The Washington times (Washington [D.C.]), July 16, 1922, SUNDAY MORNING, page 21
NEW VERSION OF ROYAL DEATH MYSTERY IS REVEALED
PRINCE RUDOLPH OF AUSTRIA SLAIN BY WRONGED HUSBAND
BELIEVE WARDEN KILLED HIM WHEN FOUND WITH WIFE
Aide of Francis Joseph Disproves Theory That Suicide Pact Existed Between Prince and Baroness, in Story of Life, Loves and death of Hapsburg Prince and his Mistress.
"AFFAIR" NOW HELD BACK OF STRANGE SLAYING OF HEIR
Third Version Supplements Storis of Death by His Own Hand and at Hands of Thugs in Brawl. Passing Remains Europe's Unsolved Puzzle.
By EUGENE SZEKERES BAGGER
EUROPE'S great royal mystery, the death of the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria and the beautiful Baroness Marie Vetsera the hunting castle at Mayerling, January 29 1889, may be solved by a new version offered by Gen. Baron Von Margutti.
So many conflicting and inconsistent versions of the event have been dished up to a curious public as "absolutely authentic" that historians have grown doubtful whether the veil of secrecy covering the event ever would be lift.
The baron offers a s[...] version of the tragedy which bears every outward and intrinsic mark of the truth as the one true solution.
Two versions have been given heretofore. The first, tacitly accepted by the emperor, was that the prince and baroness died in a suicide pact. The other had the prince slain in a brawl at the hunting castle and the baroness a suicide for her lost love.
Baron von Margutti was for seventeen years an aide-de-camp of the former Emperor Francis Joseph. He spent years collecting facts about the Hapsburg tragedy. The result of his investigation he gives in his memoirs. Much of his information was obtained from officials of the dismembered dual monarchy.
Like one of the others, his story has the crown prince dying for love — but not for the love of Baroness von Vetsera, but as the result of an affair with a gamekeeper's wife. The gamekeeper himself was the slayer.
A PRINCE'S FATAL LOVE
Of the practically innumerable narratives of what is usually referred to as the tragedy of Mayerling, the two principal versions have the same starting point. The Crown Prince Rudolph was a young man of lax habits, to put it mildly. He was very unhappily married to the beautiful Belgian Princess Stephanie, and had an illicit love affair with the still more beautiful Baroness Marie Vetsera, a young Austrian noble woman of Greek descent and no particular wealth and connections.
The prince decided to divorce his wife and marry the young woman. He put his plan before his father, the Emperor Francis Joseph. The latter, a peevish old monarch, opposed the idea with such vehemence — for dynastic, state and religious reasons — that his son, who was no strong character anyhow, gave up the plan, and merely begged for the favor of a last interview with the baroness, This was authorized, and he met his mistress on the evening of January 29, 1889, at the hunting lodge at Mayerling, in Lower Austria. Next morning: both of them were found dead.
Here the divergences begin. According to one version, the two committed suicide together, the crown prince shooting the girl first and then himself. The other theory is that the crown prince was either shot or killed by a blow on the head with a champagne bottle in a brawl at supper.
GREEK CALLED SLAVER.
It is supposed that the killing was done by one of the guests, a young Greek millionaire sportsman man named Baltazzi, a relation of the baroness Marie Vetsera, this version holds, was shot accidentally as she rushed into the room, attracted by the noise ; some say she was shot intentionally by Baltazzi, whose motive was either jealousy or the desire to avenge the family honor.
But there is one point on which all those conflicting accounts converge. Whether the crown prince commited suicide or was murdered — wether the lethal weapon was a gun or a champagne bottle — all testimony agrees that on his dead body there was no head, that his skull was shattered to tiny fragments.
I remember how, as a small boy in Hungary, I was scared out of my wits by a silly nurse who told me that the Crown Prince Rudolph, who had no head on his shoulders, would come and get me. It is a fact that when laid out in Capucin chapel at Vienna his head, or whatever was left of it, was covered with a white cloth, and no one save the court physicians ever saw the dead prince's face.
AN ARCHDUKE'S VERSION.
The version of the supper table brawl and the champagne bottle is offered, among other authorities, by Leopold Wolfling [for Wölfling] in his memoirs (1). Leopold Wolfling was the name assumed by the Archduke Leopold Ferdinand, Grand Duke of Tuscany, on renouncing his rank because of marriage with a middle class girl. But the suicide story, which was admitted though never stressed officially, also had its supporting authorities.
General Margutti himself for a time adopted this latter account. For one reason or another he had determined to get at the bottom of the mystery, and though he never conducted a systematic investigation, he kept his eyes and ears open and gradually pieced together a consistent account of the tragedy.
The first seemingly authentic account obtained by General Margutti on the crown prince's death came from the latter's old tutor, the General Count Latour von Traumburg. Count Latour admitted that what he knew of the Mayerling affair was not very much, but the little he knew confirmede the suicide theory. The crown prince had locked himself up in his room and blown out his brain after a struggle with his valet. About Marie Vetsera's fate Count Latour knew nothing.
BARONESS TOOK POISON.
Information as to the Baroness Vetsera's end was supplemented to General Marguttli by Frau Katherine Schratt. This famouf Viennese actress who was one of the Empress Elizabeth's closest friends
and who became, after the later's death, the intimate of the Emperor Francis Joseph.
Frau Schrat, writes Margutti, stated that Marie Vetsera, immediately after her last meeting with Rudolph at Mayerling, took poison and died a few hours before Rudolph. " This last piece of information is absolutely accurate," adds Margutti. "The emperor's physician. Dr. Kerzl, told me that on the morning of January 30 it was proved beyond doubt by the doctors who were summoned that Marie Vetsera had died several hours before the crown prince."
But the theory about the crown prince's suicide, though the one most generally accepted, did not satisfy Margutti.
In 1907 he met General Middleton, a british officer, at Ischl, in the Alps, the old emperor's regular summer residence for many years. General Middleton had been a confidante of the Empress Elisabeth. The latter favored him with many conversations about topics closest to her heart. Writes Margutti:
"I never realized the full scale of this horrible tragedy (the double death at Mayerling) until I came to speak of the crown prince in my talks with General Middleton. When I tried to bring the conversation round to the crown prince's tragic end, Middleton at once took up the tragic topic and remarked in his blunt way that the most interesting thing about Rudolph had been his death. There's nothing very noteworthy about his life, said the English general caustically.
MURDER, SAID EMPRESS
"Middleton was fairly well-informed on the subject of the crown prince's death inasmuch the Empress Elisabeth had told him a good deal about It. I was at once struck with the fact that Middleton dismissed the widespread legend of the Crown Prince's suicide as a silly invention. He was emphatic that the Empress always insisted that her only son had been murdered. Middleton could not say who had committed the crime. He only knew that Rudolph had fallen victim to one of his love affairs.
"But not the love affair with Marie Vetsera," he added in an authoritative tone.
This last bit of disclosure amazed Margutti beyond words. "The principal comment on Middteton's revelations was", he continues, "that they failed to show any connection between the death of the crown prince and that of Marie Vetsera. I had never heard this version before and I could not bring myself wholly to accept it. * * * Most of the many versions which had some claim to be authentic led to the assumption that Rudolph had committed suicide.
Such was the official version though unofficially it was widely reported that he had been murdered either by Mare Vetsera or by one of the guests present at the meeting in the remote hunting-lodge in Lower Austria. The suicide of the baroness on the other hand had apparently been proved.
"But I am now convinced, and on good grounds, that Rudolph met his death in a quite different way. I will state shortly how I come to my present opinion.
"A few days after the fateful January 30, 1889. my old friend and schoolmate Gmeiner told me that an undergamekeeper from Mayerling had revealed to him in confidence that the crown prince had been found on the morning of January 30 lying in front of the gamekeeper's lodge with a battered skull. He had himself assisted to carry the corpse into the hunting odge. Suicide was out of the question, if only because Rudolph had no weapon of any kind with him.
"Suspicion at once fell upon the gamekeeper, and he vanished without leaving any traces.
"The crown prince was subsequently never mentioned in court circles. Not before the unveiling Rudolph's monument in the park at Budapest in the spring of 1910 was any reference made to the departed by members of the court.
"I was talking with Count Ludwig Apponyi, the Hungarian grand chamberlain, and he begun to discuss the small and unpretentious monument representing the crown prince in hunting dress. I happened ever so casually to mention Gmeiner's version of the tragedy. I was immediately amazed by the im pression my words made on the count, who was usually courtesy itself.
"He stared at me like a lunatic, and it was some time before he recovered himself sufficiently to ask me whether I believed that version myself. When I replied that I was almost tempted to accept it he burst out :
"Well, it's the solemn truth. But keep It to yourself. We had it straight from a member of the hunting staff at Mayerling immediately after the crown prince's death.
"I ventured to suggest that I could not altogether reconcile this version with Marie Vetsera's presence in Mayerling and her death there. Count Apponyi admitted this gap in the story, but thought that it was bridged by the assumption that the gamekeeper had been employed by the baroness to commit the murder.
"The count seemed to know nothing further, but regarded it was probable that it wa only after Rudolph had paid his last account that Marie Vetsera had voluntarily taken her own life. He maintained that she was an exceptionally excitable and ambitious woman, whose vanity had been deeply wounded, so that she was quite capable of the deed.
"I confess I did not regard Apponyi's conclusion as convincing. A link was missing In the chain.
AIDE TELLS STORY
"It was quite a short time ago, two years after the destruction of the Hapsburg empire, that Rear-Admiral Ludwig Ritter von Hohnel, well known as an explorer, who had been one of the emperor's aides-de-camp, told me the following story. I can give the most complete assurances that he had it from people whose credibility both he and I regard as absolutely beyond suspicion.
"Count Hoyos — one of the few witnesses of the Mayerling drama — immediately after Januuary 30, 1889, wrote to a near relative in Hungary about the crown prince's death, and gave a detailed description of the circumstances. He recorded in black and white the fact that on the fatal day Rudolph was lying with a battered skull in the snow in front of the gamekeeper's lodge at Mayerling. It was exactly as the under-gamekeeper had said and Count Ludwlg Apponyi had believed.
"It appears that the crown prince had established relations some time previously with the young and attractive wife of the gamekeeper. She was known as a great beauty. The man was extremely jealous and simply would not tolerate the association. He accordingly gave Rudolph several warnings, but all in vain.
HUSBAND SLAYS PRINCE
"On the fatal night he found the crown prince in his house and at once settled accounts with him. Rudolph came to a miserable end. His corpse was thrown out into the snow in front of the lodge, and remained there till it was found next morning.
"There were several witnesses to the carrying of the body to the hunting lodge. The under-gamekeeper I have mentioned, Gmeiner's contemporary, was one of them.
"I must add that a day or two after the letter in question reached the addressee she received a telegram from Count Hoyos imploring her in Clod's name to reveal the contents of the letter to no one
and to destroy it. This was followed by a letter to the same effect. and it was stated that the reason was on the emperor's express orders.
NO CONNECTION IN DEATHS
"But it was already too late. Several persons, including presumably Count Apponyi. already knew what was in the letter.
"On the morning of January 30 1889, there was another corpse in the hunting lodge at Mayerling. It was the corpse of Marie Vetsera.
"What was to be said about her death? Was It not directly connected with that of the crownprince?
"However extraordinary it may seem, the answer is in the negative. It is true that both Rudolph and Marie Vetsera died approximately at the same time. Yet it would appear more than questionable whether the crown prince ever knew of the baroness suicide. The latter undoubtedly never heard of Rudolph's end, as the medical evidence proved conclusively that her death preceded his by several hours.
"With the help of what has been said it becomes easy to reconstruct, at any rate hypothetically, the course of events on the 29th and 30th of January, 1889.
" After receiving his father's emphatic refusal to consent to the proposed marriage with Marie Vetsera the affair was all over for the Archduke Rudolph. He probably laid the situation frankly before the baroness and thought he would be doing her a kindness by disappearing. Hence his flight to Mayerling.
"The choice of this particular spot was doubtless influenced by the presence there of the gamekeeper's wife, who has been described by Count Hoyos as a striking and unusual figure. Here, then, was an opportunity for diversion and change which would appeal to the well-known cynicism of the crown prince.
"That Marie Vetsera should hurry to Mayerling after the crownprince for a last meeting must have been very vexatious to him. In any case, the final parting took place, after which the baroness probably withdrew to one of the rooms in the castle she had occupied on previous visits and committed suicide.
"After the interview the crownprince did not trouble his head further about Marie Vetsera. He lost no time in seeking the side of the beautiful wife of the keeper, having already deliberately sent the husband off on some hunting errand, which was designed to keep him away from the lodge for some hours. In Count Hoyos' letter to which I have referred this last detail is emphasized. It appears, however, that the gamekeeper did not follow the crown prince's instructions, but remained near the house watching until the Archduke Rudolph appeared. He stopped him and the archduke met his death.
"Thus a higher dispensation had found Marie Vetsera an avenger without any effort of her own," comments General Margutti.
Text under the pictures
VICTIMS OF MYSTERY OF MAYERLING
THE Baroness Marie Vetsera was one of the great beauties of Europe. Prince Rudolph wished to marry her, but was forbidden by Francis Joseph. The baroness had parted with the prince a short time before she was found dead near him at Mayerling. She is believed to have killed herself when discarded by her royal suitor.
THE death of Prince Rudolph, heir to the Austrian throne, has been Europe's greatest mystery. Two versions of his death were advanced. One was that he died in a suicide act with the Baroness Vetsera, whom he wished to marry. The other was that he was slain in a brawl. Evidence now discloses an affair with a gamekeeper's wife.
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