in the crypt of St. Stephen's Basilica in Pannonhalma. Only her husband, her chambermaid and priests and monks from the archabbey took part in the burial.

The following inscription in Hungarian is on her tombstone:

LÓNYAY ELEMÉR HERCEG FELESÉGE

STEFÁNIA

BELGA KIRÁLYI HERCEGNŐ AUSTRIA ÉS MAGYARORSZÁG

VOLT TRÓNÖRÖKÖSNEK ÖZVEGYE

A WETTIN ÉS THURINGIA NEMZETSÉG SARJA

A KÖTELESSÉGNEK ÉLT ISTENNEL ISTENÉRT

HŰSÉGES SZERETET FÉRJE IRÁNT

ÁTVITTE AZ ÖRÖK ÉLETBE

1864. V. 21 - 1945. VIII. 23.

The inventory of personal estate, which was created after Stephanie's death in Pannonhalma, lists 251 items, including two diamond needles with six stones each and a necklace with three diamond clasps as the most valuable individual objects.

Her widower Elemér Prince Lónyay von Nagy-Lónya and Vásáros-Namény only survived his wife by a year. When the decision of the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 became known to separate Karlburg from Hungary and from October 15, 1947 to annex it to the newly formed Czechoslovakia , the patriotic Hungarian Lónyay made his way to Karlburg again and left everything that had not yet been looted in the castle was, with the help of the Benedictines, transferred to the Pannonhalma Abbey, whereby the Russian soldiers were bribed with wine barrels. The Karlburg Palace Library with its approximately 4,500 volumes and carved bookcases is now in the Archabbey.

Elemér Lónyay died in Budapest on July 29, 1946 ; he was buried in the crypt of the basilica next to his wife Princess Stephanie. The epitaphs of the princely couple in the upper church had to be covered during the time of communist rule in Hungary; they were only exposed again after the fall of the Wall. Even today, many memorabilia of the Lónyays can be seen in Pannonhalma Abbey.

Karlburg palace and estate, which the Lónyai couple bequeathed to the Benedictines of the Pannonhalma Archabbey in their will, were confiscated and nationalized by the government of Czechoslovakia. The decade-long restitution process between the Benedictine abbey and Czechoslovakia and Slovakia was finally decided in 2009 by the European Court of Justice in favor of the Slovak Republic.

progeny

• Elisabeth Marie (1883–1963), the red Archduchess

Commemoration

Princess Stephanie of Belgium. Photography by Ludwig Grillich (1855–1926).

During Stephanie's marriage to Crown Prince Rudolf, the following were named after her:

• the asteroid Stephania , discovered by Johann Palisa on May 19, 1881 ,
• the Stephanienwarte on the plate in Graz Mariatrost ,
• 1885 the Stephaniensaal in Graz , a concert hall expanded into a congress center from 1977 to 1980,
• 1885 Stephaniestrasse in Bratislava (was renamed " Štefaniková " in 1921)
• 1885 the Stephanie-Paradieselster , a species belonging to the birds of paradise
• 1886 the Stephanie Bridge , the predecessor of today's Vienna Salztor Bridge
• 1887 the Stephaniewarte , which still exists today, on the Kahlenberg in Vienna
• 1889 the later renamed Kronprinzessin-Stephanie-Warte in Karlsbad .
• For the visit of the Crown Princess in 1888, the previously difficult to access Plitvice Lakes in Croatia were opened up and the first footbridges built over the water. To this day, one of the most famous paths through the national park is called Štefanijin put (Stephanie's path).

literature

• Stephanie von Lónyay: I should become empress. Memories of the last Crown Princess of Austria-Hungary . Koehler and Amelang, Leipzig 1935
• Irmgard Schiel: Stephanie - Crown Princess in the shadow of Mayerling . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1978.
• Helga Thoma: Unloved Queen . Piper, Munich 2000.
• Anton Klipp: Mayerling and Karlburg (-A digression into the past-). In: Carpathian Yearbook 2007. Vol. 58, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 80-89264-03-4 .
• Juraj Hradský, Jozef Mallinerits: Rusovce - Oroszvár - Karlburg. Marenčin, Bratislava 2007, ISBN 978-80-89218-52-3 (Slovak)

Web links

Commons : Stephanie of Belgium  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Works by Stephanie of Belgium in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Entry on Stephanie of Belgium in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Literature by and about Stephanie of Belgium in the catalog of the German National Library
• mayerling.info on the death of her husband Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling
• Komu by mal patrit kaštiel v Rusovciach? (Slovak)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sigrid-Maria Großering : Rudolf. Heartbreaker, free spirit, psychopath . Salzburg 2006.
2. ↑ Sigrid-Maria Großering: Rudolf. Heartbreaker, free spirit, psychopath . Salzburg 2006.
3. ↑ Robert Seydel: The affair of the Habsburgs . Ueberreuter, Vienna 2005, p. 109; see. Farewell letter
4. ↑ Robert Seydel: The affair of the Habsburgs . Overjoyed. Vienna 2005, pp. 139–141.
5. ↑ Robert Seydel: The affair of the Habsburgs . Ueberreuter, Vienna 2005, p. 141.
6. ^ Wiener Zeitung, 10./11. May 2014.
7. ↑ Daily report - Countess Elemer Lonyay. In:  Reichspost , September 9, 1914, p. 4 (online at ANNO ).
8. ^ The wreath of Countess Stephanie Lonyay. In:  Neue Freie Presse , November 23, 1916, p. 6 (online at ANNO ).
9. ↑ In order to be buried in this church, a special permit from Pope Pius XII. required. This was granted on November 18, 1942.
10. ^ Anton Klipp: Mayerling and Karlburg. Pp. 80-94; Also with Josef Derx: Karlburg Castle and the Lónyays in the Heimatblatt of the KdL in Austria, Vienna, year 1996, episodes 5/6 and 7/8.
11. ↑ German translation: “Here rests Stephanie, the wife of Prince Lónyay, Princess of Belgium from the Thuringian Wettin family and widow of the Crown Prince Austria-Hungary. She lived in the fulfillment of her duty with God and for God and in faithful love for her husband and she maintains this love in eternal life. "
12. ↑ Quoted from Hradský - Mallinerits, p. 251 (see  #Literature )
13. ↑ Lars Friedrich: The new Mayerling hodgepodge, part 2
14. ↑ Lars Friedrich: The new Mayerling hodgepodge, part 2.)
15. ^ Anton Klipp: Mayerling and Karlburg. P. 80–94, also with Lars Friedrich: The new Mayerling hodgepodge, part 2 cited