Rudolf of Habsburg, symbol of an era

The intelligent, liberal-minded and sensitive Crown Prince Rudolf (1858 - 1889) was regarded as the Favourite of the nations of the Habsburg Empire. In many respects, his life can be read as exemplary for the period between 1848 and the outbreak of the First World War. The struggle between new political ideas and the traditional, the enthusiasm for science, art and culture as well as customs and morals, which also characterised society and everyday life in Innsbruck, are reflected in the figure of Emperor Franz Joseph I's son. The vast majority of Innsbruckers did not have the material means or the status of Habsburgs, but the fashions and trends under which they lived were the same.

Innsbruck's upper middle class emulated this ideal, just as Rudolf always saw himself as part of this upper middle class. He was considered well-read and educated and was interested in a wide range of subjects in keeping with the spirit of the times. In addition to Greek and Latin, he also spoke French, Hungarian, Czech and Croatian. As a private citizen, he devoted himself to writing press articles, science and travelling through the countries of the monarchy. He organised the publication of of the Kronprinzenwerka natural science encyclopaedia. Volume 13 was published in 1893 and dealt with the crown land of Tyrol.

He was also politically open to new ideas. Rudolf wrote liberal articles in the "Neue Wiener Tagblatt" under a pseudonym. Among other things, he wanted to promote land and land reforms by taxing large landowners more heavily and granting the individual nationalities of the Habsburg Empire more rights. He was particularly unpopular in conservative, rural Tyrol and among the military. Among the liberal-minded people of Innsbruck, on the other hand, he was seen as a hope for a renewal of the monarchy in the sense of a modern, federal state. The Rudolf's Fountain in Innsbruck on Boznerplatz does not commemorate the crown prince, but he was present at its inauguration.

Despite, or perhaps because of his aristocratic background, Rudolf's private life was turbulent, but not atypical of the time, in which parents and teachers were less approachable educators and more distant figures of respect. Children were brought up strictly. Neither teachers nor parents shied away from corporal punishment, even if there were limits, laws and rules for the use of domestic violence. Militarism and a focus on future gainful employment prevented the kind of childhood and youth we know today. Young men from the upper classes lived out their soldierly daydreams as armed and uniformed members of student fraternities. Rudolf's early years, when he had to undergo a military education under General Gondrecourt at the request of Emperor Franz Josef, were also less than luxurious. It was only after his mother Elisabeth intervened that harassment such as water cures, drill in the rain and snow and being woken up with pistol shots were removed from the six-year-old crown prince's daily programme.

Like many of his contemporaries, Rudolf, as a member of the upper class, found himself in an unhappy, arranged marriage. The 19th century was not the age of love marriages, even if the Romantic and Biedermeier periods are often praised as such. Aristocrats and members of the upper middle classes married out of arrogance and with the aim of preserving the dynasty. In the upper classes, wives were nothing more than jewellery for their husbands and the head of the household. Only when the often older husband had died could widows enjoy a life outside this role. Servants, maids, farmhands and maidservants were forbidden to marry for a long time. The danger that they would be unable to support their children and thus become a burden on the community was too great for the communities. This double standard of the aristocracy and upper middle classes towards the Pofl This meant that illegal abortions, full orphanages and children growing up with relatives in the countryside instead of with their parents were part of everyday life, especially in the cities.

Throughout his life, Rudolf was not averse to the fairer sex outside of marriage. In the last months of his life, Rudolf had an affair with Mary Vetsera, a girl from the rich Hungarian aristocracy who was considered particularly beautiful and was only 17 years old. At this time, he was already suffering from depression, gonorrhoea, alcoholism and morphine addiction. On 30 January 1889, Rudolf met Vetsera after spending the previous night with his long-term lover, the prostitute Maria "Mizzi" Kaspar, had spent the night. Under circumstances that have never been fully clarified, he first killed the young woman and then himself with a shot to the head. The suicide was never recognised by the Habsburg family. Zita (1892 - 1989), the widow of the last Emperor Karl, still spoke of an assassination attempt in the 1980s. Many of his subjects held the same view as Rudolf. Although hardly anyone could boast of claiming a Hungarian noblewoman as a playmate, a lover, the mores were not what pastors preached from the pulpit every day. Husbands indulged in sexual affairs with maids, mistresses and prostitutes.

The discussion surrounding the burial of the heir to the throne and his mistress revealed the Christian two-faced double standards of society in the Habsburg Empire. The economic liberalism of the elites contrasted with the conservative and strictly Catholic social model. Enlightenment and bourgeois freedoms clashed with piety and a new confessionalisation by the state churches. New church buildings went through the roof as the population grew, as shown by the Neue Höttinger Pfarrkirche and the Pfarrkirche St. Nikolaus in Innsbruck. The Tyrolean Glass Painting and Mosaic Institute could look forward to full order books. It is no coincidence that the title of emperor enjoyed its greatest popularity among European rulers between the French Revolution and the First World War. Suicide was considered a grave sin and actually prevented a Christian burial. Vetsera was buried inconspicuously at the cemetery in Heiligenkreuz near Mayerling in a small grave by the cemetery wall, while Rudolf received a state funeral after imperial intervention with the Pope and was laid to rest in the Capuchin crypt in Vienna.