Sissi (Elisabeth) and Ludwig II should need no introduction to regular readers. The Austrian empress and the Bavarian king were cousins and – as we see below – might have been in-laws as well if Ludwig hadn’t broken off his engagement with Sissi’s sister Sophie. But even greater than bonds of blood and wedlock was their shared sensibility – wilful, reclusive, eccentric, otherworldly. This as much as what they did or said or created is what inspired writers and artists of their own and later ages, and it is above all these secret legacies which I have tried to map here. This requires some abridgment – see here, for example, for the full rundown of Ludwig-inspired cinema – but hopefully it captures the royal cousins’ major points of psychic intersection with kindred spirits.

click through for a more legible view

Further reading
Sissi on horseback, Anselm Kiefer | Elisabeth(s), The 12-step Sissi lifestyle plan, Sissi & Romy (incl. Romy Schneider), Phantom of the empire, Dress-down Friday: Sissi (Sissi)
Rex Luna, Let them eat kuchen, Sewell on Ludwig, Ludwig at the movies, An eternal mystery (Ludwig)
Thin white archduke, Ludwig-Viktor-Gasse (Archduke Ludwig Viktor)
Places: Miramare (a whole Habsburg clusterfumble)
Places: Vittorialie degli italiani, D’Annunzio’s Cave (Gabriele d’Annunzio)
The countess in the afterlife, A Casati family tree, A Casati picture gallery, Casati continues to captivate…, Strange Flowers guide to London: part 3, Requiem for a Marchesa, Dress-down Friday: Marchesa Casati (Marchesa Casati)
Dress-down Friday: Robert de Montesquiou, Places: Palais Rose, Le Vésinet (incl. Casati), The hands of Robert de Montesquiou, A Lorrain special, part 2 (Robert de Montesquiou)
Dress-down Friday: Bibi-la-Purée, Verlaine’s funeral, Strange Flowers guide to London: part 2 (Paul Verlaine)

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Scary, no?

Did you ever have a dream where you’re walking through a closed-up wing of a crumbling palace and then you come to a door and you know you’re not supposed to open it but you do anyway? Well, no neither did I, but if you did, can’t you just imagine this wraith-like vision turning slowly towards you like something out of Poe as you’re too stunned and shocked to close the door again – ja? Can I help you?

The lugubrious, mildly terrifying young man returning your startled gaze is Archduke Ludwig Viktor – youngest brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph – who was born on this day in 1842. Thanks to inbreeding the Habsburgs generally found themselves on a physical attraction scale sliding from homely to hideous and Ludwig, bless him, fit right in among the portraits of his fugly forefathers.

It was a face only a mother could love and love him she did. After having produced an heir and two spares, Ludwig’s mutti ignored the fact that he wasn’t the girl she had longed for and dressed him like one anyway. If (and it’s a big if) you believe nurture trumps nature, the fact that this mama’s boy grew up as gay as a tree frog would offer you a satisfying narrative. Indeed Ludwig seemed determined to fulfil every quality the common person might ascribe to an “invert”: he was a flighty, pleasure-seeking reprobate who loved the theatre, collected art and antiques, wore women’s clothing, bitched incessantly and couldn’t be trusted with a secret. The imperial double-headed eagle was an apt symbol for the two-faced archduke. His sister-in-law Sissi was initially warmly disposed to him, until things she told him in confidence came back to her; finally, she refused to have a conversation with him unless a third party was present to verify it. Nonetheless the empress’s sister Sophie was picked out as a possible bride for Ludwig, but she rejected him (poor hapless Sophie would be engaged to and then dumped by another gay Ludwig, the so-called Mad King of Bavaria, and would eventually die in a fire).

No oil painting

The 21-year-old hedonist archduke about town needed a new crib, not least for his notorious parties, noted for both their extravagance and their low female turnout. He commissioned an Italianate palace on the new Ringstraße, the grand boulevard which sprang up on the site of Vienna’s recently razed city walls. It was the kind of ostentatious pile thought proper for a member of the imperial family, with statues of the great and good gracing the façade. The observant passer-by might have noticed among them a representation of 18^th century Franco-Austrian military commander Prince Eugene; a butch choice at first glance until you learn that Eugene was as fond of frocking up and man-love as Ludwig.

Though Ludwig’s own military career foundered, he always had an eye for a comely soldier, a weakness which triggered his expulsion from Vienna. His inclination had always been an open secret, and Franz Joseph had even joked that he should be given a ballerina as an adjutant to ensure nothing untoward would transpire. But Ludwig was getting reckless and had a reputation for spending hours in the Centralbad, a prestigious complex of Orientalist steam baths, where his (no doubt pruny) hands were apt to wander. The decisive incident came when Ludwig hit on an officer who, instead of removing the Imperial and Apostolic hand from his leg and uttering a polite but firm nein danke, gave the archduke a black eye. To avoid further scandal the emperor sent Ludwig into internal exile in his provincial bolthole, Schloss Kleßheim in Salzburg.

There, away from the strictures of court, he had a grand blue and white pool installed and would invite army officers to use it but – ach how silly of me! – forget to provide them with swimming costumes. But it wasn’t all pool parties and arrant campery; over time Ludwig became the embodiment of noblesse oblige, his charitable efforts for the Salzburgers making him the people’s archduke of hearts. And in the end the pink sheep of the Habsburgs outlived the empire – ha! – dying in 1919 on the first day of the conference in Versailles which would definitively abolish the old order of which Ludwig Viktor was one of the most entertaining representatives.

Ludwig’s Salzburg digs had a strange afterlife. A dance school run on Isadora Duncan’s pedagogic principles operated there in the 1920s, while the Nazis later took it over as a guest house and it was the scene of a number of meetings between Hitler and Mussolini (it was also riddled with listening devices). It now serves as Salzburg’s main casino.

Which, oddly, was what initially happened to the palace back in Vienna; before the First World War, Ludwig handed it over to the military for use as an officers’ casino. These days, if Ludwig’s ghost were to return he would have to make his way through – ugh – a TGI Friday’s on the ground floor but would be delighted to find much of the rest of the building given over to the city’s main theatre company.

And his ghost would feel right at home in the Centralbad; it is now Kaiserbründl, one of Europe’s most luxurious gay saunas.

Archduke Ludwig Viktor, born on this day in 1842, was the youngest of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph’s three brothers. I first wrote about him two years ago, describing how the Archduke’s bathhouse indiscretions saw him banished from Vienna to provincial Salzburg (and I recently found an uncredited paraphrase of my post – hiya!). But my interest in the pink sheep of the Habsburgs was reawakened by the discovery of a remarkable pamphlet in Berlin’s Staatsbibliothek. It was written in 1923 by Max Reversi and bears the title Erzherzog Ludwig Viktor von Österreich: Eine philosophische Studie (“Archduke Ludwig Viktor of Austria: A philosophical study”). Despite the title it contains little philosophy, although it is long on polemics.

Its paper not so much yellowing as browning, its edges crumbling, Reversi’s cheaply-printed essay has aged poorly. It was published in Berlin by Adolf Brand, also responsible for Der Eigene, the first-ever gay periodical. Reversi’s thoughts were pointedly printed along with two poems by Frederick the Great, Prussia’s celebrated queen. Ludwig had died just four years previously, and in outing him Reversi was daringly engaging with recent events rather than retelling what everyone already knew about a few long-dead Greeks. The pamphlet thus represents Weimar Berlin’s emerging gay movement branching out into what we would now consider a queer reading of history.

Reversi not only sympathises with Ludwig’s ruin, he singles out Archduke Franz Ferdinand as its chief architect. Ludwig’s nephew nursed a lifelong dislike for his flamboyant, gossipy uncle. A passionate hunter who apparently felled some half a million animals in his lifetime, Franz Ferdinand once shot a white deer and smirked,“doesn’t it look like Uncle Ludwig?”

“Luzi Wuzi”, as he was often known, adored balls: on the dancefloor he was said to move with “the exaggerated and precious grace of an 18th century prince”. The decor of his apartments was the talk of Vienna. In short, he was light on his feet and good with colours. He even frocked up for the occasional theatrical performance. But still the emperor didn’t twig that his brother was not as other men.

And then: “Archduke Ludwig seems to have lost any sense of what was permissible,” asserts Reversi. “Perhaps he wanted to enjoy his life one more time before he was caught by the already palpable grip of dark forces, forces that seek to destroy anything which casts doubt on their teachings.” Although ambiguously worded, the pamphlet suggests that Franz Ferdinand arranged the decisive incident which precipitated Ludwig’s fall. Once Ludwig made a pass too far in the bathhouse and was rudely rebuffed by an affronted soldier, Franz Ferdinand hurried to bring Franz Joseph’s ignorance to an end.

Humiliation was swift. Ludwig was no longer permitted to wear military uniform, his servants were denied their accustomed purple and silver livery and the wheels of the Archduke’s carriage were now black instead of gold. But the changes weren’t just aesthetic; Ludwig was banished to his summer residence, Salzburg’s Schloss Kleßheim. The Salzburgers, who were well aware of Ludwig’s reputation, nonetheless embraced their good-hearted imperial guest, who excelled in charitable works.

But even here, according to Reversi, the long arm of Franz Ferdinand continued to operate. He set a honey trap in the form of a comely coachman and when Ludwig took the bait, he was forced to undergo brutal, primitive psychiatric treatment. He finally ended up confined to a suite of three rooms, watched over by nuns.

Meanwhile the Habsburg dynasty hastened to its demise. Ludwig’s brother Maximilian was executed, as we saw, in 1867 and his nephew Crown Prince Rudolf killed himself in 1886. Ten years later Karl Ludwig (Franz Ferdinand’s father), a religious zealot, died after drinking contaminated water from the River Jordan. Sissi was taken out by an anarchist in 1898 and then – clearly heeding his father’s lesson in dramatic irony – Franz Ferdinand the compulsive hunter was felled by a bullet. Ludwig’s nemesis was no more, but of course his demise triggered the bout of protracted unpleasantness that was the First World War. At the end of it Franz Joseph was dead, the family business in ruins, and against all odds Ludwig Viktor was the last man standing. But he had little time to savour the victory, dying in 1919. A loyal servant had to beg for the upkeep of Ludwig’s beloved dog, Pamperl, and the Archduke himself was conveniently forgotten by the Austrians.

Well, not entirely forgotten. In Salzburg, a laneway a few streets from the Archduke’s palace bears his name. And like its namesake, Ludwig-Viktor-Gasse is largely hidden from view and completely, gloriously bent.

Now Italy’s easternmost city, Trieste was once the primary seaport of the Austrian Empire. In 1859 Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, brother of Emperor Franz Joseph, commissioned a castle north-west of Trieste’s city centre, on an outcrop overlooking the Adriatic.

He and his wife Charlotte, daughter of the King of Belgium, moved into the still-unfinished Castello di Miramare, or Schloss Miramar as they knew it, in 1860. It was designed by Carl Junker, a largely forgotten Austrian architect who otherwise specialised in engineering projects. The serene, light-coloured stone of the castellated exterior stood in contrast to the heavy, neurotically over-decorated interior, a style then popular in Napoléon III’s France.

And it was the French emperor who triggered the chain of events that brought Miramare’s darkest association. Seeking control over Mexico, he convinced Franz Joseph to let him install Maximilian as emperor. Eager for some kind of meaningful role, Charlotte pressed her husband to accept.

And so in 1864 a Mexican delegation of dubious legitimacy arrived at Miramare to formally offer the crown, to be received in a bedroom because the only other sizable room available was monopolised by an immovable billiard table. A few days later and Maximilian and Charlotte, dressed in prescient mourning black, set off from Miramare in tears. Among the huge crowd was Maximilian’s cross-dressing brother Archduke Ludwig Viktor.

Even as the imperial project foundered and Maximilian was hung out to dry by the European powers, including his own brother, his mind wandered ever back to Miramare. He continued to send back plans for further building work and even plant specimens for the extensive landscaped gardens. Charlotte returned to Europe in 1866 to solicit aid. Unhinged by anxiety, she travelled to Rome to petition the Pope, and became so paranoid that she would only eat chickens which she kept for that purpose in her hotel room.

The following year, Maximilian was executed after a coup led by Benito Juárez. By now Charlotte was back at Miramare, but such was her fragility that her doctors didn’t dare inform her of Maximilian’s death for months. She spent the rest of her life commuting between lunacy and lucidity, only dying in 1927.

Sissi arriving at Miramar

It was one of the most absurd episodes in the gothic carnival of wretchedness that characterised the last few decades of Habsburg rule, and its memory hung heavy over Miramare. Maximilian’s sister-in-law Sissi (Empress Elisabeth) was a frequent visitor in the late 19th century as she criss-crossed Europe in search of…well, who knows?

Tragic destinies and hubris on an imperial scale proved irresistible themes to artist and proto-hippy Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach who stayed in Trieste in 1899. For him Maximilian was “the victim of his own ‘Christian’ imperial delusions”. He painted Miramare at least four times. His images are imbued with the same melancholic spirit as these lines about Miramare written by Trieste-born poet Theodor Däubler: “Thou shalt tremble deeply at thy emptiness/thou art already woven round with myth/the sea and thy mourning will endure”.

With the fall of the Austrian Empire at the end of World War One, Trieste suffered a decline in prestige and in the 20th century became better known for its literary associations, particularly the long period that James Joyce and his wife Nora spent there. Long afterwards Joyce wrote to Nora: “I long to see the lights twinkling along the riva as the train passes Miramar.”

In the 1930s Miramare was occupied by military commander Duke Amadeo of Savoy-Aosta, who left in 1937 to take up his post as Governor-General of Italian East Africa. Like Maximilian, he was also fated not to return from his absurd imperial adventure, dying in Nairobi in 1943.

The Castello di Miramare opened as a museum in 1955. In 1964 it featured in the German thriller Wartezimmer zum Jenseits (“Eternity’s waiting room”, released in the US as Mark of the Tortoise), based on an Edgar Wallace novel. The castle is meant to be the nerve centre of an international crime syndicate whose chieftain is – naturally – in a wheelchair. It’s not a great film by any means, but it does have Klaus Kinski and Hildegard Knef (what was I going to do, not watch it?), and exploits Miramare’s sinister presence to the full.

Jan Morris brilliantly evokes Trieste’s manifold layers of significance in her 2001 book Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, in which she describes the city as “an allegory of limbo” and Miramare as “a little like a romantic idealization of the empire itself, a fairy-tale mock fortress”. “It stands on its promontory weeping, and to my eyes even in the sunshine its walls are never sparkling. A pleasant park surrounds it, and its rooms are full of treasures, but nobody who goes there can fail to sense its numen of regret.”

The melancholy which is “Trieste’s chief rapture” according to Morris, continues to shroud the seaside Castello di Miramare.

The Habsburgs were not noted for attractive offspring

God bless the homosexual men in my life. Unlike those serious, straight fellows who are always going on and on about dominion and defense strategies, polishing swords and adjusting their packages, the fops at Court have always been far more entertaining and personable.

Take my cousin Mad Ludwig. O sure, he had his issues–falling in love with his psychiatrist, obsessing over his fairy castle–but Ludwig II had an appreciation for the finer things. He kept Wagner in Steinways and patronized many a sculptor, filling his halls with marble busts and glamourous facades. Ludwig, who I’ve written about several times, was my playmate and confidante during those crazy Crimean years and various uprisings.

But Ludwig II wasn’t the only Mad Ludwig in my life.

My husband’s youngest brother, a man the Habsburgs literally kept in the closet (one offsite, as it turns out) was also named Ludwig. Ludwig Viktor, commonly referred to as the Archduke Lutzi Wutzi.

Lutzi made a far more attractive lady, don't you think?

Like Ludwig II, Lutzi had an eye for design. He commissioned a fancy Italian-style palace on the ring where he hosted his infamous single-sex soires inviting guests to “dress in costume,” wink-wink.

As the baby in a family of boys, Lutzi was coddled by his mum, the ever-protective Archduchess Sophie. Rumor has it that the matriarch, lamenting that she had no girls, would dress her youngest boy up in gowns and crinolines. I suppose the outfits grew on him, as he seemed much more comfortable pantsless.

...though this likeness of Lutzi is just plain scary

As with her other sons, the Archduchess was quite meddlesome in matters of betrothal, eventually setting her sights on my youngest sister–her namesake, Sophie Charlotte–as the perfect bride. Sophie, perhaps the prettiest of all of us Wittelsbach daughters, took one look at her intended and commenced to vomit. (Unfortunately for dear Sophie Charlotte, the family also tried hooking her up with the other gay Ludwig–the poor dear had quite a complex, and all but swore off men entirely–but that’s a story for a different day.)

I adored my brother-in-law, however, and we spent many afternoons together in the royal apartments over tea, where he offered good counsel on fashion and accessories while gossiping about who at Court was with child versus merely fat–splendid girl talk. Alas, dear Lutzi could not keep a secret, and after many a divulgement, I had to banish him from my inner circle.

Just as well, however, as my Franzl soon had to banish him from Vienna proper after one of his Orientalist steam bath encounters resulted in an officer giving the archduke a black eye when his royal hand squeezed the soldier’s very heterosexual knee. To avoid further scandal my emperor sent his baby brother into internal exile in his provincial bolthole, Schloss Kleßheim in Salzburg, where he lived notoriously and happily ever after.

Scary, no?

Did you ever have a dream where you’re walking through a closed-up wing of a crumbling palace and then you come to a door and you know you’re not supposed to open it but you do anyway? Well, no neither did I, but if you did, can’t you just imagine this wraith-like vision turning slowly towards you like something out of Poe as you’re too stunned and shocked to close the door again – ja? Can I help you?

The lugubrious, mildly terrifying young man returning your startled gaze is Archduke Ludwig Viktor – youngest brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph – who was born on this day in 1842. Thanks to inbreeding the Habsburgs generally found themselves on a physical attraction scale sliding from homely to hideous and Ludwig, bless him, fit right in among the portraits of his fugly forefathers.

It was a face only a mother could love and love him she did. After having produced an heir and two spares, Ludwig’s mutti ignored the fact that he wasn’t the girl she had longed for and dressed him like one anyway. If (and it’s a big if) you believe nurture trumps nature, the fact that this mama’s boy grew up as gay as a tree frog would offer you a satisfying narrative. Indeed Ludwig seemed determined to fulfil every quality the common person might ascribe to an “invert”: he was a flighty, pleasure-seeking reprobate who loved the theatre, collected art and antiques, wore women’s clothing, bitched incessantly and couldn’t be trusted with a secret. The imperial double-headed eagle was an apt symbol for the two-faced archduke. His sister-in-law Sissi was initially warmly disposed to him, until things she told him in confidence came back to her; finally, she refused to have a conversation with him unless a third party was present to verify it. Nonetheless the empress’s sister Sophie was picked out as a possible bride for Ludwig, but she rejected him (poor hapless Sophie would be engaged to and then dumped by another gay Ludwig, the so-called Mad King of Bavaria, and would eventually die in a fire).

No oil painting

The 21-year-old hedonist archduke about town needed a new crib, not least for his notorious parties, noted for both their extravagance and their low female turnout. He commissioned an Italianate palace on the new Ringstraße, the grand boulevard which sprang up on the site of Vienna’s recently razed city walls. It was the kind of ostentatious pile thought proper for a member of the imperial family, with statues of the great and good gracing the façade. The observant passer-by might have noticed among them a representation of 18^th century Franco-Austrian military commander Prince Eugene; a butch choice at first glance until you learn that Eugene was as fond of frocking up and man-love as Ludwig.

Though Ludwig’s own military career foundered, he always had an eye for a comely soldier, a weakness which triggered his expulsion from Vienna. His inclination had always been an open secret, and Franz Joseph had even joked that he should be given a ballerina as an adjutant to ensure nothing untoward would transpire. But Ludwig was getting reckless and had a reputation for spending hours in the Centralbad, a prestigious complex of Orientalist steam baths, where his (no doubt pruny) hands were apt to wander. The decisive incident came when Ludwig hit on an officer who, instead of removing the Imperial and Apostolic hand from his leg and uttering a polite but firm nein danke, gave the archduke a black eye. To avoid further scandal the emperor sent Ludwig into internal exile in his provincial bolthole, Schloss Kleßheim in Salzburg.

There, away from the strictures of court, he had a grand blue and white pool installed and would invite army officers to use it but – ach how silly of me! – forget to provide them with swimming costumes. But it wasn’t all pool parties and arrant campery; over time Ludwig became the embodiment of noblesse oblige, his charitable efforts for the Salzburgers making him the people’s archduke of hearts. And in the end the pink sheep of the Habsburgs outlived the empire – ha! – dying in 1919 on the first day of the conference in Versailles which would definitively abolish the old order of which Ludwig Viktor was one of the most entertaining representatives.

Ludwig’s Salzburg digs had a strange afterlife. A dance school run on Isadora Duncan’s pedagogic principles operated there in the 1920s, while the Nazis later took it over as a guest house and it was the scene of a number of meetings between Hitler and Mussolini (it was also riddled with listening devices). It now serves as Salzburg’s main casino.

Which, oddly, was what initially happened to the palace back in Vienna; before the First World War, Ludwig handed it over to the military for use as an officers’ casino. These days, if Ludwig’s ghost were to return he would have to make his way through – ugh – a TGI Friday’s on the ground floor but would be delighted to find much of the rest of the building given over to the city’s main theatre company.

And his ghost would feel right at home in the Centralbad; it is now Kaiserbründl, one of Europe’s most luxurious gay saunas.