We’ve covered Vienna from a couple of different angles now. In our first article, we focused on Vienna’s place in the modern day, and it’s quirky geopolitical positioning between ‘the West’ and the so-called “Axis of Disorder”. In our second article, we took a deep dive into the classical culture—especially music—that is so heavily associated with this city. I’ve been forced to reference Vienna’s history books more than once now, but today is where we’re going to take a deep dive into those history books. And we’re going to do so with the aim of exploring one particular character in Vienna’s story: the House of Habsburg.
It’s actually a whole bunch of characters with a common lineage—think House Targaryen vs House Lannister in Game of Thrones. The House of Habsburg is on that level for European history.
House of Habsburg 101
First, let’s zoom out and talk about European royals in general.
To me—despite that fact that I am current living in a country that has a King (the United Kingdom)—talking about these historical royal dynasties feels completely divorced from the present day. But in truth, these royal houses have played important roles in some very recent events! And when you really start to map out who is related to whom… it’s an extremely small world. I had originally assumed that the monarchs ruling over European countries were, themselves, descended from that country, but this is not the case!
To give a prominent example, the late Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, Prince Philip, was actually born in Greece and came from the royal lines of Greece and Denmark. I’d grown up thinking of him as sort of a mascot for England, but he was *gasp* an IMMIGRANT! If we go back a couple more generations, we discover that the current monarchs of Denmark, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK are all descended from Queen Victoria.
Another notable example is Czar Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, who—along with his entire family—was famously murdered by the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution, which established the Soviet Union. Well, Nicholas was actually of German and Danish descent, and not-so-distantly related to the people who were (at the time) sitting on the thrones of Denmark, Greece, the UK, and Germany.
It was a super complicated system of inter-marrying amongst the most powerful families in Europe that managed to keep power concentrated in the hands of as few people as possible by—to oversimplify this—forcing each subsequent generation of children to marry their cousins. It’s basically an inbred oligarchy.
Okay, now back to the Habsburgs
The House of Habsburg is one of the most important dynasties in European history. Their origins are bit murky, but their collective ascent to nobility as a family can be traced all the way back to the 900s. They were lords controlling patches of territory in central Europe who—over the course of generations—fought their way to the very top. Starting in 1440 when they were at the helm of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburgs were in control of major world powers until the early 1900s.
Here’s a fun fact: one of the more famous members of the House of Habsburg is Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo was the trigger for WWI. As you may recall from history class, this is the war that saw the dissolution of a number of old-world countries, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.
Likewise, not all of the countries that the Habsburgs ruled over still exist (e.g. Bohemia, Dalmatia, Sicily, Lombardy-Venetia, Galicia-Lodomeria, Slavonia, etc.), but a lot of them do! The list of present-day countries that were once ruled by the House of Habsburg include Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Spain, Portugal… and Mexico!
And to extend this list to include the the modern-day countries whose territory was once (at least partially) under Habsburg control of some sort… there’s also the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czechia, Serbia, Romania… and probably even more. Honestly this history gets super confusing. I’m sure that MANY PhDs have been done solely on tracing the Habsburg family tree. So, for lil’ ol’ me trying to trace all of the different family lines and territories through the centuries… it was starting to feel like a lost cause. Here’s the summary:
Looking at the big picture of European monarchy—the Habsburgs and otherwise—I couldn’t help but think about just how 👏 much 👏 blood 👏 is on the hands of these families. And the fact that they were all intermarrying to keep hold of power makes it even weirder. To have this bloodthirsty oligarchy of inbred, nepo-baby tyrants running the world for so long… I can almost start to understand why the “lizard people” conspiracy got so much traction. These super powerful people can seem like such sociopaths that they don’t even feel human when you start to look at the big picture.
To bring this into the present, I’ll share an episode of 30 Rock shows a hilarious portrayal of the fictional Prince Gerhardt Hapsburg, who was supposed to be the last of the Habsburg royal line. The joke here is that he’s in such poor health because of generations of inbreeding… and unfortunately, it’s funny because it’s kind of true. 😅
As an American, watching the monarchs of today justify their existence to their tax payers is… interesting. However, surprisingly, there is a lot of love for the remaining monarchies left amongst the general public! Even I felt sad when Queen Elizabeth died. Given that I had yet to even visit England at the time, this seemed to defy all logic. But the mystique of royalty is undeniable.
Today, we’re going to see some of this love pop up in a surprising place: the tomb of House Habsburg.
The Tomb of the Habsburgs: Kapuzinergruft
In German, the name of this place is Kapuzinergruft. That translates to “Imperial Crypt” and it sits beneath The Capuchin Church in central Vienna. If you’ve been reading this blog for a few years now, the word “Capuchin” should strike terror into your heart. Perhaps you will recall our visit to the The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo a few years ago? What a nightmare. If you don’t… here it is.
Don’t worry, this is going to be a lot less crazy than the trauma that I experienced in Palermo. In this case, there are no actual bodies on the display, but it’s still creepy. At the bottom of a long staircase, this crypt houses an insane collection of ornate coffins, grotesquely decorated with death-related symbolism, including welded metal skulls with cross-bones, crowns, halos, bat wings… all sorts of regal-yet-creepy add-ons. There are also lots of metal sculptures of deathly angles posing around prop tombstones or busts of the deceased. It was all extremely intricate and artistic… and extremely morbid. It’s like a Tim Burton film down here.
What really brought this from past to present for me was the tomb pictured below with the name “Elisabeth in Bayern” printed on it. Around the base of the coffin, there was a large group of very personal items that had been left for her. This included things like flowers of course, but what stood out to me was the 10-12 different hand-sketched portraits of this woman, many of which were accompanied by hand-written letters addressed to “Sissi”. I got the sense that most of these had been drawn/written by children… so who was this person?
This is the tomb of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who lived from 1854-1898. From my research, she strikes me as sort of the Princess Diana of her day. She married into royalty at a young age to become a somewhat reluctant member of the Habsburg royal court. Despite her political and cultural significance, her life was marked by tragedy, as her only son died in a murder-suicide at the hands of his mistress, and she herself would die by assassination. But while she was alive, she was widely known to be one of the most famous, beloved, and beautiful women in Europe in the 1800s. She was tall and slender, and was well known to have intense fitness and beauty regimes. In a corset, her waist was apparently only 16 inches in circumference! There’s a whole subsection of her Wikipedia page (linked above) called “Beauty” that is actually really interesting to read. Anyway, here are some of the items left at her grave today. Clearly, like Princess Di, she maintains an active place in the collective memory of Austria.
Sissi was the wife of Franz Joseph I, whose coffin sits elevated on a pedestal next to hers. Franz Joseph I was Emperor from 1848 to 1916. After the death of he and Sissi’s only son, the new heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary became Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Remember him? He’s the guys whose assassination was the trigger for WWI, a.k.a. “the Great War.” So it was Franz Joseph who officially brought Austria-Hungary into the war that would ultimately see its dismantling. Franz Joseph died (of natural causes) about 2 years before the end of the war, so he would not live to see the demise of his Empire, but he was an extremely important player in this paradigm-altering event.
If you’re interested to learn more about WWI, I highly recommend you listen to a series called Blueprint for Armageddon from Dan Carlin. I have definitely mentioned Dan Carlin before on this site. This is like 20 hours of listening, but it forever altered the way I see the world around me. WWI was one of the most interesting conflicts in history—much more so than WWII in my opinion! We don’t tend to hear as much about it because it was just senseless violence with no clear “good guy” or “bad guy”… but make no mistake: everything happening in the world today can be directly traced back to WWI. And everything that happened in WWI was a direct result of the centuries of history that preceded it. Learning about WWI via Dan Carlin, the modern day suddenly felt uncomfortably close to the past for me. So, here’s the resting place of the big man himself!
In the final room of this crypt are a collection of coffins for family members who died in the more recent past. One of them—Archduchess Yolande of Austria—actually died in 2023! That was like yesterday. And of course, she had children of her own.
There are still Habsburgs out there!
The most prominent of the LIVING Habsburgs—and the current head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine—is Karl von Habsburg. He is a notable guy in Austria today, having served in European Parliament as well as hosting a game show in 1990s. 😂
And Karl is actually a grandfather now! His model-slash-jewelry designer daughter, Eleonore von Habsburg (here’s a link to her Instagram) married a Formula One driver and had 2 kids of her own. Meanwhile, her little brother Ferdinand Habsburg (IG link), is a super famous race car driver on the European circuit.
Seeing the Instagram accounts of these two is pretty interesting… because they are about my age! And of course, to me—a lil’ Ohio boy—their lives seem inaccessibly glamorous. But that’s what this family has always been I suppose. People like me were always supposed to have that reaction to them. That’s why we all revolted. 😂
THE HABSBURG SAGA CONTINUES!
Up next is the final article queued for this series in Vienna.
Until then, I’ll leave you with something dark to feed your rumination on the systems of violent inequality that have kept families like Habsburgs on top of the world.
Are they super fascinating? Yes.
And do I now want to be friends with Ferdinand and Eleonore? Of course. 😂
But when you zoom out on this story, it’s all quite troubling.
Seriously, nothing can prepare you for how creepy this place is... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I'll start from the beginning. The Capuchin Catacombs are always placed highly on people's lists of things to do and see in Palermo, and it's easy to see why. It's just SO outrageous! Before we dive into this article, I've got some serious explaining to do, because you are sure to have questions. I know that for me, the biggest question I had in all of this was just "why." Why does this place exist?
Buckle in, kids!