Empress Elisabeth 'Sisi' Of Austria

Empress Elisabeth 'Sisi' Of Austria

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Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as Sisi, was Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary by marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph I.

Born on Christmas Eve, 1837, the future empress grew up between Munich and Possenhofen castle, on lake Starnberg, Bavaria.

Sisi enjoyed a carefree childhood, far from the constraints of court life.

Her engagement with the Emperor of Austria happened quite by chance:

Sissi was simply escorting her sister and mother to Bad Ischl, where the young Emperor planned to formally propose to her Sister, Helene.

However, the stern and quiet Helene didn’t leave much of an impression on Franz Josef.

The younger and more cheerful Sissi, however, captured his heart immediately.

The young couple wed the following spring, thrusting the young Sisi into the limelight.

Sisi was world-famous in her time as a fashion icon and trendsetter.

Tall and slender, she was considered one of the most beautiful women of her age, and her personal style was often admired and copied.

In particular, she was famous for her wasp waist, which ranged from 40-50 cm in circumference, and was achieved through corsets and the practice of tightlacing.

To further emphasize her delicate physique, she was among the first to ditch hoop skirts and petticoats, preferring a simpler, more slender silhouette.

At 32, she began refusing to sit for portraits and photographs, in an attempt to retain her youthful image.

This only added to her mystique.

While her waist was by far her most celebrated feature, the Empress was particularly proud of her thick chestnut hair, and made a point of never cutting it.

In later years, her hair went down to the floor, and simply combing it took up several hours each morning.

Washing it was an even bigger operation, that took up an entire day every three weeks.

To keep it manageable, she wore extremely elaborate braided hairstyles, created by her personal hairdresser, Fanny Feifalik.

Never far from the Empress, Feifalik became one of her closest confidants.

Thanks to her passing resemblance with the Empress, she was even used as a body double on occasion.

Maintaining such a slender figure did not come easy, and the Empress was known for fastidious dieting.

Sisi followed various trendy eating regimens of the 19th century, including the orange diet, or living off mainly milk and eggs.

She often avoided meat, instead preferring veal juices cooked into a thin bouillon to keep her strength up.

She also took steam baths to cut down her weight, and olive oil baths to preserve her skin tone.

The Empress had a habit of weighing herself, up to three times a day - in the rare cases when she approached 50 kg, she went on crash diets.

Exercise also played a big role in maintaining her beauty, and she had gymnasiums installed in all her residences.

Her dressing room in the Hofburg, was equipped with rings and bars so she could practice gymnastics during her morning routine. These can still be seen today.

Sisi used cosmetics and perfume sparingly, as she wished to showcase her natural beauty.

She tested countless skin care products, prepared either in the court pharmacy, or by a lady-in-waiting in her own apartments.

She appeared to favor "Crème Céleste" a compound of white wax, spermaceti, sweet almond oil, and rosewater.

She liked to experiment with a wide variety of facial tonics and waters.

Her night and bedtime rituals were just as demanding.

Sisi slept without a pillow on a metal bedstead, which she believed was better for retaining and maintaining her upright posture.

Raw veal or crushed strawberries, lined her nightly leather facial mask.

She was also heavily massaged, and often slept with cloths soaked in either violet, or cider-vinegar above her hips, to preserve her slim waist.

Her neck was wrapped with cloths soaked in Kummerfeld-toned washing water.

To further preserve her skin tone, she took both a cold shower every morning (which in later years aggravated her arthritis) and an olive-oil bath in the evening.

Sisi actually slept very little, and spent hours reading and writing at night.

She even took up smoking, a shocking habit for women which made her the further subject of already avid gossip.

She had a special interest in history, philosophy, and literature.

Despite her strict regimen, the Empress did indulge herself occasionally – she was partial to hearty Bavarian dishes and had a sweet tooth.

Her favorite treat was violet-flavored ice cream.

Sisi’s favorite sport by far was riding, and she acquired a reputation as a daredevil.

She was reported to be one of the best equestrians of her age.

She trained regularly in Vienna’s Spanish Riding School, and rode extensively at the Royal Hungarian residence in Gödöllö.

Of particular media interest at the time were her numerous riding excursions to the British Isles from 1876-1882, where she maintained several stables, and participated in fox and stag hunts.

A frequent riding companion, was the famed British equestrian George “Bay” Middleton, a distant ancestor of the current Princess of Wales.

Once age and health problems made riding impossible, the Empress took up fencing and hiking instead, spending up to 8 hours walking, and choosing her attendants according to their ability to keep up.

At 1:35 p.m. on Saturday 10th September 1898, Sisi and Countess Irma Sztáray - her lady-in-waiting - left the hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva, to catch the steamship 'Genève' for Montreux.

Since the empress despised processions, she insisted that they walk without the other members of her entourage.

They were walking along the promenade when the 25-year-old Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni approached them, attempting to peer underneath the Empress's parasol.

According to Contess Sztáray, as the ship's bell announced the departure, Lucheni seemed to stumble, and made a movement with his hand, as if he wanted to maintain his balance.

In reality, he had stabbed Sisi with a sharpened needle file that was 4 inches long, which he had inserted into a wooden handle.

She was pronounced dead at 2:10 p.m.

Everyone knelt down and prayed for the repose of her soul, and Countess Sztáray closed Sisi's eyes, and joined her hands.

Sisi was 60 years old, and had been the Empress of Austria for 44 years.

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Source~HistoryExtra/Wikipedia.

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https://ko-fi.com/thetudorintruders

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Empress Sisi 1865 ~ Franz Xaver Winterhalter.