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By Paolo von Schirach
December 1, 2011
GENEVA- In Geneva to speak at a conference, I decided to go out and take a walk along the lake. It was evening. I had nothing in mind that I wanted to do or see. But as soon as I got near the lake, literally a few steps from the hotel, I recognized the area. And a vivid memory came back to me. I had been there, on that very spot, several years ago, in 1998. And I had never come back to that exact place. The first time, something strange had happened. It was the end of Summer in 1998 and I was in Geneva for work, I was walking along the lake and I saw a very small plaque attached to the railing that prevents people from falling into the water. It says that, on that very spot, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Emperor Franz-Joseph, and universally known as “Sisi” or “Sissi” had been stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist, Luigi Lucheni. But the strangest thing was that the plaque said the assassination took place on September 10, 1898. And that day happened to be September 10, 1998. So it was exactly 100 years after the assassination. And, indeed, as I just realized that peculiar coincidence, I noticed not too far from the plaque in front of which I was standing that there was a small ceremony, the unveiling of a statue of Sissi, erected to mark that anniversary.
Habsburg memories
And so it was. I just happened to be in Geneva and walk by the place on that day. I felt that it was so strange. This Habsburg memory brought back stories I had heard from my Austrian grandfather and mother. How beautiful Sissi was. How unhappy she was. The death her son Rudolf. And more thoughts and more connections.
My Austrian heritage resurfaced. And yes, that includes my chance encounter, sharing a taxi cab in Washington DC, with Otto von Habsburg, (he would have been the rightful Emperor of Austria, had the monarchy survived), a few years earlier. And the beautiful feeling I had: imagine to be sitting literally next to a symbol of that bygone era, with all its glories: the Emperor. And my family’s history in Austria. And the lands in Southern Bohemia they had received as rewards. And my first visit to the Schoenbrunn Palace near Vienna, when I was 9 years old, and Sissi’s portraits over there.
It was the anniversary
And so, totally by accident I happend to there in Geneva on the 100 years anniversary of Sissi’s death. And so it was… This time around, in 2011, no anniversary. But of all the hotels that they could have selected for me in Geneva, they picked this one, just a few hundred yards from the same spot. And my casual walk, with nothing in mind. And then the flash, the sudden recollection and finding that, indeed, the Sissi plaque was right there. And a short distance away, Sissi’s statue that I literally saw unveiled for the first time on September 10, 1998. I do not why, but I felt that I had to pay my respects to my Empress. And so, for a few minutes I stood in front of the simple, small plaque on the spot where Kaiserin Elisabeth had been stabbed to death.
Connections, memories, visiting and revisiting, especially when it all happens so unintentionally –all this colors our lives. Sissi, a tragic death, followed by the end of the Monarchy that followed the Great War that Sissi never saw. So many thoughts…
And the world today. People were walking past me standing in front of the small plaque. Not one person paid any attention. May be the people in Geneva know the Sissi story quite well and have lost interest. Or may be we live so flattened in the present moment that we lose sense of the broader contexts that underpin our existence. Contexts made out also of a beautiful Austrian Empress and the deranged mind of her assassin.
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