Empress Elisabeth of

Bavaria

Sissi
The Restless Empress

Elisabeth of Austria
(24 December 1837 10 September 1898)

Her Royal Highness Duchess

Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie
Born in Bavaria, on Christmas Eve
The fourth child of Duke Maximilian
Joseph in Bavaria and Princess Ludovika
of Bavaria
Her home was at Possenhofen Castle

The Duke and the Princess

Possenhofen Castle

Her marriage to 23-year-old

Franz Joseph I of Bavaria

Children
Archducess Sophie of Austria-5 March
1855 29 May 1857(age 2)
Archducess Gisela of Austria-12 July
1856 27 July 1932(age 76)
Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria-21 August
1858 30 January 1889(age 30)
Archducess Marie Valerie of Austria-22
April 1868 6 September 1924(age 56)

Sophie of Austria

Gisela of Austria

Rudolf, Crown Prince

Marie Valerie of Austria

The Hungarian child

The beginning of a love story

He fell in love with her, when they met at a
resort in Bad Ischl, Upper Austria
Initially, her older sister, Helene,
nicknamed Nene, was supposed to marry
the Prince
The couple got married eight months later,
on 24 April 1854 in St. Augustines
Church, Vienna

Coronation of the couple as King

and Queen of Hungary and Croatia

The relationship with Princess

Sophie
Princess Sophie of Bavaria, Franzs
mother, was not only Sissis mother-in-law,
but also her aunt.
She was nicknamed ,,the only man in the
Hofburg for her authoritarian manner on
his son
She took away Elizabeths daughters,
Sophie and Gisela, to raise them properly

 She always thought that:

...The natural destiny of a Queen is to give an heir to the
throne. If the Queen is so fortunate as to provide the
State with a Crown-Prince this should be the end of her
ambition - she should by no means meddle with the
government of an Empire, the care of which is not a
task for women... If the Queen bears no sons, she is
merely a foreigner in the State, and a very dangerous
foreigner, too. For as she can never hope to be looked
on kindly here, and must always expect to be sent back
whence she came, so will she always seek to win the
King by other than natural means; she will struggle for
position and power by intrigue and the sowing of
discord, to the mischief of the King, the nation, and the
Empire...

"Children are the curse of a

woman, for when they come, they
drive away Beauty, which is the
best gift of the gods".

 Mainly because of her aunt, the Empress

found life at the palace to be an endless
torture
She had difficulty in adapting to the rigid
protocols and the strict etiquette

The fall in depression

After her daughters (Sophie), his
sons,her mothers, fathers and sisters
death, the Empress sank deeper intro
depression and melancholy
After Rudolfs death, she dressed only in
black for the rest of her life

 She also suffered from bulimia, as she

kept her weight at 50 kg, even after 4
pregnancies.
The Empress was also known to be
extremely obsessed with her beauty, her
main valuable thing being her long hair,
treated by her favourite hairdresser, Fanny

The death
Elizabeth of Bavaria was assassinated in
september 1898 by the 25-year-old Italian
anarchist Luigi Lucheni
He stabbed her with a neddle file.
She shortly died after being carried to the
hotel where she was staying.
Her last words were:,,What has
happened? before losing consciouness
again

 Although she is known as a tragic and

enigmatic figure in the history, she still
remains a historical icon, because of her
free spirit and of her important role on
Austro-Hungarian politics