Sissi the Empress

The Empress Sissi

Her life

Sisi was born as daughter of Duke Maximilian and Duchess Ludovika in Bavaria. In 1853, she got to know her cousin Emporer Franz Joseph, who was going to marry Sisi's sister Helene. Franz Joseph fell in love with Sisi immediately and decided to marry her instead of her sister. They married, Elisabeth being 16 years old. The love marriage did not work out: Sisi was an independent girl and totally unprepared for the strict protocol at court, an ambitious stepmother and a busy husband who struggled to fight revolutionary and separatist tendencies in the Habsburg empire. The Viennese aristocracy was making fun of her and her mother in law Sophie took over the control of her life. Her children were taken from her and Sisi was barely allowed to see them, putting her in deep depression and illness. After two year of cure and lodging in Madeira, Korfu and Bavaria, Sisi returned with new confidence to Vienna. She decided to take control for political issues and soon took interest in Hungary, the very troubled neighbour of Austria. In 1867 she was crowned Queen of Hungary. Sisi was obsessed with her beauty and her perfect figure and taking care of her body, resulting in anorexia. Her very liberal ideas, her call for a republic structure and her effort for the poor and troublesome made her very popular with the Austrian people. In 1870 she decided to withdraw from public life and tried to live the life of a private person. In 1898, on the 10th of September, while she was walking through Geneva, she was assassinated by a young Italian anarchist.

HER BEAUTY SECRETS

To complete this "perfection" of the silhouette, she used the goods made of seawater. Every night she soaked tissues in salt water in which she wrapped her hips to carve her figure. Thus she used the slimming and disinfiltrating actions of seawater. In the same way, she was doing sport every day, something rare for the women of the time, brisk walking, gymnastics, but especially riding, which she practiced twice a day. She had a large number of creams that she made prepare, based on fruit, alcohol, egg, but also raw meat she applied over his entire body for hours to give an appearance natural. In fact, the Empress refused to wear perfume as well as make-up, which she related to women of little virtue.

But her greatest pride was her hair that came to her heels. A real daily ritual was organized around her hairstyle. This task belonged to her lady companion, Fanny Angerer, who needed three hours to brush, wash and comb Sissi's hair. This was extremely rare at the time since women only maintained hair every two to three weeks.