10.9. 1898 Murder of Empress Elisabeth of Bavaria

The Austrian Empress Elisabeth of Bavaria was the victim of an assassination attempt in 1898 while staying at the Hotel Beau Rivage in Geneva.

In the summer of 1898, Elisabeth spent a precious fortnight with Franz Joseph in Ischl. From there she then went to the baths at Nauheim, but her mental state did not otherwise improve. She was all drawn to Switzerland, to Lake Geneva, which she had grown very fond of. She had already written of it in an earlier letter, "It has a completely different colour, quite like the sea."

9. On September 9, 1898, Elisabeth stayed at the Hotel Beau Rivage in Geneva under the false name of Countess von Hohenembs. The hotelier, however, knew her from previous stays and boasted of this rare guest to a local journalist. The next day, information about the Austrian Empress's visit appeared in the local newspaper, where it was read by a local 25-year-old Italian anarchist, Luigi Lucheni.

"He originally wanted to assassinate Prince Henri of Orléans in Geneva, but he changed his travel programme and did not come to the city. So the assassin wanted to go back to Italy, where his victim was to be King Umberto. Mostly, Lucheni wanted to kill a prominent aristocrat whom he hated to the depths of his soul," writes Jan Bauer in Women of the House of Habsburg.

But Lucheni's problem was that he had no money for the return trip to Italy. A glance at the newspapers, however, offered him an alternative object of attack. He bought a triangular file and lurked at the hotel for the Empress. Elizabeth had had a bad night. In the evening she surprised Countess Irma Sztáray, who was accompanying her, with a strange question: 'What do we know about peace and well-being after death? No one has returned from there."

The next day, as the two ladies walked from the hotel to the steamer landing, a young man ran towards them on the quay of Lake Geneva. Irma later described the incident as follows: "Unconsciously I step forward, thus shielding the Empress from him, only the man now acts like one who has stumbled badly, rushes forward, and at the same moment thrusts his fist against the Empress. She falls without a word, as if struck by lightning, and I, bereft of my senses, bow down over her with a single despairing cry. Her eyes betrayed that she was fully conscious."

The two ladies still made their way along the bridge to the ship. Suddenly the Empress uttered a pain in her breast. Countess Irma thought she could not breathe, so she loosened Elizabeth's black lace blouse. It was only then that she noticed that there was a growing dark spot on the batiste chemise near her heart. When the Empress was brought back to the hotel on a stretcher, the doctor could only pronounce her dead.

Luigi Lucheni was found guilty in court of murdering the Empress of Austria. The jury's deliberations were brief and the result unanimous. The assassin was given life imprisonment. Twelve years later, he hanged himself with a leather belt in his cell.

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