Word: vetsera
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Died. Elisabeth Marie Petznek, 79, only child of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and Princess Stephanie of Belgium and last link to the 1889 "Mystery of Mayerling." in which her father and Baroness Marie Vetsera died in an apparent murder-suicide pact that left the Austro-Hungarian throne of the Habsburgs without a male heir; in Hütteldorf, Austria. Only five when her father died, she grew up to marry Prince Otto zu Windisch-Graetz but grew steadily disenchanted with her royal life, divorced him after 23 years to drift into socialism, marry Austrian Social Democrat Leopold Petznek...
...last day of January in 1889 Archduke Rudolph, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was found shot dead in the royal hunting lodge at Mayerling. Beside him, and apparently the second member of a suicide pact, lay the body of the young Countess Maria Vetsera. Their deaths were the culmination of a hopeless love affair--hopeless because Rudolph had been married long before he ever met Maria. Such a story is the stuff of which fairy tales, or even tragedy, is made, but it certainly did not provide the material for a successful television show...
...lushly romantic Mayerling, Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux played out the theory of a suicide pact, inspired by Emperor Franz Joseph's order to break off the love affair. The real dope, whispers the new picture confidentially, is that the Prince (Jean Marais) and Marie Vetsera (Dominique Blanchar) were victims of a political intrigue. They planned suicide, all right, even left notes. But after they changed their minds, a German agent slipped into the bedroom and finished the job with his pistol...
...later married Rudolph's widow, reconstructs the affair as the climax of a psychopathic melodrama, motivated by Rudolph's unhealthy fascination for sex and death. According to Author Lonyay's version, the bored, philandering Rudolph, morbidly intrigued with the idea of double suicide, talks mistress Marie Vetsera (his third choice for the role) into the act, then takes ten hours to shoot himself after finishing...
...stricken when he heard the news. Years before, a tailor had tried to kill him, and ever since he had used the word "tailor" to describe anything that he considered utterly contemptible. So now he shrieked: "My son died like a tailor!" -and proceeded to suppress the story. Mary Vetsera was buried secretly. As for Rudolph: "His Imperial and Royal Highness [has] died suddenly of heart failure," said the Court communiqu...