She was the most beautiful woman of her time and the most unhappy too. Empress Sissi, far from being a fairy-tale ruler, was depressed, eaten away by her obsessions, her hair and her weight. Discover the morose intimacy of a woman with terribly modern neuroses.
Can you imagine Sissi with the beautiful face of Romy Schneider? Imagine that the original, Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1854-1898), was just as beautiful. But I’m sorry to disappoint you, she wasn’t as overjoyed as her fictional counterpart. You would not have wanted to have her as your best friend because the sovereign was not a model of balance. The little duchess in Bavaria (yes, in Bavaria and not from Bavaria because it is the younger branch of the Wittelsbach family) was 14 when thhe loses his love of youth carried away by tuberculosis. For his mother Ludovica, it’s a godsend. She would never have let her daughter marry a simple earl. Sissi writes poems to ease her grief. Death becomes a kind of romantic fantasy that is both terrifying and desired. Later, she will even have a life-size statue of death in her room illuminated by green lights…
One summer day in 1853, Sissi asks her mother if she can accompany her to Bad Ischl for the birthday of her cousin, the young Emperor Franz Joseph. Ludovica agrees. Attending the court will do the greatest good to his youngest follower of long rides in the Bavarian Alps when his father, Max, does not take him to drink beers in the taverns. Sissi will keep her sister Hélène company while planning her engagement with the Emperor. Ludovica planned everything with her sister, Archduchess Sophie. But nothing goes as planned. François-Joseph falls in love with the youngest of his cousins and marries her the following year when she is only 16 years old.
Sissi: depression, anorexia, OCD…
On her wedding day, Sissi realizes that her romance is turning into a nightmare. She hates performing and will never bow to the label that the Archduchess is trying to instill in her. In Vienna, Sissi passes for a somewhat silly rebel and suffers from loneliness. She thinks that motherhood will alleviate her melancholy but her stepmother takes away custody of Sophie, her first born. An empress does not pamper. Despite a terrible baby blues, Sissi becomes pregnant again. Same cause, same effects, the Archduchess literally confiscated little Gisèle from her after she was born.
The Empress rebels by demanding that her daughters follow her on a trip to Hungary. Alas, the eldest falls ill and dies in her mother’s arms. The Archduchess accuses her daughter-in-law of having killed the child by her inconsistency. The empress, consumed by guilt, sinks into depression. The births of her two other children will not change anything since she does not have the right to raise them.
From then on, Sissi never stopped fleeing this capital she hated. On permanent vacation, she lives as she pleases and lets herself be caught up in her passions, which today we would call anorexia nervosa. I know, you are going to tell me that she was modern. Certainly, but let me tell you about his “care routines“. Sissi is beautiful. She knows it. Everyone tells her so. Her husband even offers statuettes of her likeness to ambassadors. exclaiming “god she is beautiful“. To be certain of its perfection, Sissi is offered photos of the most beautiful women in the world that she collects in an album. She is one of them and she wants to remain so since she only exists through her physical appearance. To maintain her slim sylph, she imposes a strict diet. Almost no solid food but fruit juice, milk, gravy… without the meat.
In short, she starves herself despite the protein and vitamins in her diet. Sweets and violet ice cream are her only indulgence. Result: 1.72m for 50 kg including 5 kg of hair. The Empress has an auburn mane whose tips caress her heels. Her pride resides in these silky fibers which she has combed and styled two to three hours a day. The loss of every hair is a tragedy. She asks to be presented with the brushing dead on a silver platter. Today we would talk about OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). For her hairdresser, Fanny Angerer, it is a fantasy against which she has a parade: she sticks an adhesive on her apron so as to discreetly collect the dead hair. The silver board thus remains empty. The Empress would never have noticed the deception!
Result: 1.72m for 50 kg including 5 kg of hair
Sissi, a “trash” empress?
Sissi is also keen on the tone of her body. In her room, she has a wall bar and rings set up for her morning exercise next to her bathroom scale. She also practices brisk walking to the great despair of her companions who are suffocating in their corsets. The sovereign is also known for her qualities as a horsewoman. She knows how to educate horses and can ride for whole days. During her horseback rides, she puts on a fine moistened doe leather tunic. As it dries, this second skin marries its own and enhances its curves.
Whatever Sissi’s routine, no one escapes the ravages of time. After her thirties, there are hardly any pictures of her. Newspapers are reduced to photo montages. Empress murdered at 61 leaves no evidence of her faded face. Her beauty was no more than a cracked veneer unable to hide her unease.
The funniest thing, in my opinion, is that the whole world wanted to make her a character in a novel, but some were disillusioned. In 1951, Eduard Von Steiger, the president of the Swiss confederation, opened a box bequeathed to his country by the empress. It contains poems she wanted published 60 years after her death. The president, moved, begins to read them, blushes, then closes the box! He would never publish such a thing. Sissi had kept the trick of pouring out in her poems. In one of them signed Titania in homage to the character of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she compares herself to the fairy queen who fell in love with a man with the head of a donkey by bad luck. His donkey is François-Joseph!
Little love, many obsessions, ocds and anorexia, such is the real life of Sissi. A trashy Sissi… maybe I should submit her biopic to Netflix. What do you think ?
1- Sissi’s BMI, not counting her hair, is 15.2, which corresponds to morbid thinness.
Virginie Girod is a Doctor of History, specialist in the history of women. She is deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine Secrets d’Histoire. She also acts as a recurring columnist on the show but …