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Anna Nahowski (1860–1931) was the mistress of Franz Joseph of Austria from 1875 until 1889. She was from the age of fourteen married to the silk manufacturer Heuduck, who was heavily indebted by gambling and alcoholism. She met Franz Joseph at a walk in the park of Schönbrunn.
- 1860
- Austrian
- 1931 (aged 71)
- Royal mistress
Jun 1, 2020 · by Susan Flantzer © Unofficial Royalty 2020. Credit – Wikipedia. Anna Nahowski was the mistress of Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria from 1875 – 1889. Anna never spoke publicly about the affair during her life. She did keep a diary which was released in 1976 after the death of her daughter Helene.
Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I (German: Franz Joseph Karl [fʁants ˈjoːzɛf ˈkaʁl]; Hungarian: Ferenc József Károly [ˈfɛrɛnt͡s ˈjoːʒɛf ˈkaːroj]; 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and the ruler of the other states of the Habsburg monarchy from 2 December 1848 until his death in 1916.
- 2 December 1848 – 21 November 1916
- Princess Sophie of Bavaria
Der Kaiser und sein Hof. Ein neues Franz-Joseph-Bild, Wien 2008. On 24 April 1854 Franz Joseph married his first cousin Elisabeth (1837–1898), who was seven years his junior and the daughter of one of his mother’s sisters. The romantic circumstances of their first encounter – it was in fact Elisabeth’s elder sister Helene who had been ...
- Overview
- Early years
- Neo-absolutism, 1841–59
- The years of decision, 1859–70
Franz Joseph was the emperor of Austria (1848–1916) and king of Hungary (1867–1916). He divided his empire into the Dual Monarchy, in which Austria and Hungary coexisted as equal partners. In 1879 he formed an alliance with Prussian-led Germany. In 1914 his ultimatum to Serbia led Austria and Germany into World War I.
What was Franz Joseph’s childhood like?
Franz Joseph was the eldest son of Archduke Francis Charles and Sophia, daughter of Maximilian I of Bavaria. As his uncle Emperor Ferdinand (I) was childless, Franz Joseph was educated as heir presumptive. When revolution broke out in the Austrian Empire, Franz Joseph was proclaimed emperor at age 18 in December 1848, after Ferdinand’s abdication.
What was Franz Joseph’s family like?
Franz Joseph was married to his cousin Elisabeth of Bavaria, who was regarded as the most beautiful princess in Europe. They had four children: Sophie, Gisela, Rudolf, and Marie Valerie. Rudolf, the heir apparent, shot himself in a suicide love pact in 1889. Elisabeth was mortally stabbed by an Italian anarchist in Geneva in 1898.
What was Franz Joseph’s legacy?
Franz Joseph was the eldest son of Archduke Francis Charles and Sophia, daughter of King Maximilian I of Bavaria. As his uncle Emperor Ferdinand (I) was childless, Franz Joseph was educated as his heir-presumptive. In the spring of 1848 he served with the Austrian forces in Italy, where Lombardy-Venetia, supported by King Charles Albert of Sardinia, had rebelled against Austrian rule. When revolution spread to the capitals of the Austrian Empire, Franz Joseph was proclaimed emperor at Olmütz (Olomouc) on December 2, 1848, after the abdication of Ferdinand—the rights of his father, the archduke, to the throne having been passed over. Hopes of a revival of monarchist sentiments were raised by his radiant, youthful appearance.
Of all his mentors, the old chancellor Klemens, Fürst (prince) von Metternich, probably exerted the most lasting influence on Franz Joseph. A more profound influence, however, was that of his wife, the duchess Elizabeth of Bavaria. He married her in 1854 and remained deeply attached to her throughout a stormy marriage.
During the first 10 years of his reign, the era of so-called neo-absolutism, the emperor—aided by such outstanding advisers as Felix, prince zu Schwarzenberg (until 1852), Leo, Graf (count) von Thun und Hohenstein, and Alexander, Freiherr (baron) von Bach—inaugurated a very personal regime by taking a hand both in the formulation of foreign policy and in the strategic decisions of the time. Together with Schwarzenberg, who had become prime minister and foreign minister in 1848, Franz Joseph set out to set his empire in order.
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In external affairs Schwarzenberg achieved a powerful position for Austria; in particular, with the Punctation of Olmütz (November 1850), in which Prussia acknowledged Austria’s predominance in Germany. In home affairs, however, Schwarzenberg’s harsh rule and the formation of an intolerant police apparatus evoked a latent mood of rebellion. This mood became more threatening after 1851, when the government withdrew the promise of a constitution, given in 1849 under the pressure of the revolutionary troubles. That retraction had long aftereffects and led to the liberals’ permanent distrust of Franz Joseph’s rule. In 1853 there was an attempt on the emperor’s life in Vienna and in a riot in Milan.
After Schwarzenberg’s death (1852), Franz Joseph decided not to replace him as prime minister and took a greater part in politics himself. Austria’s mistaken policy during the Crimean War originated largely with the emperor, torn between gratitude to Russia for its help in quelling a rebellion in Hungary in 1849 and the advantage the monarchy might derive from siding with Great Britain and France. The mobilization of a part of the Austrian Army in Galicia on the borders of Russia in retrospect turned out to have been a grave error. It gained no friends for Austria among the Western powers but lost considerable goodwill that Tsar Nicholas I had earlier harboured for Franz Joseph.
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The mood of crisis after the defeat of 1859 caused Franz Joseph to pay renewed attention to the constitutional question. A period of experiments—alternating between federalistic and centralistic charters—kept the country in a permanent state of crisis until 1867. The congress of princes at Frankfurt in 1863, for which the reigning heads of all German states assembled with the sole exception of the king of Prussia, was a high point in Franz Joseph’s life. Yet the absence of the Prussian king demonstrated that Prussia no longer regarded Austria as the leading German power.
Franz Joseph had vainly tried to postpone the decision for predominance in Germany by entering into a comradeship-in-arms with Prussia in a war against Denmark in 1864. After their victory, squabbles arose between them, and war with Prussia became inevitable. The conclusion of an alliance between Italy and Prussia pointed up the dangerous possibility that both foreign-policy problems might have to be faced at the same time, yet Franz Joseph failed in his attempt to avoid an armed conflict at least with Italy. In June 1866 Austria concluded a possibly unique agreement with Napoleon III of France that stipulated that Austrian-held Venetia was to be given to the Kingdom of Sardinia regardless of the outcome of the impending war with Prussia. As the emperor considered it incompatible with the army’s honour to cede a province without fighting, war with Italy broke out despite the agreement. In later years, Franz Joseph characterized his policy of yielding territory with one hand while fighting for it with the other as honest but stupid, whereas the chancellor Friedrich Ferdinand, Graf (count) von Beust, called the agreement the most shocking document that he had ever seen. Although its defeat in the war with Prussia that the Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck had forced on the unprepared monarchy caused Austria no territorial loss in the north, it nevertheless sealed Austria’s expulsion from Germany. The victories gained by the Austrian Army in the south, moreover, could not prevent the loss of Venetia, so that Austria found itself expelled from Italy as well.
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Franz Joseph and Elisabeth, the ‘perfect couple’ of the Austrian monarchy, have gone down more in the annals of popular literature than in history. The emperor falls in love with a beautiful young princess and takes her back to his palace; such is the stuff of fairytales. But how happy was their marriage in reality?
Sep 30, 2022 · In The Empress —the new German royal drama based on the life of Austria’s Empress Sisi that debuted on Netflix this week—the first two episodes focus on her courtship with Franz Joseph I....
