The poverty of the lower classes and of his own life made Lucheni hate authority. In 1898, Lucheni returned to Switzerland where he did some construction work. Lucheni served in the Italian Army from 1894 – 1897. He left foster care when he was sixteen-years-old and worked odd-jobs in Italy, Switzerland, and Austria-Hungary. Lucheni was moved to Italy in 1874 and spent his childhood in orphanages and with foster families. His father is unknown and his mother was an Italian worker named Luigia Laccheni who left her son at a foundling hospital. Twenty-five-year-old Luigi Lucheni was born in Paris, France on April 22, 1873. For more information, see Unofficial Royalty: Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria.On January 30, 1889, at Mayerling, a hunting lodge in the Vienna Woods which Rudolf had purchased, Rudolf shot his 17-year-old mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera and then shot himself in an apparent suicide plot.

Elisabeth felt emotionally distant from her husband and fled from him, as well as her duties at court, by frequent traveling.Ĭrown Prince Rudolf married Princess Stephanie of Belgium, daughter of King Leopold II of the Belgians. Although her husband loved her, Elisabeth had difficulties adjusting to the strict Austrian court and did not get along with Imperial Family members, especially Sophie Friederike of Bavaria, Archduchess of Austria, her controlling mother-in-law who was also her maternal aunt. The marriage was not a happy one for Elisabeth. The heir to the throne was their son Crown Prince Rudolf. Franz Joseph and Elisabeth were married on April 24, 1854, at the Augustinerkirche, the parish church of the Imperial Court of the Habsburgs, a short walk from Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria.Įlisabeth and Franz Joseph had three daughters and a son. Five days later their engagement was officially announced. Franz Joseph told his mother that if he could not marry Elisabeth, he would not marry at all. Instead, Franz Joseph fell in love with the 15-year-old Elisabeth. In 1853, Helene, the eldest daughter in the family, traveled to the resort of Bad Ischl, Upper Austria with her mother and younger sister Elisabeth to meet her first cousin Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria with the hopes that Helene would become his bride. She was the fourth of the nine children of Maximilian Joseph, Duke in Bavaria, from a junior branch of the House of Wittelsbach, and Princess Ludovika of Bavaria, the daughter of Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria and his second wife Caroline of Baden. Empress Elisabeth of Austria, 1897 Credit – WikipediaĮlisabeth, Duchess in Bavaria, known as Sisi, was born on December 24, 1837, at Herzog-Max-Palais (Duke Max Palace) in Munich, Kingdom of Bavaria, now in Bavaria, Germany.

Elisabeth and franz joseph