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archduchessofnowhere · 2 months ago

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“She is unfit for her position both as Empress and as wife”: Elisabeth and Dr. Seeburger

Left: Doctor Johann Seeburger, by Ludwig Angerer, c. 1860. Via the Royal Collection Trust. Right: Empress Elisabeth of Austria, by Ludwig Angerer, c. 1861. Via Wikimedia Commons.

I had this sitting on my drafts for months, yet I didn’t find any motivation to finish this post. That is, until the first teaser of Die Kaiserin season 2 dropped, featuring, among other things, a scene in which Elisabeth spits a doctor in the face. And while something as rude as this never happened, the young empress of Austria did have a troubled relationship with one doctor at the Habsburg court: Johann Seeburger. I don’t know if the doctor in the teaser is meant to be him, but given that he and Elisabeth ended up being borderline hostile towards each other, I wouldn’t be surprised if Seeburger was the inspiration (assuming the doctor is an actual character with lines and not a random physician that will get spit on the face for no reason). So without further ado, let’s look at what we know about Elisabeth and Seeburger’s relationship.

I couldn’t find information on Dr Johann Seeburger, only that he was born in 1800, and seems to have worked at court since at least the beginning of the reign of Franz Josef (probably earlier, since it was very difficult to access court). We don’t know what kind of relationship Elisabeth and Seeburger had when they met, as biographers don’t make any mention of it. He attended Elisabeth during her first pregnancy, and I think it’s safe to assume he also treated her during her second one. Seeburger wasn’t the only doctor consulted - Doctor Heinrich Fischer, the Wittelsbach’s personal physician, was also called for a second opinion.

Aunt Luise [Elisabeth’s mother]’s Doctor Fischer, in whom I have a great deal of confidence, has arrived here... [He was] delighted by Sisi’s blooming appearance and finds her whole condition very satisfactory. He and Seeburger say that the great moment will come at the end of February, at least the first days of March... (Praschl-Bichler, 2008)

Elisabeth probably felt more comfortable with Fischer, who had been her doctor back in Bavaria, than with Seeburger, so it’s not odd they called him for a second opinion.

It is not only until the Imperial family’s ill-fated Hungarian trip of 1857 that Sisi’s biographers mention Seeburger again - for in this trip, her first child tragically died.

The little archduchesses Sophie and Gisela arrived in Hungary on May 5 of 1857, a day after their parents, but they never joined them in the tour - the girls were to stay in Buda, where the Imperial couple could visit them during the short breaks of the packed tour schedule, which was meant to last two months. The visit started off well, but only a few days after their arrival, Gisela fell ill with fever.

Gisela’s fever was first attributed to teething, but the next day her sister Sophie also fell ill. Franz Josef and Sisi were meant to leave Buda and continue their journey through eastern Hungary, but the emperor postponed the journey for ten days as the girls continued to be sick. This did not mean that the parents were always next to their daughters, as historian Martina Winkelhofer notes, “the days that were now free were filled with further receptions and audiences. Only the evening festive events were cancelled.” (2022)

After three days Gisela got better, but Sophie showed no improvement. Dr Seeburger was among the physicians that were present attending the young archduchesses, but still Franz Josef called the pediatrician Josef-Michael Götz from Vienna. “The latter was not only the author of the manual Care and Treatment of Sick Children during the Early Phase of Life (1842), which is in the imperial court library, but had also studied the ‘course of the great epidemics (cholera, typhus, influenza) in children’.” (ibid, 2022)

Götz left a day after being summoned, but Baby Sophie only got worse. At this point the parents were feeling desperate: Franz Josef wrote to his mother Archduchess Sophie that the girl’s cries “tore his heart apart”, and added that “‘What Sisi and I are suffering, you can imagine!’” (Praschl-Bichler, 2008). Baby Sophie was diagnosed with typhus, and the pediatrician was recalled. After a hard night it seemed the child showed signs of being better, and it was believed she would recover. So on May 21, the Imperial couple was given the all-clear by the doctors to finally continue their tour.

Here is where things get a bit odd. Quoting Winkelhofer again (emphasis by me):

Elisabeth and Franz Joseph then set off from Buda to Jászberényi with a solemn entrance into the city. On the fourth day of the tour, however - as can be read in the travel protocol - there arrived “a telegraphic dispatch about the condition of Her Imperial Highness Archduchess Sophie from Buda, the contents of which distressed His Majesty to such an extent that Her Royal Highness’s departure was already scheduled for noon”. The telegram probably came from Sophie’s aja, and may have been sent without consulting the doctors because, as soon as the decision to leave was made, a report from the court physicians arrived: “His Majesty [had] decided to interrupt the sudden departure that had already begun”. (2022)

What happened? We can only speculate - whether the aya realized that Sophie hadn’t recovered before the doctors, whether the doctors’ report arrived before the girl’s health worsened. Whatever actually happened, those hours of delay were to result crucial: the next morning Sophie was in critical condition. The parents, who were in Debrecen at the moment, only arrived in Buda the following morning, where they found their child already at death’s door. That afternoon, on May 29, the two years-old Sophie died.

I went in detail on the last days of Baby Sophie because I think they’re crucial to understand the aftermath of her death. Having been away from her daughter during her final days was a great source of torment for Elisabeth, who blamed herself for leaving the child when they thought she was going to make it. Unsurprisingly, she also felt the physicians had failed in saving her daughter. According to her biographer Egon Conte Corti, the young empress tried to have Seeburger dismissed, but Archduchess Sophie’s intervention prevented it. (1936, p. 75)

I always feel that biographers focus too much on how grief made Elisabeth act “irrational” - to the point they ignore that she had a genuine reason to be upset at Dr Seeburger. Was she being fair? I don’t know, it was the 19th century, who knows if there was any doctor who could’ve cured Baby Sophie. I want to believe that all the doctors who treated her truly did as much as they could to help the girl. Corti claims that until the end Seeburger “was very crestfallen, but when pressed with questions he would only say that he had not given up hope.” (ibid, p. 73). But it was Seeburger and the medical staff who ultimately told Elisabeth and Franz Josef that it was safe to leave Sophie and continue the trip, and it was he who sent the report that prevented them from coming back earlier the 28th. Perhaps her animosity towards the doctor was unfair, but the way I see it, it was also understandable.

After this, the relationship between the empress and the court doctor became tense. Unlike her first two, Sisi’s third pregnancy and labor were very difficult. She wasn’t allowed to nurse Rudolf - which was the norm, but she had a large influx of milk that caused her a lot of pain. More concerning, she caught fever during the puerperium, but even though Laxemburg (where the Crown Prince had been born and the empress was recovering) was cooling, as it didn’t have heating, Seeburger didn’t order to move the empress to a different palace. Winkelhofer notes that the physician’s attitude is surprising, since there was a real danger of puerperal fever. Archduchess Sophie had to write (emphasis by me):

telegram after telegram to convince the Emperor and Seeburger that it was only the unhealthy air in Laxenburg that was causing Sisi’s fever attacks and that a speedy transfer of Sisi to my warm parlours in Schönbrunn [Sophie was staying in Ischl], well protected in a closed carriage during the warm midday hours, would certainly be advisable. Seeburger did not want to go along with this idea at first, but after the second attack of fever he said he would bring Sisi to Schönbrunn in the middle of this month; if only the bad weather did not throw a spanner in the works! (Praschl-Bichler, 2008; also in Winkelhofer, 2022)

Only months after Rudolf’s birth, Austria was at war with Sardinia. The war took a great toll on Sisi’s mental health, and she was visibly stressed. The court society found their empress disappointing: they wanted an icon of hope, a figurehead who would visit hospitals and attend public events to lift the spirits of the Viennese. But Elisabeth was only a twenty-years old woman who hadn’t known peace for the past years, and courtiers could not forgive her this. Dr Seeburger was no exception. During a meeting, the physician told the Viennese police officer that:

She [Elisabeth] is unfit for her position both as Empress and as wife; though she has really nothing to do. Her relations with the children are most perfunctory, and though she grieves and weeps over the noble Emperor’s absence, she goes out riding for hours on end, ruining her health. An icy gulf separates her from the Archduchess Sophie, and the Mistress of the Household, the Countess Esterhazy, has absolutely no influence over her. (Corti, 1936, p. 81)

If you’ve read any biography of Sisi, you’ve probably read this quote. Authors who cite this statement usually focus on what Seeburger said: Elisabeth was acting “crazy” during the war, she didn’t have a good relationship with her kids, she and her mother-in-law couldn’t stand each other anymore. His word is usually taken at face value, even if the author citing him notes that Seeburger and Sisi didn’t like each other much. Martina Winkelhofer is the only historian I’ve read who takes into account the context in which the court doctor said this, and considers what it meant (emphasis by me):

These strong words show how unfairly the emperor’s closest entourage behaved towards Elisabeth. Even if this was the court physician’s personal opinion, someone so close to the imperial family should not have expressed himself in this way. Details about members of the household were taboo and observing their silence was a sign of the loyalty necessary for a career at court. Seeburger could have written about his disappointment in the form of a diary, as many did, without publicly defaming the imperial couple. By revealing such intimacies to the police minister, who had a widespread network of informants and contacts in all parts of society, he damaged the emperor. In addition, Seeburger’s complaints contained a good deal of misogyny, because all he did was deny Elisabeth the right to be a woman, wife and mother, even out loud. (2022)

Seeburger’s statement about Elisabeth wasn’t a neutral observation: he was badmouthing her after years of having a bad relationship with her, something many authors don’t seem to realize when citing him. As Winkelhofer also notes, although Archduchess Sophie was indeed not getting along with her daughter-in-law at this time, she did not write nor say a bad thing about Elisabeth, because attacking the empress was the same as attacking the monarchy. Even if you think Seeburger was right, I don’t think you should omit the context in which he said what he said.

When Elisabeth fell mysteriously ill in 1861, she wasn’t attended by Seeburger. Many doctors treated the empress the following two years, but it was eventually her trusted family doctor, Heinrich Fischer, who was able to cure Sisi: when he finally took charge of her treatment in 1862, he concluded that she had been misdiagnosed by her previous doctors; most importantly, he seems to have noticed that her ailments weren’t only physical, but also mental. He remained her personal physician until his death in 1874. (Winkelhofer, 2022)

Elisabeth and Seeburger had a complicated relationship, to say the least. We are still missing a lot of information, but for what I could gather, the hostility between the two isn’t really surprising. What’s surprising is how this entire context is missing in so many books about the empress, especially when Seeburger’s famous quote is brought up.

Sources:

Corti, Egon Caesar Conte (1936). Elizabeth, empress of Austria (translation by Catherine Alison Phillips)

Praschl-Bichler (2008). Unsere liebe Sisi: Die Wahrheit über Erzherzogin Sophie und Kaiserin Elisabeth

Winkelhofer, Martina (2022). Sissi. La vera storia. Il cammino della giovane imperatrice (translation by Federica Saccucci)

#empress elisabeth of austria #doctor johann seeburger #archduchess sophie of austria #franz josef i of austria #sophie of bavaria archduchess of austria #tw death of a child

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