Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Elisabeth had difficulty adapting to the strict etiquette practiced at the Habsburg court. Nevertheless, she bore the emperor three children in quick succession: Archduchess Sophie of Austria (1855–1857), Archduchess Gisela of Austria (1856–1932), and the hoped-for crown prince, Rudolf (1858–1889). In 1860, she left Vienna after contracting a lung-disease which was presumably psychosomatic. She spent the winter in Madeira and only returned to Vienna after having visited the Ionian Islands. Soon after that she fell ill again and returned to Corfu.

National unrest within the Habsburg monarchy caused by the rebellious Hungarians led, in 1867, to the foundation of the Austro–Hungarian double monarchy. Elisabeth had always sympathized with the Hungarian cause and, reconciled and reunited with her alienated husband, she joined Francis Joseph in Budapest, where their coronation took place. In due course, their fourth child, Archduchess Marie Valerie was born (1868–1924). Afterwards, however, she again took up her former life of restlessly travelling through Europe. Elisabeth was denied any major influence on her older children's upbringing, however — they were raised by her mother-in-law Princess Sophie of Bavaria, who often referred to Elisabeth as their "silly young mother."
Elisabeth embarked on a life of travel, seeing very little of her offspring, visiting places such as Madeira, Hungary, England and Corfu. At Corfu she commissioned the building of a palace which she called the Achilleion, after Homer's hero Achilles in The Iliad. After her death, the building was purchased by German Emperor Wilhelm II.

She became known not only for her beauty, but for her fashion sense, diet and exercise regimens, passion for riding sports, and a series of reputed lovers. She paid extreme attention to her appearance and would spend most of her time preserving her beauty. She often shopped at Antal Alter, now Alter és Kiss, which had become very popular with the fashion-crazed crowd, as described by the famous 19th-century writer Richard Rado:
“Everyone, from the most wealthy, to the upper middle class… almost every woman visited the shop. The shop's name even extended beyond the country’s borders… Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary (Sisi), wife of Francis Joseph I and Queen of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, was also among its clients.
Her diet and exercise regimens were strictly enforced to maintain her 20-inch (50 cm) waistline and reduced her to near emaciation at times (symptoms of what is now recognised as anorexia).

One of her alleged lovers was George "Bay" Middleton, a dashing Anglo–Scot who was probably the father of Clementine Ogilvy Hozier (the wife of Winston Churchill). She also tolerated, to a certain degree, Franz Joseph's affair with actress Katharina Schratt.
The Empress also engaged in writing poetry (such as the "Nordseelieder" and "Winterlieder", both inspirations from her favorite German poet, Heinrich Heine). Shaping her own fantasy world in poetry, she referred to herself as Titania, Shakespeare's Fairy Queen. Most of her poetry refers to her journeys, classical Greek and romantic themes, as well as ironic mockery on the Habsburg dynasty. In these years, Elisabeth also took up with an intensive study of both ancient and modern Greek, drowning in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Numerous Greek lecturers (such as Marinaky, Christomanos, and Barker) had to accompany the Empress on her hour-long walks while reading Greek to her. According to contemporary scholars, Empress Elisabeth knew Greek better than any of the Bavarian Greek Queens in the 19th century.

In 1889, Elisabeth's life was shattered by the death of her only son: 30-year-old Crown Prince Rudolf and his young lover Baroness Mary Vetsera were found dead, apparently by suicide. The scandal is known by the name Mayerling, after the name of Rudolf's hunting lodge in Lower Austria.
After Rudolf's death, the Empress continued to be an icon, a sensation wherever she went: a long black gown that could be buttoned up at the bottom, a white parasol made of leather and a brown fan to hide her face from curious looks became the trademarks of the legendary Empress of Austria. Only a few snapshots of Elisabeth in her last years are left, taken by photographers who were lucky enough to catch her without her noticing. The moments Elisabeth would show up in Vienna and see her husband were rare. Interestingly, their correspondence increased during those last years and the relationship between the Empress and the Emperor of Austria had become platonic and warm. On her imperial steamer, Miramar, Empress Elisabeth travelled restlessly through the Mediterranean. Her favourite places were Cap Martin on the French Riviera, where tourism had only started in the second half of the 19th century, Lake Geneva in Switzerland, Bad Ischl in Austria, where she would spend her summers, and Corfu. More than that, the Empress had visited countries no other Northern royal went to at the time: Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Malta, Greece, Turkey and Egypt. Travel had become the sense of her life but also an escape from herself.

On 10 September 1898, in Geneva, Switzerland, Elisabeth, aged 60, was stabbed in the heart with a sharpened file by a young anarchist named Luigi Lucheni, in an act of propaganda of the deed. She had been walking along the promenade of Lake Geneva about to board steamship Genève for Montreux with her lady-of-courtesy, Countess Sztaray, when she was attacked. Unaware of the severity of her condition she still boarded the ship. Bleeding to death from a puncture wound to the heart, Elisabeth's last words were "What happened to me?" The strong pressure from her corset kept the bleeding back until the corset was removed. Only then did her staff and surrounding onlookers understand the severity of the situation. Reportedly, her assassin had hoped to kill a prince from the House of Orléans and, failing to find him, turned on Elisabeth instead. As Lucheni afterward said, "I wanted to kill a royal. It did not matter which one."

The empress was buried in the Imperial Crypt "Kapuzinergruft" in Vienna's city centre which has for centuries served as the Imperial burial place.

Zeremonial-, Gala- und Staatswagen des Wiener Hofes

Prior to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Imperial Court Stables (today’s Museumsquartier compound) housed over 600 vehicles of the most diverse types. The privilege of using court carriages was not limited just to the Imperial Family; it was also enjoyed by individuals ranging from dignitaries and servants to court actors and squires. The spectrum of vehicles—which ranged from baroque ornamental carriages to gala, recreational and everyday carriages and cargo automobiles—was commensurately large.

Part of this fleet was taken over in 1918 by the representatives of the new Republic, and another part of it had to be handed over to the Empire’s successor states. Furthermore, numerous vehicles went to the newly created “Bundes-Fuhrwerksbetrieb” (a federally owned transport company), and these were then used for commercial purposes. The remainder were auctioned off to private buyers in order to supplement the empty state treasury.

Following the war years, the historic carriages of the Viennese Court that, from the mid-19th century onwards, had been viewable for a fee by the general the public were once again put on public display. But in the year 1922, when the former Court Stables—where the carriages were kept—was needed by the trade fair organiser Messe-AG, the historic vehicles were turned over to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. They were transferred to the former Winter Riding School at Schönbrunn Palace, where they are still housed today.

The official liveries and uniforms had lost their function following the disbanding of the court. The Kunsthistorisches Museum, therefore, had suggested in 1921 that at least part of these be preserved for museum purposes. But since they had been laid claim to by four state offices, 1922 saw only a very small selection of these items actually entrusted to the museum’s care, while the lion's share were turned over to ministries and to the Austrian State Theatre.

At first, the two new collections of the Museum of Carriages and the Department of Court Uniforms were attached to the Weaponry Collection (today’s Collection of Arms and Armour), where they received but little attention. This applied particularly to the Department of Court Uniforms, from which numerous pieces were sold or rented out to film production companies. The forced remittance of items to Germany’s Wehrmacht, such as the entire winter wardrobe of the servants, further decimated the collection’s inventory.

This situation changed when collection curator Erwin Auer succeeded in defining both the Museum of Carriages and the Department of Court Uniforms as independent, unified collections under his direction between 1947 and 1950. He assumed the Herculean task of first compiling an inventory of the as yet completely unordered holdings, producing basic descriptions and collecting eyewitness accounts. A further task was to successively repair the physical damage to the Carriage Collection that had occurred during the Second World War. Nearly half of the “Imperial Carriages”, for instance, had been smashed as a result of bomb hits.

The acquisition policy pursued with regard to the Department of Court Uniforms during this period was characterised by great foresight: alongside a multitude of uniforms worn by diplomats, civil servants and court dignitaries, objects of the Imperial Family and the great noble houses were purchased for prices that—from a present-day standpoint—were exceedingly low.

In the evaluation, research and reception of the items held by the Museum of Carriages and the Department of Court Uniforms, a new trend can be made out for the period that began in the 1990s. It is by now taken for granted that the show carriages of the ruling houses are artistically significant exponents of their respective eras: but also regarding the history of technology and in terms of research on courtly life and ceremonial practice, the holdings of the two collections are of the utmost interest. This fact is now being done justice within the collection through intensive fundamental research. From 2001 to 2007, the archives of the Oberststallmeisteramt, totalling thousands of fascicules, were systematically gone through and digitally catalogued for the first time ever. This project created a solid basis for further research on the collection holdings for decades to come.