Who was Baroness Mary Vetsera? What did she have in common with Crown Prince Rudolf? Why did she decide to commit suicide at the age of 17? Why was she buried several times?
Baroness Mary Vetsera was born in Vienna on March 19, 1871 and attended the “Educational Institute for Noble Girls” in the Salesian monastery. Mary’s passion was sport and she was an accomplished horsewoman as well as a member of the Vienna Ice Skating Club.
Her father was the diplomat Albin Ritter von Vetsera and her mother Helene, from one of the richest Greek families of the time. Ladislaus, her older brother, died in the Ringtheater fire of 1881.
Her lineage gave her access to Viennese society, although not to the aristocratic court society she longed for. Marriage to the widowed Prince Miguel of Braganza would have meant this rise, but the 17-year-old Mary only had eyes for Crown Prince Rudolf. Her mother wanted to distract her with a trip to England, but that did nothing to change her youthful crush.
Her cousin Marie Louise von Larisch-Wallersee introduced her to him and from autumn 1888 organized secret meetings between the married Rudolf and the enamoured Mary. In her, he found a friend who wanted to go to her death with him out of love, after his former lover, the prostitute Mizzi Kaspar, had rejected this idea.
Mary was taken to the Mayerling hunting lodge by Rudolf’s coachman Josef Bratfisch, where Rudolf first shot her and then himself in the early hours of January 30, 1889. On the morning of February 1, 1889, Mary Vetsera was secretly buried in the local cemetery of Heiligenkreuz.
More than 100 years passed before Mary Vetsera’s remains were to be dissected, as she had been buried without being examined. To the great surprise, no bones were found in the coffin, as these had been stolen by a furniture dealer in Linz and later returned. The investigation revealed that Mary had indeed been shot in the head. There was another funeral in 1993.
Her death is still the subject of speculation today, above all because the Viennese court hushed up the incident.
