Imperial Journey: Death in Vienna Everything dies. (Who wants to live forever?)

Vienna is filled with the death trappings of the Habsburg dynasty. Death comes particularly hard on a life of power and privillege and the very least one can do is go out in an operatic way.

However it can be very moving. From the Augustinians' church at the Hofburg (where the Habsburg hearts are placed in urns) to the crypts of the Stephansdom (where their internal organs are placed) and to the capuchins' Kaisergruft (Imperial Crypt) where their bodies proper are laid to rest, Vienna keeps reminding the visitor that everything and everyone dies. Memento mori.

Descent to the Stephansdom crypt...

This time I managed to visit all three resting places of the Habsburgs. More interesting are the images from the capuchins' Imperial Crypt:

Death's head decoration from the huge sarcophagus of Maria Theresia. As time progressed sarcophagi became less ostentatious and ornate however.


Sarcophagus of a Habsburg archbishop.




Poor Franz Joseph. He worked from early morning to late night, received hundreds of officials everyday, changed the face of Vienna with a massive construction project for theatres, facades and so on, and yet... all that remains to remember...Mayerling, the fall of the Empire in the Great War and his late dementia, when he was kept locked in his toilet so as not to shit all over Schönbrunn palace, as "The Good Soldier Svejk" informs us...


...and poor Sissi. Some hungarian must have left the flowers. They are so like the flowery stars that she wore on her hair...

Stars.

Appropriate indeed to think of stars today. One thinks of something when one loses it.

For the internment of Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma, wife of the last Austrohungarian Hbsburg Emperor Karl I, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, the legend for the tradition into the capuchins' crypt was played out in whole. My aunt attended the funeral and she recounted to me the ceremony, as best as she could remember:

Empress Zita

The funeral process stopped at the gate of the Kapuzinergruft. The herald knocked on the heavy door. "Who desires to enter?" replied the gatekeeper monk from inside...The Herald announced that Her Imperial Majesty the Empress-consort Zita of Bourbon-Parma, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary has passed away and is by imperial right to be interred in the crypt. "We, the dead in here, know of no Empress Zita" came the sorrow-laden voice of the monk.

The Herald knocked, the question was placed again, to which he replied that Zita of the Habsburgs has passed away. "We know of no Habsburgs" came the grief-striken reply.

The Herald knocked for a third time. The monk again asked "Who is it that desires to enter?"

There was silence, and then, the Herald said:



"Zita, a poor commoner, whose sins are as numerous as the stars in the sky..."

Tears in his eyes, the monk said "Then... she may pass".

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