Kaiserin Elisabeth - Das poetische Tagebuch

Although her contemporaries were unaware of the fact, Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898), the wife of Emperor Franz Josef and mother of Crown Prince Rudolf, wrote poetry, specifically emulating the poet Heinrich Heine, whom she admired (but who was ostracised by the Viennese court). The empress used the diary-style poems as a means to vent her many frustrations, at the same time criticising the Viennese court and aristocratic society, indeed the monarchy as a whole, as no longer of its time. Many merciless, frequently even downright provocative statements by the empress regarding the internal affairs of the House of Habsburg and Austrian politics in the late 1880s are what make this source so valuable and justify publication of this edition, there being no comparable, similarly high-ranking historical source from this period. The fact that the verses have little literary merit does nothing to reduce their value as a source. The Viennese historian and biographer of Elisabeth Brigitte Hamann was the first to be granted permission to examine this source and is now presenting it to the public as a complete edition. The empress herself mandated that her literary estate should be left in the safekeeping of the Swiss President (and not in the Viennese archives, where it seemed to her that the risk of it being destroyed was too great – a fear that was almost certainly justified). She also desired that these verses be published in the 20th century in order to inform the “souls of the future” about many things that went on behind the scenes. In keeping with an order by Empress Elisabeth, the net proceeds from this poetic diary will go to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).