Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Biography

Elisabeth, known as Sisi, was born in Munich in 1837 into the Bavarian ducal branch of the House of Wittelsbach. She grew up with little formality between the family's Munich palace and Possenhofen Castle, spending much of her time riding in the countryside.

In 1853 her aunt Archduchess Sophie arranged for Emperor Franz Joseph to meet Elisabeth's elder sister Helene, but the emperor chose Elisabeth instead, and they married in Vienna in April 1854, when she was sixteen. She found the strict Habsburg court stifling, and her mother-in-law took charge of raising her first children. She had four children, Sophie, Gisela, Rudolf and Marie Valerie.

Elisabeth developed a strong attachment to Hungary and championed Count Gyula Andrássy, pressing her husband to reach terms with the Hungarians. After the Compromise of 1867 created Austria-Hungary, she and Franz Joseph were crowned King and Queen of Hungary in June 1867.

The death of her son Rudolf at Mayerling in 1889 left her deeply shaken. She withdrew from court life, travelled widely on her own and built the Achilleion palace on Corfu as a retreat. On 10 September 1898 the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni stabbed her with a sharpened file on the Geneva lakeside, and she died soon afterwards; her 44 years as empress were the longest of any Austrian empress.